It’s been a long long day. I have precious little time to get everything in order for my next visa before the current one expires. I was under the false impression that my health check would occur in Pudong at 2:00 this afternoon. I only realised it was in fact to happen in Changning, way way west of Pudong. This realisation occurred around 1pm as I arrived at the wrong place. Needless to say, I’ve spent much greater time on public transportation than off it today. Only at the end did I cave and use a taxi for anything other than time estimates.

Before the panic set in, before I even made it to Pudong, I was at 龍之夢. There’s a book store operated by Xinhua but not called Xinhua across Changning Road from the actual mall, within spitting distance of two different Starbuck’s. In the past they’ve had some decent but not great books on Shanghainese, but with what I thought was time to kill, I headed back. Their selection on Shanghainese materials has doubled to a grand total of 4 books, two of which are dictionaries. There were about the same with one major exception. One had IPA transcription next to the characters with tones for each one, and the other had some non-standard and difficult to figure out transliteration system, free of tones. So I bought the first one. At only 38RMB, I think it was well worth it. Here’s the link for the one I skipped.

I’ll get more on the dictionary later. I’d like to touch on the futility of learning Shanghainese for a moment. I had a decently long cab ride back from my health check during which the usual conversation topics were touched on (hey you speak chinese well (I don’t), shanghai is too big (he said), are black people in america decent people, etc.). We got to the topic of language as is the case with most conversations I have these days, and the book was still in my bag so I thought I’d give it a quick try. I showed it to him; he read while driving. He was rather amused and pointed at one entry, pronouncing it clearly in Shanghainese. Except it didn’t match what was written hardly at all. He said 夹 as jia though the book gave kA, the tones being a mismatch as well. The other words in the phrase were close enough, but that one difference is enough to bring things into question at least for me. Not wanting to lose the thread of the conversation, I shrugged it off. Only later did I learn he was from Chongming Dao, which while technically is Shanghai, doesn’t really speak Shanghainese. They speak Chongminghua, which is different enough to be considered a distinctly different dialect by most sources, places closer to the Wu dialects in the Nantong area.

Maybe calling this a point of futility is a bit strong. But it does hurt the motivation a bit when self-described Shanghairen aren’t quite hitting the Shanghaihua target I’d set up (stupidly) in my mind.

Very topical to hit on the black thing, I thought. Maybe he’s a reality t.v. fan.

With my apologies to Beijing Sounds for posting on the same setting only shortly after it appeared there*, the following was recorded in a taxi sometime around 7 in the morning last week as I was on my way to the bus station. The windows of the taxi were open and half the conversation was through the radio so things get a bit messy at the end. I’ve taken out as much of the wind as I can without making the words any less clear than they already are. I’d also forgotten to grab my external microphone so I had to record it through the phone’s built-in mic which leaves much to be desired.

Finally, I have to say I’m mostly guessing on a lot of this. I felt more confident about what was happening when it was happening. Now, a few days later, it all seems much foggier. “A” is my driver and “B” is another driver in another car.

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A: ＿＿＿侬弗侬弗吃饭对吧。
(unclear syllables) You, you haven’t eaten, right?

B: 嗲？
What?

A: 阿現在＿＿侬弗吃饭对吧。
Uh you haven’t already eaten, right?

B: 喔。吃饭啦。
Oh. I ate.

A: 因为吃吃[米?]对吧。我＿＿弗吃＿＿。
(unclear, followed by something about how A hasn’t eaten yet)

That’s as far as I’m going to transcribe without a native speaker to help. Right around 00:15:45 you’ll hear 吾弗相信, 我不相信. At around 00:21:30 it moves solely to other cars for a while. I really wish I had been in the woman’s taxi just to hear her speak in person. The guy at 25 is classic too. Three cheers for personality. 00:39:00 sees the return of my driver.

The second voice answers lazily with 嗲, pronounced roughly as “dia” would be in pinyin. It’s the most Changzhou way of saying 什么 I’ve heard while in Shanghai you’re likely to get “zuo/jiu sa” for 做什么. Meawhile 做 tends to take the sound (and sometimes the 汉字) of 就 more often than not, at least in my neck of the woods. I’m not sure how far east 嗲 goes before being replaced with something else, but it’s alive and well at least this far west.

Suggestions or corrections or wild and largely unsubstantiated guesses on what else is being said are always welcome.

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* I left the date from when I started this post but only got around to publishing it on June 9.