This week’s Shanghainese Saturday Sunday Monday… day covers a few tools of communication. Speaking of which, the phone company hasn’t managed to get me online at my new place yet, thus the delays.

　电话
　[di22ɦo44]
　telephone

　手机
　[sɤ33ʨi44]
　mobile phone

　电脑
　[di22nɔ44]
　computer

And an earlier entry that never made it past Twitter, a phrase for when communication breaks down:

　侬讲啥？
　noŋ gaŋ sa?
　What did you say?

As usual you can receive these phrases as well as updates of the site via Twitter by following @AnnalsofWu.

#shanghaisat

Well, It’s Saturday. And this week’s theme is tea.

绿茶 – loʔ¹¹ zo²³, green tea

红茶 – ɦoŋ²² zo⁴⁴, black tea

茶叶 – zo²² ɦiɪʔ, tea leaf

奶茶 – nɑ²² zo⁴⁴, milk tea or bubble tea

Note:
The letter ɦ is darker and, well, raspier, than the standard English h sound. O is like it’s name in English. ʔ marks a stopping of the air like you’re holding your breath for just an instant. The standard lowercase i is like “ee” and the ɪ is like the vowel in the word “if” or “sit”. Finally the ɑ is like when you have to say “aaah” at the doctor’s office. It’s further back in you mouth than the a in “bar”.

As usual you can find these as well as tweets by following @AnnalsofWu on Twitter, assuming you can get over the GFW.

It’s Saturday. A month ago it was recommended, probably without even the slightest hint of seriousness, that it become Shanghainese Saturday (since dubbed 星期沪). It started with an unprecedented level of news on Shanghainese, all in one day. Now each Saturday you can learn a couple useful phrases in Shanghainese jut by being on Twitter.

Today’s phrases:
English: Happy to meet you.
普通话：很高兴见到你
上海话：老开心碰到侬
Pronunciation: lao kai xin bang dao nong

English: What is your reason for coming to Shanghai?
普通话：您到上海来的目的是什么？
上海话：侬到上海来做啥？
Pronunciation: nong dao sang hai lai zu sa

The older ones seem to have been lost in the ether, however I do still have the first which comes from an earlier post on this blog.

English: Have you eaten?
普通话：你吃饭了没有？
上海话：侬饭吃过了吗？
Pronunciation: nong ve chi gu la va
IPA:noŋ¹³ vɛ¹³ tɕ’iɪʔ⁵ ku³⁴ lɑʔ² vəʔ²

The tweets were originally under the hashtag #shsat but since that’s an acronym otherwise in use on Twitter, future tweets with be under #shsaturday. You can receive these tweets by following @annalsofwu. I promise not to tweet about my latest mundane life details if you do.

Today seems to be Shanghainese Saturday, at least from my end of things.

At LanguageLog, Victor Mair has a post up (A Potpourri of Materials on Shanghainese) which, among other things, has a great quote from a mother who is raising her daughter to understand and hopefully speak Shanghainese. I particularly like this part:

“I think the hardest part now for promoting Shanghainese is to let people understand that promoting a dialect is different from saying it (together with its culture and people) is superior than other dialects (and people and local cultures). Shanghainese and Shanghai people had such a bad reputation in the past (for which we only have ourselves to blame) that it is very difficult for people to distinguish these two separate issues.”

There’s also an interesting note on topolectal high school examination questions appearing here in China and a link to this site to inflate my ego just slightly.

Through a recent post on ChinaSmack I came across M and MX, a site with bilingual Chinese/English comics and, surprise surprise, Shanghainese podcasts. Click here for all the recordings. Check it out.

Then, prolific twitterer David Feng posted a link to a slightly odd cartoon in Shanghainese called 黑猫警长, Sergeant Black Cat. While not my typical form of evening entertainment, it’s good to see Wu in such form.

Finally, eChinaCities.com has a short article on Shanghainese called Nóng Hô! that includes a few common phrases and some great photos.

Thanks to Victor Mair and LanguageLog for the mention.