WIKITONGUES: Ivy speaking Shanghainese

Hello everyone, I'm a Shanghainese person.

I've grown up here all my life.

I have a lot of memories here.

I grew up speaking Shanghainese at home

with my family but in school and at work

we would speak Mandarin.

This is because we were required to speak Mandarin

in school.

But now in Shanghai, less and less people

are using Shanghainese, to the point that

there are even many Shanghainese people

who can't speak Shanghainese anymore.

So I hope that all of us can continue preserving

and carrying our local Shanghainese forward.

My parents mostly speak Shanghainese

but they also speak other Chinese dialects

because Shanghai is a city

of immigrants.

So in Shanghainese you often hear many

accents similar to those of other places.

For instance Suzhounese, Ningbonese, or let's say

some of what they speak in Zhejiang too.

Sometimes in a large household, like when

we're with our maternal and paternal grandparents,

we would speak... our parents would speak

with their parents in a dialect that is...

from outside Shanghai because they all

came from other places to here.

A lot of schools now demand children to speak

only Mandarin and no Shanghainese,

so my sister's kids, even when they're back home,

they basically don't speak Shanghainese.

So as adults we all feel that it's a shame. So I hope...

Shanghainese is actually a very pretty language to listen to,

We have a lot of regional opera so it's singable like that.

So if you can try and learn the language, you'd realize

a lot of things that you can express with it

feel actually very different from Mandarin.

Of course Shanghainese is also quite similar to Suzhounese, Hangzhounese

and also many other languages from the Jiangzhe region.

So if you properly learn Shanghainese, I believe you will also be able to understand

Suzhounese or Ningbonese, as well as many such languages from these places.

Shanghai also has several other local dialects,

like Nanhuinese, Fengxiannese, Jinshannese or the urban speech,

Also... Chuanshanese, they're all different.

If you speak Fengxiannese to a Chuanshanese person, they might not understand.

So even though Shanghai is small, there are actually

many different kinds of accents here.