Shanghai dialect

Shanghainese (上海話; pinyin: Shànghǎihuà) is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai. Wu has 87 million speakers as of 1991, and is the second largest form of Chinese after Mandarin (which has some 800 million speakers).

See language tree of the Chinese dialects starting from 1500 BC, and Wu's position relative to them.

Like other northern Wu dialects, the Shanghai dialect has voiced initials [b d g z v dʑ ʑ]. It is rich in vowels [i y ɿ ɥ e ø E ə ɵ a ɒ ɔ ɤ o u], but has a set of five or six tones, less than those found in southern Wu dialects. Only two live tonal constrasts exist in the Shanghai dialect. Compare this with 4 in Mandarin, and 6 in Cantonese. Neither Mandarin nor Cantonese have voiced initials found in Shanghainese (and other Wu variants), English, French, and Japanese. In effect these two live contrasts (high and low) would make Shanghai dialect more of a pitch level language, than a tonal one.

Contents

Initials

	Labials	Dentals	Silibants	Palatals	Velars	Glottals
Unvoiced Unaspirated Stops	p	t	ʦ	ʨ	k	(ʔ)
Unvoiced Aspirated Stops	pʰ	tʰ	ʦʰ	ʨʰ	kʰ
Voiced Stops	b	d		dʑ	g
Nasals	m	n		ɲ	ŋ
Unvoiced Fricatives	f		s	ɕ		h
Voiced Fricatives	v		z	ʑ		ɦ
Liquids	(w)	l		(j)

Shanghai dialect has a set of voiced initials and exhibits unvoiced unaspirated and aspirated stops. Moreover, there are unvoiced and voiced fricatives sets. Palatized initials also feature in Shanghai dialect. The /l/ consonant is also particular in that there is a slight flapping of the tongue during speech, somewhat similar to the Japanese r (although lateral and not post- alveolar). The sound may be made by lightly placing the tongue on the back of the upper set of teeth. However this flapping is not present when each character is individually pronounced.

Rimes

Vowel	Diphthong	Nasal Ending	Nasalised Rime	Glottal Stop
		(m, n) ŋ
ɿ
ɥ
i	ii, iɪ, iɯ, iE, iɔ, ia	iŋ, iiŋ, ioŋ	iã	iɪʔ, iɤʔ, ioʔ, iaʔ
y	yø	yiŋ		yɪʔ
u	uE, uø , uo, ua	uəŋ	uã, uɒ̃	uɤʔ, uoʔ, uaʔ
ɪ				ɪʔ
ø
ɤ	ɤɯ			ɤʔ
o	ou	oŋ		oʔ
	ei
ɚ
		əŋ
E
ɔ
a		aŋ	ã	aʔ
			ɒ̃

The Middle Chinese [ -m ] ending rimes in Shanghai dialect have merged with [ -n ], some of which subsequently dropped off. Some Middle Chinese [ -ŋ ] ending rime characters have become rimes with a nasalised ending, [ iã, uã, uɒ̃ ]. Middle Chinese [ -p -t -k ] rimes have become glottal stops [ -ʔ ].

In certain variants, the [ u ] is pronounced unrounded (close back unrounded, turned m).

Tones

陰 Yin	陰平 Yin Ping	(陰上 Yin Shang)	陰去 Yin Qu	陰入 Yin Ru
陰 Yin	53	(55)	34	55
陽 Yang	陽舒 Yang Shu			陽入 Yang Ru
陽 Yang	13			13

The Yang Shu tone is composed of Yang registers of the Ping, Shang and Qu tone characters. The Yin Ru and Yang Ru tones are abrupt tones, and apply only to those rimes in Shanghai dialect, which end in the glottal stop [ ʔ ]. The Yin Shang tone (/55/) is not common in today's variants of the Shanghai dialect, having merged into the Yin Qu tone. If the Ru tone and tones automatically related to the voiced initials (b d g z v dʑ ʑ) are not considered (as they are fixed into the syllabic structure), then the Shanghai dialect has only 2 live tonal contrasts (/53/ and /34/). This makes it especially unique amongst Chinese dialects.

Advanced tone sandhi and argument for pitch accent classification:

In polysyllabic words or set phrases, all syllables after the first lose their original tones and are pronounced based on the table below as "neutral" syllables. Even the first syllable that determines subsequent pitches is altered in a polysyllabic word. The patterns vary depending on the number of syllables in the word or set short phrase.

1st syllable original tone	2 syllables	3 syllables	4 syllables	5 syllables
53	55 - 21	55 - 33 - 31	55 - 33 - 33 - 31	55 - 33 - 33 - 33 - 31
53	H - L	H - L - L	H - L - L - L	H - L - L - L - L
34	33 - 44	33 - 55 - 31	33 - 55 - 33 - 31	33 - 55 - 33 - 33 - 31
34	L - H	L - H - L	L - H - L - L	L - H - L - L - L
13	22 - 44	22 - 55 - 31	22 - 55 - 33 - 31	22 - 55 - 33 - 33 - 31
13	L - H	L - H - L	L - H - L - L	L - H - L - L - L
5	33 - 44	33 - 55 - 31	33 - 55 - 33 - 31	33 - 55 - 33 - 33 - 31
5	L - H	L - H - L	L - H - L - L	L - H - L - L - L
2	11 - 23	11 - 22 - 23	11 - 22 - 22 - 23 or 22 - 55 - 33 - 31 depending on word	22 - 55 - 33 - 33 - 31
2	L - H	L - H - H	L - H - H - H or L - H - L - L	L - H - L - L - L

H = relative high pitch; L = relative low pitch

Notice that these patterns are quite similar to Japanese pitch accent patterns. Tone sandhi of polysyllabic compounds in the Shanghai dialect has attracted the interest of many scholars, who have previously given only careful consideration to the tone of the monosyllable while trying to describe the rules of tone sandhi for polysyllabic compounds. It has been argued that the number of tones of the Shanghai dialect, generally held to be five under previous analyses, can be reduced to only two underlying tone patterns, or tonemes, by recognizing the existence of the phoneme "voiced h" (Xiaowen Shen, University of Tokyo).

References

Lance Eccles, Shanghai dialect: an introduction to speaking the contemporary language. Dunwoody Press, 1993. ISBN 1-881265-11-0. 230pp + cassette. (An introductory course in 29 units).

External links

Shanghai Dialect (http://www.csulb.edu/~txie/shanghaihua.html): Resources on Shanghai dialect including to a Web site (in Japanese) that gives common phrases with sound files
Conversational Shanghai Chinese (http://www.linguasinica.com/Shanghai/): An online textbook of Shanghainese, with audio.
Zanhe.com - Shanghainese: Introduction and Development (http://www.zanhe.com/): A project to introduce Wu Chinese, Shanghai variant (post-1970s), and to promote its development. In the works.

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