Maybe it’s just my own proximity to the subject, and maybe I just never paid it any attention in the West or Middle East, but there seems to be an exceptionally high occurrence of non-locals trying to speak local topolects. Granted, not many are trying to pass as 丹阳人, but it has happened. My proof has since been taken off Youku, but trust me, it was there.

There’s what I assume to be a quite popular show aired in Taiwan called 康熙來了 which to me anyway is the Platonic form of a Mandopop talk show. The hosts are Xú Xīdì 徐熙娣, better known as 小S, and Cài Kāngyǒng 蔡康永. Cài is from a rather old and rich family in Shanghai, my sources tell me. On this particular Friday afternoon, my background noise is some other variety type show hosted by the pair. And, as happens from time to time, the topic of topolects came up. 小S asked him how to say a number of things in Shanghainese. He did, and she attempted with some success to repeat the phrases.

As I mentioned, this seems to happen quite often. There are forum posts upon forum posts of how to say things in local dialects. Each of these that I’ve seen has a number of replies showing some interest. While no one is really going to make a major effort to learn one fully, which includes people I know who’ve moved here 10 years ago and still can’t understand much more than the basics, people do have some awareness of and at least passing interest in them.

The thing is, I can’t see this happening in the states. While we have people like Hugh Laurie (House) and Anna Torv (Fringe) who’ve made their television careers by faking another single dialect, I don’t see Stephen Colbert’s Christmas special dedicating ten minutes on how to speak like you’re from Philadelphia.

It makes me wonder what this does, if anything, for preservation. It seems obvious to me that this wouldn’t in any way dilute a dialect. But could it help? Do any universities in Shanghai teach Wu as a second language in the same way you can study Uyghur in Ürümqi? If so, seriously let me know. I’ll make sure to enrol for the fall term.

So far all of the books I’ve been able to find specifically covering 常州方言 have been without any real phonetic transliterations, IPA or otherwise. Instead characters are used and loosely at that. 《常州方言》which I bought last week has about 4 occurrences of Latin letters in the whole book, usually of little value. In other places it tells you that “我读罗音” which I’ve not once heard from all the people of whom I’ve asked to speak for me, leading me to believe the authors may not have been cut from the same cloth as my available speakers. See the 丹阳 comment below to see what I mean. At any rate, below are a few more common variations, some from the above mentioned book and some from other sources.

我 can be written 吾 or in the case of Shanghainese can be 阿拉^[1]
你 or 您 in Shanghai is written and said as 侬 (though apparently in 新昌 it can be 倷, nǎi)
不 is written 弗^[2]
太 is written 忒^[3]

What’s more, 呢 is written 唻 and 吗 is written 口伐^[4] or just 伐. There’s a whole chapter in 《常州方言》on modal particles though many of the characters used are not otherwise covered by Unicode.
口格 is used for what would be 的 in Mandarin. Thus 有的 is 有口格 and 好的 becomes 好口格. In some cases 嘚 takes the place of 的 as an adjectival marker. It’s been suggested to me that 嘚 is likely a 丹阳 thing, really just meaning it’s not 市中心 Changzhou dialect. Having not been to 丹阳 I can’t really say one way or another. update: A possible answer to that has come up. 家开, pronounced by the ever-helpful 婷婷 as gu kaⁱ where the i is almost not there, is a phrases meaning 回家. However, as she also tells me, it’s really only spoken in the southern parts of Changzhou. So perhaps it’s not about 丹阳 afterall.

There are plenty of times when a character that may no longer be widely used in Mandarin is used for the Wu equivalent, e.g. 姊 for 姐，囥 for 藏 etc., or even multiples replaced by one as with 什么 becoming 嗲 (so 做什么 is 就嗲).

There’s also something going on with tones being represented by different characters. Iit gives 二 being 两, which happens pretty consistently in Changzhou. However it goes on to say that in some cases 二 should be said as 腻 nì, not nī, ní or nǐ.

I must admit this whole character-only thing is far more taxing than I had predicted. This whole project is moving from the realm of practical proficiency to scholarly pursuit one day at a time. I’m making a trip to Wuxi soon at which time I’ll be hitting up the local bookstores in search of a proper text on that dialect. In the meantime I’m still searching the city for a copy of any of 赵元任’s works or anything that may have a transliteration system I can map on to IPA. In the mean time I’ve reached the point where I need to head back to Xinhua where I bought the one I have to re-evaluate the books they otherwise have to see if I can pick anything of greater value out of those, though I’m not holding my breath for anything that comes out of Xinhua.

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1. which is also a transliteration for “Allah” in Mandarin. See the Glossary of Chinese Islamic Terms which I compiled a couple months back.
2. or, occassionally online, 佛. this however is less accurate in both sound and meaning.
3. pronounced as [te] or in Changzhou as [d̥eɪ̯]
4. unable to find a proper character, i’ve resorted to using HTML to make my own.