 Welcome to the world of Shanghainese, my name is Yuan Zhang, lecturer in linguistics and the languages of China. I'm a native speaker of Shanghainese. Let me start by showing you what I plan to do for this series. So each time I will either talk about the Shanghainese language itself or I will talk about something related to Shanghai society and the Shanghai community. Today is a general introduction about Shanghainese. If you take a look at this map, against the red arrow, there is a striped patch which is what we call the area for Wu languages. In this picture on the right, you see an overview of the dialects in China where against the red arrow again, the red patch shows the Wu languages area which is enlarged on the left. So on the left, the major cities are usually related to the major dialects in the Wu dialect area. So you see Shanghai, Suzhou, Ningbo, Shaoxing, Wenzhou and Jinghua. They are all related to distinct dialects. In total, the Wu languages have 80 million speakers that's ranked the second largest cluster of languages in China and the 10th in the world. This is a map of greater Shanghai. It has an area of 6,340 square kilometers. And the registered regular residents there by the year 2019 is around 24 million, 24.28 million to be exact. How many speakers of Shanghainese are there in this area? So this is harder to tell. But what we can find is a record related to the census in the year 2013. At that time, there was a language survey of the regular residents which accounts for 24.15 million people there. At that time, 97% of people claim themselves to be speakers of Mandarin. That is also called Hu Tonghua, general Chinese. And also among this population of regular residents, 81.4% of people claim themselves to be speakers of Shanghainese. So we can say that many people living in Shanghai are bilingual. And so what we can also deduce is that in the year 2020, there could be more than 20 million speakers of Shanghainese. Something about the historical development of the language. Early Shanghainese, it's said to be evolved from the mixture of middle Chinese with the indigenous Baiyue language or languages. So it took shape in the span from the spring and autumn period to the Han dynasties, which is a long period. The second phase is modern Shanghainese, which spans between 1843 to mid-1950s. 1843 is the year immediately after the First Opium War when Shanghai became a trading port open to the Western powers following the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing. In the mid-1950s, marked the introduction by the Chinese People's Republic of China's central government, the introduction of a series of language reform measures, which had great impacts on all dialects in China. Because it was at that time when Mandarin and also the related Hu Tonghua, standard Chinese, was explicitly promoted. For contemporary Shanghainese, that is the language spoken by people since the 1950s, there are three variants. First, the old variant that is typically spoken by people born in the 1920s and the 1930s, and it overlaps a lot with modern Shanghainese, you know, Shanghainese used between 1843 and the 1950s. And it is still a variant, which is widely used in the suburban areas of Shanghai, with the intending to be pejorative suburban areas, that's the outskirts of the downtown area of Shanghai. If you are there, you'll find that this is a vast stretch of area, and it is used even among the younger people there. The middle variant of Shanghainese, contemporary Shanghainese, is now commonly taken to be the standard variant, that is often the variant that is being taught in textbooks and radio programs, like this program. And it is the variant used by the majority of middle-aged people in the urban areas of Shanghai. By middle-aged, I mean people born between the 1960s and before the 1990s. The new variant, it is the variant mostly used by very young people in the urban area, and it has some distinct phonetic and lexical features, but certainly it also overlaps a lot with the middle variant, and it is often code mixed with Putonghua or standard Mandarin. That is because many young people don't really know how to express the exact concepts and ideas in Shanghainese proper. Now, I want to give you a taste of Shanghainese by reading a paragraph, first in Mandarin and then in Middle Shanghainese. The paragraph is taken from a recent and so-called very Shanghainese novel called Fanhua, and in English it is called Blossoms. In Mandarin, Du Shang Ge Lou, the best is Ye Li, the taste of the past. Liang Chao Wei, A Fei Zheng Zhuan, Jie Wei's appearance. Under the light, it is called Chao Piao. It is called Fang Jing Xi Zhuang Nei Dai. It is also called Qing Shuang Fang Ru Kou Dan. It is called Fu Ke Pai Xi Kai. It is called Fu Ke Pai Xi Kai. Then it is called Su Tou. San Qi Fen Tou. It is called Xi Xi Su Hao. Quan Shen Bi Ting. It is called the Lan Shan in the bones. Finally, Guan Deng. This paragraph is the most Shanghainese, the best. Now, Middle Shanghainese. Du Shang Ge Lou. Zhu Huo Ye Li. Du Chi Ge Mi Tou. Liang Chao Wei, A Fei Zheng Zhuan, Jie Wei's appearance. Under the light, it is called Su Chao Piao. It is called Fang Jing Xi Zhuang Nei Dai. It is called Qing Shang Fang Ru Kou Dan. It is called Fu Ke Pai Xi Kai. It is also called Fu Lei. Ru Zi Shi Tou. San Qi Fen Tou. It is called Xi Xi Su Hao. Xu Shen Bi Ting. Tou Chao Guo Dou Li Ge Le Xi. Zhu Er Gui Deng. It is called the Zhu Shang Tei. Zhu Ge Lou. Well, I must say that the written language stands between the Shanghainese and its proper expression. Well, what you can find is that Shanghainese is indeed very unique. You'll probably agree with me that it is mutually unintelligible with Mandarin. And in fact, because I have knowledge of Cantonese as well, I used to work in Hong Kong for a long time, more than 20 years. I can tell you that Shanghainese is also mutually unintelligible with Cantonese. But if you are in the Wu language area or Wu dialect area, you'll find that Shanghainese is mutually intelligible with most of the Wu Chinese, especially like Ningbo dialect and Suzu dialect. Probably with the exception for Wen Zou Wu dialect, which is a bit more unique. What also makes Shanghainese unique compared with Mandarin is that it has five tones. Well, Mandarin has four. And Cantonese has nine. What is more interesting is that Shanghainese has a rich tone-sandy system. What do we mean by tone-sandy? Well, for Chinese, we know that each syllable in Chinese stands for one character. Or this is probably not the right way of saying it. But we can say that in Chinese, each character is usually equivalent to one syllable. And each syllable has a fixed tonal value that differentiates among different meanings. So when you have two syllables put together in meaningful, in a meaningful lexical form, then the tones will be affected by the neighboring tones. So the tonal values will change. What if we had three tones or three characters put together, or four, or five? Well, for Shanghainese, then the tonal values of each can be affected. So when you pronounce a sentence, then you keep on having tone-sandy. And it is very difficult for you to try to mark down the tones because you have to change the tonal value in the context. Next is that Chinese has a unique lexicon. If you read Mandarin, sometimes you can tell which words are borrowed from Chinese. And Shanghainese certainly has an idiosyncratic grammar, even though that this aspect has been very much understudied. And finally, believe it or not, Shanghainese is among the variants of Chinese, Shanghainese is the most recorded in written form, next only to Mandarin. Especially for that historical period, which is what we call the modern Shanghainese period between 1843 and the 1950s. For that period, a lot of scripts in Shanghainese were published, especially due to the great efforts of Western missionaries. That is something we'll return to later. That is a very interesting topic for me. So from a social linguistic point of view, there is also a very interesting hot topic that is often picked up recently. Is Shanghainese in danger or not? Well, for a lot of experts who have informed knowledge about endangered language studies, like many of my colleagues at Sours, they will probably say, at first impression, they will probably say that, no, Shanghainese is still very safe, because the language has 20 million speakers. But then for a lot of people who are worried about the future of Shanghainese, especially in Shanghai, they would say, yes, Shanghainese is very much endangered, because it is quickly losing a lot of its unique, distinct features, especially in terms of phonetics and in terms of, let's say, the study of lexical aspects of the language. Because Shanghainese used to be considered as a one language representative of the Wu languages. But then it is quickly losing a lot of its distinct features at too fast a pace within a short span of 30 years. Now, people would say that Suzhou dialect is a representative Wu language. Shanghainese, well, maybe not, because it is so often used with a lot of code switching between Shanghainese and Mandarin. That is, people start with a sentence in Chinese, but then they shift to the use of Mandarin terms in the middle, because they don't know how to express them in proper Shanghainese. This is alarming. And for a lot of people living in Shanghai, they would say that losing Shanghainese means the loss of Shanghainese culture. Believe it or not, again, revolution has removed a lot of cultural relics in Shanghai, but then a lot of former cultural values still exist with great resilience in Shanghai language itself. And just a little bit more about that aspect is that we can say that after revolution, people tried hard to have a better life in China and in Shanghai. But then now they wake up to find that in between, they have lost their own dialect or language, which is a great pity, isn't it? Many times, well, this is because of the promotion of Mandarin. There is nothing wrong with the promotion of Mandarin, but then it is still a great pity to see your own language being lost as a result. So now it's getting a bit clear why I'm trying to promote or at least to introduce Shanghainese to more people here. One reason I think it's always interesting for people interested in knowing about different languages, that is what we call language buffs, it is always interesting for them to get to know the wonder of a new language. This time, we're talking about a Chinese language, which is now Mandarin, yet it is still a Han language. It is probably not easy to find a Chinese who can speak both Cantonese and Shanghainese. In addition to Mandarin, which every Chinese can probably speak, and this is also from my experience, and it is probably even rarer for us to find a native speaker of English who has these feats. That is, I have never met a native speaker of English who can speak both Chinese and Cantonese fluently. So this is a challenge. I hope the English native speakers can meet. The second reason for us to promote Chinese here is to invite people to experience Chinese culture through the language. You may find yourselves in Shanghai one day, and it will be a good opportunity for you to use the language there, and you'll be responded with great warmth by the local people. The third reason is related to the idea of Chinese being endangered. We can't certainly go back to the past by trying to speak modern Chinese again, that is, using a lot of its phonetic features there. I don't think it is ever possible to do that. But then what we can still do is to use Chinese more, think about Chinese, rather than using Mandarin only. And this is one, I believe, important way to invigorate the language. So I want to encourage more people to speak, and even more people to learn about it, to know that there is an important language in China, and there is also an important cluster of languages called Wu languages in China, which is often unduly represented only by Mandarin. Because if you take a look at the charts of the most used languages in the world, you don't see Wu languages, because Wu languages, mysteriously, have been swallowed by Mandarin. So you only see Mandarin there. What are the prerequisites and requirements for you to learn Chinese if you want to? This is something I'm going to do, in fact. Well, we can take it as a module, which has never been taught at Seoul's event, even though they teach Mandarin, Cantonese, and Mingnan dialects there. Well, you need to be curious about languages. And it would be a plus for you to know some Chinese characters that will make it easier for us to quote sentences, even though I really plan to introduce a romanization system for Chinese, which is, in fact, different from the romanized system for Mandarin, which is called Ping-In as well. So it is the Chinese Ping-In system. And I hope you'll be willing to reflect on the structure of the language, and you'll be willing to do some practices, Jews with me. And I will end this session and every session afterwards with some recommended links, which I sometimes I can't show you the linked content because of copyright reasons. But then, at least, you can click on the links and view for yourselves.