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Local lingo in need of saving
By Xu Wenwen |
January 12, 2011, Wednesday
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Print Edition
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HANGZHOU'S distinct dialect is being forgotten by younger generations - and with it goes understanding of local customs and culture. Xu Wenwen learns about the constant changes the city's language has undergone throughout time.
When you hear an old Hangzhou resident say "the Menban'er fan (meal) is great" in Hangzhou dialect, they're not referring to the food in a "Menban'er restaurant," but an old Hangzhou-style fast food.
Menban'er literally means door plank, and a Menban'er meal refers to fast food arranged on door planks.
In the last century, many Hangzhou restaurants would place a door plank on two benches and use it as a simple table to present dishes and rice. Hence the name Menban'er fan, the old-style fast food popular among Hangzhou's working people.
However, 26-year-old Hangzhou native Spring Jin is not familiar with the expression.
"I have never heard that, and I bet few young Hangzhou people know it," said Jin.
Other expressions she may not be familiar with include Men'er bu (cloth), the material specially stitched on the soles of shoes, or Luodi mao'er (fallen cat), which means "once upon a time."
Since the city is developing so rapidly, many slang words and expressions rooted in customs and culture and once widespread in Hangzhou are disappearing. Their swift lifespan, from emergence to extinction, is evidence of the ongoing changes in the city.
The charmingly archaic idioms and vocabulary were unique in China, because the Hangzhou dialect is distinctive from all other dialects in the country.
Though essentially a kind of southern China's Wu dialect family, Hangzhou patois boasts northern Mandarin features concerning grammar, accent and vocabulary.
For instance, a great number of words in Hangzhou patois suffix er (the suffix does not have any meaning), in the same way Chinese northern dialect does.
"About 70 percent of Hangzhou dialect's vocabulary has an er as suffix," says Gao Yun'geng, the 79-year-old performer of "Xiao Re Hun," a comic dialogue performed in Hangzhou dialect.
"But unlike northern people who combine the sound of er into its last character's syllable, Hangzhou people read er as one syllable," Gao adds.
"The phenomenon derives from Hangzhou's three important mergers in history," said Bao Shijie, a dialect expert.
The first merger came during the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), when Hangzhou was chosen as the capital and a large number of northern people flocked to the city.
"Hangzhou and northern people lived in a compact community, they communicated and intermarried, which influenced the old Hangzhou dialect dramatically and therefore shaped it into a southern dialect with northern character," said Bao.
The second merger was in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), when lots of Manchu people (the people that ruled China at the time) settled in Hangzhou.
"In the Song Dynasty (960-1279), some people in Jianggan District (a Hangzhou suburb) spoke the original dialect, but in the Qing Dynasty, their language was 'northernized' as well," says Bao.
After the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, Hangzhou dialect had its third change, attributed to many groups of people from northern China moving to the south, as well as the promotion of Mandarin in China's education system.
Though standard Mandarin is based on the northern dialect phonologically, it has many differences from its predecessor, such as the er suffix is less used and many slang words are unrecorded.
"The accent of Hangzhou dialect is drawing close to Mandarin," says Gao. "Such as the pronunciation of street (jie) has changed from ga to ji, and thank (xiexie) that used to be jiji, is now jiajia."
Plus, "modern Hangzhou people use er much less than before," added Gao, who is trying to perform his "Xiao Re Hun" art in a Shanghai dialect because "Hangzhou patois sounds less pleasant than before."
Meanwhile, due to the popularization of Mandarin, people are proud of speaking standard Mandarin, so "usually the more education a Hangzhou native receives, the less dialect he or she speaks."
It is happening not only among young people but also children. In fact, according to a recent sample survey by a local publication Youth Times, more than two thirds of primary school students in Hangzhou speak little Hangzhou patois.
"Many children understand Hangzhou dialect but can not speak it, even if their parents are local," said Teng Junxia, a Chinese teacher at Shengfu Road Primary School.
Seeing the awkwardness, she initiated a weekly Hangzhou dialect class as a supplementary course last semester.
Children learn through reading, role-play, and watching TV news dubbed in Hangzhou dialect, in the same way they learn English.
"Dialect, which is intimately involved with local culture, reflects the city's history and the development of the local language," said Teng. "Learning Hangzhou dialect helps in understanding Hangzhou."
The decline in regional dialect does not only happen in Hangzhou but the whole country.
Last summer in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, a Chinese "culture war" erupted because proposals for Guangdong's main television station to broadcast primarily in Mandarin angered citizens in Guangdong Province, who fear that Cantonese is being sidelined.
In Shanghai, old slang has been listed in middle school literature textbooks so students can better understand the history of the city through its language.
Also, it has become a trend in recent years for film characters to speak in dialect. A new Sichuan-dialect version of the latest blockbuster, "Let the Bullets Fly," hit the big screen recently.
On China's video platform Tudou.com, the American animation "Tom and Jerry" has at least 15 dialect versions, spontaneously dubbed by enthusiastic netizens.
When you hear an old Hangzhou resident say "the Menban'er fan (meal) is great" in Hangzhou dialect, they're not referring to the food in a "Menban'er restaurant," but an old Hangzhou-style fast food.
Menban'er literally means door plank, and a Menban'er meal refers to fast food arranged on door planks.
In the last century, many Hangzhou restaurants would place a door plank on two benches and use it as a simple table to present dishes and rice. Hence the name Menban'er fan, the old-style fast food popular among Hangzhou's working people.
However, 26-year-old Hangzhou native Spring Jin is not familiar with the expression.
"I have never heard that, and I bet few young Hangzhou people know it," said Jin.
Other expressions she may not be familiar with include Men'er bu (cloth), the material specially stitched on the soles of shoes, or Luodi mao'er (fallen cat), which means "once upon a time."
Since the city is developing so rapidly, many slang words and expressions rooted in customs and culture and once widespread in Hangzhou are disappearing. Their swift lifespan, from emergence to extinction, is evidence of the ongoing changes in the city.
The charmingly archaic idioms and vocabulary were unique in China, because the Hangzhou dialect is distinctive from all other dialects in the country.
Though essentially a kind of southern China's Wu dialect family, Hangzhou patois boasts northern Mandarin features concerning grammar, accent and vocabulary.
For instance, a great number of words in Hangzhou patois suffix er (the suffix does not have any meaning), in the same way Chinese northern dialect does.
"About 70 percent of Hangzhou dialect's vocabulary has an er as suffix," says Gao Yun'geng, the 79-year-old performer of "Xiao Re Hun," a comic dialogue performed in Hangzhou dialect.
"But unlike northern people who combine the sound of er into its last character's syllable, Hangzhou people read er as one syllable," Gao adds.
"The phenomenon derives from Hangzhou's three important mergers in history," said Bao Shijie, a dialect expert.
The first merger came during the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), when Hangzhou was chosen as the capital and a large number of northern people flocked to the city.
"Hangzhou and northern people lived in a compact community, they communicated and intermarried, which influenced the old Hangzhou dialect dramatically and therefore shaped it into a southern dialect with northern character," said Bao.
The second merger was in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), when lots of Manchu people (the people that ruled China at the time) settled in Hangzhou.
"In the Song Dynasty (960-1279), some people in Jianggan District (a Hangzhou suburb) spoke the original dialect, but in the Qing Dynasty, their language was 'northernized' as well," says Bao.
After the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, Hangzhou dialect had its third change, attributed to many groups of people from northern China moving to the south, as well as the promotion of Mandarin in China's education system.
Though standard Mandarin is based on the northern dialect phonologically, it has many differences from its predecessor, such as the er suffix is less used and many slang words are unrecorded.
"The accent of Hangzhou dialect is drawing close to Mandarin," says Gao. "Such as the pronunciation of street (jie) has changed from ga to ji, and thank (xiexie) that used to be jiji, is now jiajia."
Plus, "modern Hangzhou people use er much less than before," added Gao, who is trying to perform his "Xiao Re Hun" art in a Shanghai dialect because "Hangzhou patois sounds less pleasant than before."
Meanwhile, due to the popularization of Mandarin, people are proud of speaking standard Mandarin, so "usually the more education a Hangzhou native receives, the less dialect he or she speaks."
It is happening not only among young people but also children. In fact, according to a recent sample survey by a local publication Youth Times, more than two thirds of primary school students in Hangzhou speak little Hangzhou patois.
"Many children understand Hangzhou dialect but can not speak it, even if their parents are local," said Teng Junxia, a Chinese teacher at Shengfu Road Primary School.
Seeing the awkwardness, she initiated a weekly Hangzhou dialect class as a supplementary course last semester.
Children learn through reading, role-play, and watching TV news dubbed in Hangzhou dialect, in the same way they learn English.
"Dialect, which is intimately involved with local culture, reflects the city's history and the development of the local language," said Teng. "Learning Hangzhou dialect helps in understanding Hangzhou."
The decline in regional dialect does not only happen in Hangzhou but the whole country.
Last summer in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, a Chinese "culture war" erupted because proposals for Guangdong's main television station to broadcast primarily in Mandarin angered citizens in Guangdong Province, who fear that Cantonese is being sidelined.
In Shanghai, old slang has been listed in middle school literature textbooks so students can better understand the history of the city through its language.
Also, it has become a trend in recent years for film characters to speak in dialect. A new Sichuan-dialect version of the latest blockbuster, "Let the Bullets Fly," hit the big screen recently.
On China's video platform Tudou.com, the American animation "Tom and Jerry" has at least 15 dialect versions, spontaneously dubbed by enthusiastic netizens.
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