Home » Feature » News Feature
Generation gap in city’s ‘difficult’ dialect
Print Edition
JIANG Jingfeng, 12, is in his first year at an ordinary local middle school. Born into a typical Shanghainese family, the boy can understand the local dialect he hears but can barely speak an entire sentence.
“In big family gatherings, uncles and aunties make fun of the young generation, asking them to say some ‘weirdly pronounced’ Shanghainese to entertain the adults,” says Zhao Jufeng, Jiang’s mother.
This situation is quite common in the city — locally born children, especially post-2000, cannot speak the local dialect, rendering them barely understood by their grandparents.
“I admit Shanghai is an international, metropolitan city — people all over the country and the world come here and live here,” says Jiang Qi, the grandfather. “In our generation, people cannot speak fluent and accurate Mandarin, but in the opposite, now our grandchildren cannot speak our own language.”
The reasons are complex. In young Jiang’s class, students come from all over the country. So do the their teachers. Mandarin has become the common spoken language for communication among the students. Although many families speak Shanghainese at home, kids spend most of their time with their classmates and teachers at school.
According to a recent online survey about regional dialects posted on Weibo, Shanghainese is listed among the 10 most difficult, ranked at No. 5.
The hardest are Wenzhou dialect (No. 1), Cantonese (No. 2), with Fujian and Suzhou tied for third. The dialects after Shanghainese are Changsha, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Shandong, Tianjin and northeast dialects.
Survey participants ranked Shanghainese at 7.5 in overall difficulty (out of a possible 10), and gave it a 6 for the possibility that new learners can catch it quickly. The most difficult Wenzhou dialect earned a 1 in the category.
The research is not scientific, and some scholars point that the survey didn’t cover the seven Chinese dialect schools. For example, Shanghainese, Suzhou dialect and Wenzhou dialect belong to the Wu school according to the geography, and all are listed in the top 10. But the Gan school, such as Jiangxi dialect, is not represented, points out Ran Qibin, a Chinese language professor in Nankai University.
“In this survey, the standard of ‘hard to understand’ is apparently compared with Mandarin,” Ran says. “With more tones, dialects in southern China are more difficult than those in the north.”
Excluding minority languages from the survey also was not reasonable, Ran says.
“In the study of Chinese language, the standard of ‘easy’ or ‘difficult’ does not merely depend on understanding, as the test is extremely time-consuming and not reliable,” says Tao Huan, a Chinese language professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University.
He notes that for Shanghai people, Suzhou dialect is easier to understand because Suzhou is nearby and the language system is the same. But to people in Beijing and elsewhere in northern China, Suzhou dialect is harder.
“So it’s hard to say which dialect is more difficult to understand,” Tao says.
“Those dialects listed have more differences with Mandarin in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. So they are harder to understand for people with other dialect backgrounds,” says Miao Xiaowu, a teacher with the School of Art of Sichuan Normal University.
Get involved in local life
According to this survey, the website asked for public feedback on the result for Shanghainese. Among 2,465 people who answered, 25 percent recognized the result and agreed that Shanghainese is really difficult; 18.5 percent doubted the result and 34 percent said that local cultures, including dialect, have no comparability.
Regardless of the difficulty, most local people like grandfather Jiang hope new Shanghainese can learn the local dialect as a way to be involved in the city life.
“I am already used to speaking to my grandson in Shanghainese and having him reply in Mandarin,” Jiang says. “But we still hope that he will have more chances to practice his dialect.”
Zhou Yuqiong agrees.
She says that what worries her most is the dialect, as her 3-year-old daughter will go to kindergarten this autumn.
“Now our family teaches her to speak Shanghainese, and we are so proud she can speak very clearly and accurately, which really surprises strangers and relatives. But many friends told me that she will soon forget the dialect when she starts to enter school,” Zhou says.
Rather than serving just the basic function of communication, Shanghainese is a significant identification for people. With the city always in a top position in the country for its economy and culture, the city’s local people are proud to be Shanghainese, and language is a symbol of this identification.
With more and more people flowing in from different regions, the young generations use less and less their native dialects.
“Even if they can communicate in their dialects with family or local friends, the pronunciation is not as authentic as the older generations and loses many old phrases,” says Professor Ran.
He says that local dialects are precious pieces of culture heritage, and cites the need to protect them in the same way that endangered animals are protected.
“From the angel of study, dialects maintain the track of ancient Chinese language, with enriched information of history and society,” he says.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
