An introduction to Shanghainese: Part 1

This post is a series on introductory Shanghainese, so it's a lengthy, lengthy introduction to Shanghainese. Shanghainese (上海閒話, zaon he ghe wu) is the best known of the Wu Chinese dialects (吳語 wu nyiu), a series of dialects spoken in and around Shanghai, in a region known as Jiangnan (江南 kaon noe). Shanghainese, unlike Mandarin and Cantonese should be easier for native English speakers to learn and speak because it does not have tones, but a pitch accent like in Japanese. Basically, forget all you know about tone in Mandarin or Cantonese when learning Shanghainese, because you won't be needing it. Shanghainese and some other Wu dialects, especially Suzhou dialect (蘇州閒話 su tseu ghe wu), are known for its rather flowing, palatal-heavy speech (of which it is stereotyped for called 吳儂軟語 wu non nyoe nyiu) rather than the stereotyped, the sharp high-low, sing-songy, cacophonous, guttural speech in Mandarin or Cantonese. Shanghainese and the Wu dialects were also an important part in shaping modern Standard Mandarin, since the late 19th century when many writers in that language, many of whom were native speakers of Wu Chinese. Shanghainese also played an even greater role in influencing the variety of Standard Mandarin spoken in Taiwan. The first part is about phonology and an introduction to the increasingly used Tongyong Wu Chinese romanization (通用吳語拼音 thon yon wu nyiu pin yin). We will also be using Hanzi, in which we use the traditional way of writing Chinese characters, not the simplified (because you can convert traditional easily into simplified but not the other way around). This post is based on http://wu-chinese.com/romanization/ to a loose extent, but it's mainly directed at English speakers and those who don't speak Chinese or read Mandarin. It's also directed at people who don't speak Shanghainese but want to know more about it.

If we want to go into specifics, Shanghainese belongs to the Taihu Wu dialect group, more often called 'Northern Wu Chinese'.  Prior to the 19th century, Shanghainese did not exist as it did today. The dialect spoken there was more or less the same as in Suzhou dialect, as it was still a part of Jiangsu province. As Shanghai became more important, migrants from other parts of Jiangsu and Zhejiang arrived and settled in the city. A major influence in Shanghainese is the Ningbo dialect. And Shanghainese is a mixture of Suzhou dialect in its speech and Ningbo dialect in its phonology with some influences from other neighboring Northern Wu dialects along with Mandarin, more or less what is called a koiné language. Essentially a new dialect that has arisen as a result of contact between two or more mutually intelligible varieties of a language. And throughout the centuries, Shanghainese has changed a lot. Shanghainese spoken today was almost not the same as it was spoken 50 years, and definitely not the same as it was spoken 100 years ago. This blog will be focusing on the modern variety of Shanghainese spoken today.

Again, if you are used to Chinese language, forget about tone. Within the Chinese languages, and in many Chinese and Southeast Asian languages, languages have tone. That is, it uses pitch to determine lexical meaning in this case. So words with a different pitch can have a different meaning. And so, the common assumption is that all Chinese languages are monotonic, that is each word has a specific tone. This is certainly true in the case of Mandarin, Cantonese and Hakka, as well as Vietnamese. However, many do not know that there are stereotonic languages within the Chinese languages. That is the tones constantly change due to a multitude of complex factors, and not only that, but each word doesn't necessarily have the same tone every single time. Examples of such languages are the various dialects of Wu Chinese, Fuzhounese and Hokkien. Hokkien is a strict stereotonic system, where it has tone sandhi, but doesn't have additional innovations. While Shanghainese has a ridiculously complex tone sandhi system until it completely devolved into a pitch-accent system. By comparison, other Wu Chinese dialects also have a semi-pitch accent system but not to same degree as in Shanghainese. With Fuzhounese, it's in between the other Wu Chinese dialects and Hokkien in terms of stereotonic tonality. So pretty much, why bother too much with tone in Shanghainese?

Traditional Chinese linguistics divides the syllable into initials (mainly consonants) and rimes (nucleus and the occasional coda), unlike the onset-nucleus-coda and the consonants and vowels in English. So we'll follow that method, mainly because it's easier to learn Shanghainese that way.

We'll start with the initial consonants. These consonants are always found at the beginning of a Shanghainese word. (We will cover consonant endings later, which are along with vowels)

So what we'll focus on first are the basic stops, or obstruents or plosives. It's a consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so all airflow ceases. Another form of stop consonant is the nasal, in which the vocal tract is blocked but airflow passes through the nose.

The alveolar stops in Shanghainese consist of: t, th, d, n and l.

t is pronounced as the t in stop.
th is pronounced as the t in table.
d is pronounced as the d in door.
n is pronounced as the n in near.
l is pronounced as the l in lure.

Next are the bilabial and the labiodental stops in Shanghainese.

p is pronounced as the p in spear.
ph is pronounced as the p in paper.
b is pronounced as the b in ball.
m is pronounced as the m in meal.

After that, come the velar stops in Shanghainese.

k is pronounced as the c in screen or as the k in skewer.
kh is pronounced as the k in kick or as the c in corn.
g is pronounced as the g in grain.
h is pronounced as the h in hear.
ng is pronounced as the ng in sing.

Unlike most other Chinese languages, the Wu Chinese dialects differ in these consonants because they retain voiced non-nasal plosive initials (b, d and g), which are not found in Mandarin or Cantonese. In addition to that, in varying degrees, these dialects still retain the three-way contrast of its predecessor, the Middle Chinese language, as you have noticed in the t/th/d, p/ph/b and k/kh/g consonantal groups.

Next, we'll be moving onto alveolar and palatal fricatives and stops. A fricative is a consonant that's made where

ts is the voiceless alveolar sibilant affricate, and it doesn't have an exact equivalent in English. It's pronounced as the ts in tsetse fly in English or as the z in the German word zwei.
tsh is the aspirated voicedless alveolar sibilant affricate, and there isn't an equivalent in English. But it would be pronounced like the c in Mandarin Chinese.
dz is the voiced alveolar sibilant affricate, and still there is no equivalent in English. Shanghainese doesn't have that sound (because it's merged with z), but it's found in some other closely related dialects.
s is pronounced as the same as s in socks.
z is pronounced as the same as z in size.
ny is pronounced the same as the ñ in the Spanish words enseñar and mañana. Some say it is more of an alveo-palatal nasal.

Now moving onto some of the harder ones. the palatal fricatives. It's important to note are these fricatives and affricates that usually come before the fronted vowels in Shanghainese such as i or iu (which we will cover). All of which don't have exact English equivalents either, but they're close enough to consonants found in English.

c is the voiceless alveo-palatal affricate, and there is no equivalent in English. So it would be like the Mandarin j in Beijing and roughly similar to the ch in bleach.
ch is the aspirated voiceless alveo-palatal affricate and there's no equivalent in English, but it's roughly something like the ch in chocolate.
j is the voiced alveo-palatal affricate and there isn't an equivalent in English, but it's roughly like the j in jump.
sh is the voiceless alveo-palatal sibilant fricative and there is no equivalent in English, but it's similar to the sh in sheep.
zh is the voiced alveo-palatal sibilant fricative and there is no equivalent in English, but it's close to the s in vision.

And then finally, onto the other initials.
gh is the voiced glottal fricative and it does not have an exact English equivalent. The closest would be the h in behind for some speakers of English. Although you could pronounce it as the r in French rouge, but it wouldn't be the same.
There are also w and y, but I will get to them somewhere around the end of this post.
f is pronounced as the f in fear.
v is pronounced as the v in vine.
' is the glottal stop, and it would probably be among the harder sounds to pronounce and to master for English speakers. Do you know how when people say "uh-oh!", that there's something in the middle of the uh and the oh? This is what people call the glottal stop. Some English speakers, like myself, glottalize the -t ending in many English words in some words such as cat, pat, sat. So a rough equivalent would be the tt in sitting or the t in city for some English speakers.

There are some vowel less syllables that are in use, which are 'm, 'n, 'ny, 'ng and 'l. These are not used too often that are not touched too much upon or some not often used pronunciations.

Next are the rimes, or the finals of monophthongs:.
a is like a as in father.
o is something like o as in go or phone.
e is like e as in select or left.
i is like ee as in bee.
u is something like oo as in boot.
y is a harder sound to pronounce. It's the same as Mandarin i as in shi or si.
au would be the ough in thought.
eu is a diphthong that can't be replicated easily in English, though it sounds like the in two. Take a in about and u as in influence and try to put them together.
iu would be like the German ü in über.
oe is the same like eu as in the French word jeune.
ae is like e as in select or left except a little more fronted. 


The diphthongs are easy to figure out, since I didn't bother explaining them unless if they differ phonetically than what it is written.
Here's what you might encounter:
iau
ieu
iae
uae
uoe
ioe

As well as lesser-encountered ones:
ie, which is more often a longer version of i.

Shanghainese (in addition to the other dialects of Wu Chinese) in its development, unlike Mandarin and Cantonese truncated and shortened many of its triphthongs and diphthongs as diphthongs and monophthongs, respectively. So as a result, it sounds simpler.
So as an example, 海, hai in Mandarin would be pronounced as he in Shanghainese.

Nest are the nasal endings. This is the tricky part because these nasals are allophonic, that is the pronunciations differ depending on certain factors. In this case, the vowels not only differ, but also the nasal endings.

-an is the nasalized version of a. So a as in father, but try to stop air from coming into your mouth, but not from your nose so it sounds muffled. So it's a lot like in Portuguese where this sound exists.
-aon is pronounced like the ong as in long.
-on is pronounced something like o as in phone with the ng as in long.
-in is hard to pronounce for some, since it's pronounced like ee as in bin with the ñ in the Spanish words enseñar and mañana.
-en is hard to pronounce for some, since it is pronounced like the on as in lesson but the difference is that the n is like the ñ in the Spanish words enseñar and mañana.
-iuin is slightly harder, since it combines the German ü in über with the ñ in the Spanish words enseñar and mañana.

Shanghainese, unlike Mandarin (most Mandarin dialects which doesn't have glottal rimes, except for some varieties of Southwestern Mandarin, Wu Chinese-influenced Jianghuai Mandarin and some other dialects in Northern China) and unlike Cantonese and other Southern Chinese languages to a degree (since Shanghainese lacks -p, -t and -k endings),  so what we get is a series of endings that end in a glottal stop, which is not represented with ' but with -h.
These pronounciations would be a lot easier if you glottalize your -t endings in English, like I do (because I speak with a New York accent).
-aeh is pronounced like the et in pet.
-oh is pronounced like the o as in cold but with the glottal stop at the end.
-eh is pronounced like the ut as in cut.
-ih is pronounced like the it as in pit.
-iuih is pronounced like the German ü in über, but there is the -ih at the end so it would be pronounced with the it as in pit.

Consider the combinations ghi, gho, ghu, gha, ghe. gho, gha and ghe are found in Wu Chinese but not ghi and ghu because they instantly become yi and wu respectively.

Examples:

ghi -> yi
ghia -> ya
ghu -> wu
ghue -> we
ghie -> yie

Many of them are rough pronunciations but as you gradually speak it more and more you'll gradually become fluent. The same goes for tongyong pinyin and pronouncing Chinese characters the Shanghainese way. There is still some stuff I haven't touched upon for Shanghainese phonology.

Important resources to note are:

http://wu-chinese.com/minidict/index.php The mini dictionary of Wu Chinese. You type in a Chinese character (Simplified, usually but traditional works for Shanghainese) or the tongyong pinyin equivalent of a word. It would usually show the characters of a pronunciation or the tongyong pinyin equivalent of a Chinese character that you typed in.
http://wu-chinese.com/minidict/index.php?searchlang=ng And the lexicon is the same, except it gives explanations of words in Chinese.

If you know Chinese, http://www.eastling.org/ can also help with obscure words. Especially when finding words that aren't found in the mini dictionary or the mini lexicon. Such as obscure words in literary texts, when you can use the Middle Chinese character analyzer, to get some idea how an obscure word should hypothetically be pronounced in Shanghainese.

How do you start actually writing in Shanghainese? Well, there's no way to tell. But what I did is I read Chinese characters using Shanghainese pronunciation. Classic poems are a good start, so feel free to read classical Chinese poetry in Shanghainese pronunciation. (Although the traditional way to read it was through the literary register pronunciation, but I prefer to read it the way I like)

Please do not hesitate to ask questions even though I don't know everything.

Once you got the basics of it, try to transcribe your speech in Tongyong Romanization, then type it with the IME to get a clue of what you're saying. The IME helps a lot because it can help with choosing the correct words.
Wu Chinese IME http://wu-chinese.com/ime/
It requires Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5 SP1 if you are using Windows XP.

There is also another input method right here http://input.foruto.com/wu/index.html , but it uses a different but similar romanization system, in which I'll cover next. Unlike the other one, it is for Shanghainese language only while the other IME generally covers Shanghainese, Suzhou dialect and Ningbo dialect.

Welcome to my blog!

I just started this blog, but it's mainly about Chinese-Americans whose roots are from Shanghai, northern Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu.  I guess it's not much relevant to most Asian Americans, but it should show a rather overlooked side of an Asian-American minority. So it would come of interest to Americans, especially other Asian-Americans who show interest in a rather unique region of China called Jiangnan (江南; kaon noe in Shanghainese), its language, its history and its culture. Most of the blog would be in English, even though there are a few occasions when there are Shanghainese posts (in traditional Chinese characters). I guess the names 'Jiangnan culture' and 吳越江南 (wu yiuih kaon noe) in the link name are a bit too vague in the context of being an American-born Chinese of Shanghainese heritage. I'm also planning on introducing the Shanghainese language, but it's mainly directed at those who have Shanghainese as their mother tongue to help read and write correct Shanghainese as a proper written language. But you don't have to be Shanghainese to learn it. Basically much like how I learned how to read and write it. But it won't focus on just Shanghainese, as I'll also give attention to other dialects of the Jiangnanese (Northern/Taihu Wu Chinese) language, as well as distantly related languages such as Huizhou Chinese or the various 'Wu Chinese' dialects of Southern Zhejiang. There will also be posts about famous people from all parts of Jiangnan as well as about Overseas Asians of Jiangnanese heritage.

Here's the story. I was born and raised in the United States to an immigrant family from Shanghai. Shanghainese was the only language that I grew up with until I was thrust into a foreign, English speaking world. I was almost woefully ignorant about it until I realize what my heritage was. Growing up, I spoke only Shanghainese amongst my family, friends and acquaintances from Shanghai. Oftentimes, I felt uncomfortable and unnerved at the thought of speaking English or Mandarin to them. I became interested in my heritage and culture and knowing that Shanghainese culture is more than just Shanghai, but a new beating heart within the ancient Jiangnan region. So this has mostly been a journey of self-improvement. Now reading and writing in Shanghainese in proper Chinese characters is to an extent, almost second nature to me. Knowing that Shanghai is an inseparable part of Jiangnan, its history as the heartland of China brings immense pride to my culture. And to this day, I speak Shanghainese every day and to some extent, brings me closer to my heritage, my family and my friends from Shanghai and the rest of the region.

Growing up in New York, most of the Chinese Americans around me were Cantonese or someone from the deep southern part of China, and I was different than them. I was Shanghainese, an anomaly, something different than the norm. Because of that, I never really felt attached to a lot of what my Cantonese acquaintances held dear unto them in terms of culture. And the few Chinese American friends I made, they were almost always Shanghainese or someone from a neighboring city, such as Ningbo or Suzhou. My parents sent me to Chinese school and I read and wrote in Traditional characters learning Taiwanese Standard Mandarin, which is almost identical to the Shanghainese-accented Mandarin my parents speak. This part of my education encouraged me to read and write in Shanghainese.