Talk:Shanghainese

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OED uses Shanghainese (as opposed to Shanghaiese) for the language/people and Shanghailander for the people. --Menchi 00:10, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Despite OED I would still argue that the word "Shanghainese" should not be used since there is no suffix as "-nese". There is only "-ese". The word "Chinese" exists because "Chin-" already has an "n" at the end.

Yes why is this article under Shanghai dialect. In general, it is improper to call any of the Chinese languages dialects because they are generally mutually unintelligible. It is a fiction created by China for the purpose of national unity.--Amerinese 18:55, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I wonder how many different versions of this there is likely to be. Just imagine if some objects using "Shanghainese" and wants to call it via the Mandarin Chinese "Shanghaihua" or even Shanghaihua with tones as I notice a page was move to (NB Fanqie was moved to Fanqiè by User:Urhixidur on March 23rd). It's going to get rather ridiculous IMHO. How's about rendering the article under IPA as zɑ̃ ɦɛ wo to be almost correct, as we've not provided the actual tone. Sheesh. 23:51, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Point taken, but I think you make the situation sound more ambiguous than it really is.

1) IPA is not a written language. It is a way of transcribing oral language. i.e. it has no spelling conventions (which is good because one wants only one way of writing sounds). It is not a good way of representing Chinese.

IPA is not the be all and end all, there are many ways of writing Shanghainese with different IPA. For example, 夜(night) can be transcribed as /ɦia/ or /ja/ in IPA. In fact IPA is less flexible than romanization because it cannot easily take into account variations in the Shanghainese dialect, such as pronunciation of 尖团音 (性sin, 兴hin) or 爱 being pronounced either [e] or [ej]. Naus 23:08, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

My point being, if you want to call it by what the Shanghai person calls it, you ought to use their 'dialect', and where no commonly recognised romanisation exists (even though there was one of many added in the page) then the IPA would represent the sound. Since this often isn't practical as not everyone speaks the language, or use IPA in the language being talked about, it seems that if you take the process to its ultimate position, it becomes ridiculous. Dylanwhs 08:52, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

2) Dialect is an improper word for the already stated reason. America has several dialects (i.e. regional dialects) of English in addition to Standard Media English. They are generally and mostly mutually intelligible. This is not true of Chinese at all. Taiwanese people had to learn Mandarin in school, knowing Taiwanese was certainly helpful but not enough and there are many people that only speak Taiwanese and can't understand Mandarin.

'Dialect' has been the term used in writings about Chinese languages, and though I do not like it, it does exist. For example, Mantaro J. Hashimoto's study of "The Hakka Dialect" (1973). I would prefer it to be called Hakka language, and for other Chinese languages like Yue, Min, Xiang, Gan, Wu and Mandarin etc.

3) Pinyin and standard Romanization schemes are used where convention for English does not exist. Thus we might call the great Shanghainese silent film actress in English Ruan Lingyu because there is no other convention and pinyin is the standard Romanization of the day. Where names have historically had different spelling convetions (Peking Univeristy), they may preserve the historical spelling and that will dominate over the standard pinyin. Think about other words like PRC. In English, People's Republic of China is the proper name of PRC, not Zhonghua Renmin Gonghe Guo. You make it sound like there are several standard conventions when there's not. Usually there's pinyin unless there's a historical spelling or there's a translation. Another example--Maggie Cheung is Maggie Cheung, not Zhang Manyu. Zhang Manyu is how you pronounce her name (minus tones) in Mandarin. If she didn't have an English name, however, people would probably call her Zhang Manyu in English. If she lived in an earlier period and was famous enough, she might have Wade-Giles spelling or something else funny.

When considering names, it is usual to write names in the romanisation that they are given in the place of their birth. Rendering it in Mandarin when they are known by another romanisation is wrong, as you point out. Besides, there are romanisations which are neither Wade, Wade-Giles, Pinyin, Gwoyeu Romatzhy, etc for Mandarin. Some are truely ad hoc ones, and there are romanisations of Chinese names of immigrants to America which are not truely surnames, but the given name of the immigrant, for which the entry port clerk wrongly designates as being their surnames. Moreover, these renderings are perhaps close the clerks' understanding of what the sounds are to his own spoken English, from the Chinese speaker's own dialect. Dylanwhs 08:52, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

4) Shanghainese is the dominant name for Shanghaihua in English. We must follow convention.--Amerinese 01:22, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

When to use -ese, -nese etc? By including "dialect" after the place of origin of the language discussed, it would better identify the origin, to my mind. For example if someone comes from a place called Zhongguo, (which has different characters to the name Zhongguo meaning China), would it be called Zhongguo-ese? or Zhongguo-nese? When convention cannot dictate a precedent, at least consistency can always be reached by adding "dialect". It's not satisfactory given the word has it's own uses, but when is a dialect a dialect, and when is it a language? Dylanwhs 08:52, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You did not respond to this point. Shanghainese is still the dominant term used to refer to Shanghaihua in English as reflected in the OED cited at the top of the page.--Amerinese 23:00, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Even though Shanghainese is the dominant term used and reflected in OED, if you want consistency across all the various varieties of spoken Chinese, then some form of common nomenclature and approach is needed. This is the crux of what I'm saying. Do we always refer to OED for a term which came into use centuries ago, like Amoy, for Xiamen dialect? Or Amoyese/Amoynese etc? (Dialect being used in the sense of it being a dialect of Min Chinese) Dylanwhs 16:46, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

---

Since the new format, a number of Unicode IPA characters do not display correctly anymore. This affected Shanghai dialect, Hakka and other language pages I've edited. I think it has something to do with the automatic insertion by the software of the meta tag for the charset. Can anyone do anything about it? Dylanwhs 20:00, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Change Skin under Preferences back to Default/standard. --Menchi 01:39, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The IPA needs to be marked with the IPA template. Compare [i y ɿ ɥ e ø E ə ɵ a ɒ ɔ ɤ o u] with the template, and [i y ɿ ɥ e ø E ə ɵ a ɒ ɔ ɤ o u] without. This seems to have been done in part, but not completed. rossb 13:08, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've now added the IPA template. But I suspect the E symbol in rimes is wrong (it's not an IPA character). Can anyone elucidate? rossb 07:15, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The capital E is a symbol which should be of a slightly smaller size, but I can't find it in the list of IPA symbols I was working with originally. Dylanwhs 00:48, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

fixed for you. Naus 23:15, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Romanizations 2 Naming of localised dialects 3 Rime is / is not rhyme ? 4 Common words/phrases 5 Common Words/Phrases屋裏向 6 Mandarin subtitles? 7 Shanghainese pitch accent 8 Wu in Wu

[edit] Romanizations

I don't know Shanghainese so could someone explain all the romanization schemes shown in the Common Words and Phrases in Shanghainese section and why they all need to be there? --Umofomia 20:56, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't speak Shanghainese either, though I did write quite a lot of the phonology bits. I've some books on learning SH dialect, and they're romanised, and different to the one given in this page. Perhaps a SH speaker should elucidate the intricacies, and correlate the IPA with the romanisation. Dylanwhs 00:48, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The romanizations schemes are different mainly in the phonology. They all use a p/ph/b system akin to Wade-Giles, but the portrayal of 尖团音 is different. For example Thonjon has 请 spelled as "tshin", while Lumazi has it spelled as "chin". From an orthodox Shanghainese pronunciation point of view, "tshin" is the more correct spelling. This is similar in many ways to the Japanese Kunrei-siki versus Hepburn romanization (ti vs. chi, syo vs. sho, etc). Another difference is in the representation of the final glottal stop (入声). Lumazi uses an "-e" final and Thonjon uses the acute accent. 68.252.232.54 09:38, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Naming of localised dialects

Perhaps the problem can be solved in structuring the name of the title as follows "Shanghai - Dialect of the Chinese Wu language", and others like "Cantonese - Dialect of the Chinese Yue language", "Taoyuan - Dialect of the Chinese Hakka Language" etc. Dylanwhs 20:54, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This approach or something like it would at least allow for consistency and precision within and among articles on the dialects/languages of China. -Dpr 06:17, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rime is / is not rhyme ?

I was confused at the use of 'rime'. I looked up the word rime and from there got to Syllable rime. From that explanation I think I understand why 'rime' might be used here.

But if the word used here really is supposed to be 'rime', perhaps someone could make a link from the first use of rime to Syllable rime? By doing that, no one would be (cough) tempted to change the word to 'rhyme'.

—the preceding unsigned comment is by Shenme (talk • contribs) 16:07, 4 January 2006 Z+11

Why don't you? (Yes "rime" is correct here.) Be bold! —Felix the Cassowary 06:27, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Done. Hmm, I do keep forgetting to 'sign' my comments. That's a nice way to fix that, old bird. :) Thanks. Shenme 22:20, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

There's a template {{subst:unsigned|username|date}} which you can add to unsigned comments, so its more-or-less all automatic :) —Felix the Cassowary 02:10, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Common words/phrases

There should be a column for Mandarin equivalents of the Shanghainese (Wu) words and phrases. By Mandarin equivalent, I do not necessarily mean the Mandarin pronunciation of the phrase's Chinese characters, I mean the written version people in Shanghai would use when writing the phrase in standard written Chinese. For example, tseiwei (goodbye) (Shanghainese) would be zaijian in Mandarin.

I've made modifications to the IPA column (systemized the IPA transcription), they were originally too random and somewhat incorrect. Also added a few more relevant rows such as personal pronouns. Since this is not a Chinese wikipedia, I don't think we need to have Mandarin term 再见 zaijian in the column, Shanghainese 再会 is enough. Of the romanizations available, the Northern Wu《北吴》 one is definitely more mature and has potential, it's romanization and phonology are also more "compatible" with other northern Wu dialects beyond Shanghai. It is based on a system of p/ph/b and differentiates "hard" ca加, cha卡, ha哈, ga茄, gna外 with "soft" ci机, chi气, hi喜, gi棋, gni疑 (similar to the Imperial Postal system for Mandarin only greatly improved); thereby freeing many consonant letters for other purposes and also allows for greater spelling compatibility between different readings of the same character, e.g. 文读“家”cia and 白读“家”ca. In keyboards that cannot input the acute accent for Rusheng, a -k final can be used as substitute. Naus 23:30, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Could the section on Common words/phrases be revised, please. There are a couple of words below that do not have the IPA and the English translation... Also, using IPA is a bit of a nuisance, it is like learning yet ANOTHER language, sheesh. Could IPA please be replaced with something more convenient for the average joe, such as Wade-Giles or something like that??86.42.128.5 (talk) 23:01, 16 March 2008 (UTC)Gimp

IPA is important because it is really the only way to phonologically compare different languages accurately. Having a commonly used romanization scheme along with IPA is often helpful as well though, as you have pointed out. However, Wade-Giles was designed only for Mandarin and not for Shanghainese. I don't speak Shanghainese though, so someone else will have to take over from here. —Umofomia (talk) 09:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Common Words/Phrases屋裏向

The meaning of Oelishan'屋裏向' means house. But, it literally means inside the House. Lishan is a common prefix,meaning inside, or within.

Now for the second time, someone has changed it to 屋裏厢. For that someone, I advise you to do a little more research on the actual meaning of the word. Blind Man Walking 20:56 3-29-06

[edit] Mandarin subtitles?

The article presently mentions a Shanghainese TV series which had "subtitles in Mandarin" for the rest of China. However, Mandarin is a spoken language, not a written language. More likely is that the subtitles were in Simplified or Traditional Chinese writing. Since I'm not familiar with the TV series in question, I'm not able to correct the article. Could somebody who's more familiar update it? Thanks! —Thebrid 10:39, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

The subtitles would almost definitely be in modern standard written Chinese, it is in effect written spoken Standard Mandarin (putonghua). LDHan 11:57, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shanghainese pitch accent

Wikipedia has a specific policy against providing original research. Granted the section is cited to a specific person, but it still bears the tone of original research and probably does not have a lot of research along its train of thought. No offence to the author, as I heavily support demarcating pitch accent and intonation from lexical tone.
Aside from that, if it DOES deserve to stay in the article, which I think it probably does, it needs to be redrafted. The tone is wrong because it's both not NPOV and it's not very formal. Also, there isn't enough information presented for it to be useful in presenting its core argument, that of comparing the observed tone pattern of Shanghainese speech to that of Japanese. First sentence of the explanation asks the reader to compare with Japanese pitch accent, which is neither presented nor is linked to anywhere.
<spetz>.216.175.188.98 20:05, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wu in Wu

What is Wu (for example Shanghainese) pronounciation for its autonym 吳方言 (pinyin: Wú fāngyán) or 吳語/吴语 (pinyin: Wú yǔ)? Or maybe there is another local name for Wu language? --Koryakov Yuri (talk) 13:26, 29 November 2007 (UTC)