Sites Specifically Promoting Shanghainess (Wu), Culture, Language, and Identity Options

[rudeboy]

Linguistically-speaking, Wu Chinese is a distinct language that is mutually unintelligible with other Chinese "dialects'. It as as different from Mandarin as French is to Spanish, and thus is not really a dialect. It has equal legitimacy with Mandarin and other "dialects" and the right to be politically recognized and not suppressed. Shanghainess (Wu) cultural awareness and identity have been brought back by Shanghainess and other Wu-speaking Chinese from abroad as well as by contact with Mandarin-rivaling Cantonese culture.
Here are sites specifically promoting the Wu language/culture with forums and pics:
http://zanhe.com]Wu Language at Zanhe.com
http://sinolect.org/]Wu Language
Shanghainess Pop Culture at Shanghaining.com
Shanghainess FM Radio
Shanghainess Amateur Rap

From Intro. on zanhe.com:
1. SYNOPSIS / CONTEXT

Shanghainese 上海話 is a dialect of Wu Chinese 吳語 or 吳方言, which has 77 million native speakers, making it the second largest Chinese language (hereafter termed regionalect) after Mandarin Chinese (Cantonese ranks as third with 71 million worldwide). For comparison, the population of Wu speakers slightly surpasses the population of native French, Italian, or Korean speakers worldwide (1987 data). Shanghainese is the distinct style of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai; it is an integration of the various forms of Wu, as millions of people throughout the Wu-speaking region of China settled in Shanghai during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The IANA language tag for Shanghainese is zh-wuu and the three-letter SIL code is: WUU.
(IMG:http://www.zanhe.com/Sinitic_Languages.gif)
Wu Chinese is mutually unintelligible with other Chinese regionalects. The major forms of Chinese are sometimes called dialects and sometimes called separate languages. Those that favor dialect classification factor in political considerations and the former existence of a common written language (文言, Classical Literary Chinese) in China (and even throughout Japan, Korea and Vietnam). On the other hand, linguists that favor separate language status for the regionalects make their case based on mutual intelligibility data, and on phonetic and lexical differences. From these measures, the Chinese regionalects are more different than the Romance languages (Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan). Supporters of language status also argue that the universality of Classical Literary Chinese (no longer practically used today) was no more different than that of formal Latin used in Western Europe after the fall of Rome, and that the characters today only create the illusion (through cultural identity) of uniting the various regionalects. Modern Mandarin vernacular writing (白話) is incompatible with non-Mandarin Chinese regionalects such as Wu Chinese.

...

Many Shanghainese see their mother tongue as an essential element of the Shanghainese identity. However, Shanghainese and other Wu dialects have been facing a slow and silent decline in the face of the vast dominance of Mandarin in Chinese society over the past fifty years. Except for the comforts of the home and in casual exchanges amongst Shanghainese peers, all other communication are done in Mandarin. If there's one non-Shanghainese speaker in a group of Shanghainese speakers, the entire group will speak Mandarin. When traveling to other parts of China (outside of the Wu-speaking area), speaking Shanghainese is considered extremely rude to other Chinese people. For this reason, Shanghainese speakers rarely speak Shanghainese outside of Shanghai; and over time, much of the Chinese population have little idea that Shanghainese even exists, much less how it sounds like. Shanghainese is banned in schools, and the local media is discouraged to use Shanghainese. Shanghainese is never heard on national television, and rarely even on Shanghai's local stations (only during some local interviews). Most Shanghainese cannot write simple thoughts down on paper in their mother tongue due to the lack of Wu Chinese education. Consequently some Shanghainese mistakenly feel that their mother tongue must be extremely inferior and unsuited for contemporary society and are resigned to its extinction.

The Common Chinese Language movement based on Mandarin was actually started by Shanghainese intellectuals and writers during the early 20th century to create a common vernacular medium for national communication. Mandarin was selected as the base, due to the large population size of Mandarin speakers in China and its relative simplicity. The bulk of vernacular Mandarin Chinese literature were written not by native Mandarin speakers but by native Wu and Shanghainese speakers. As result, a huge amount of today's Mandarin Chinese vocabulary come from Wu Chinese via these literary works. The words and usages have become so well adapted into Standard Mandarin, that most speakers assume they are indigenous to Mandarin, rather than being cognates of Shanghainese. What the early Shanghainese proponents for a common Chinese language did not anticipate was that Standard Mandarin's promotion would be handled through the simultaneous oppression of all other Chinese regionalects, and most harshly on Wu and Shanghainese. This was very much against the wishes of the early common language proponents, including Lu Xun, the famous pioneer of vernacular Mandarin literature and a native Wu speaker from Shaoxing, Zhejiang province. For more information on Lu Xun and his writings regarding the languages of China, go to the Resources tab at the top of the page.

Without a recognizable standard and no Shanghainese education, Shanghainese today has also changed greatly from just fifty years ago. It has has lost many vowels, becoming harsher in quality and more simplified phonetically. The phonology is now closer to that of modern Japanese; and like Japanese, conversational Shanghainese today has a pitch accent tonal system (Qian, N. 2003). In the past five years, Shanghainese youths have been giving more attention to their mother tongue than the generations before. Vernacular Shanghainese has become popular in Shanghai's underground music scene as something that brazenly challenges both Mandarin and Cantonese constraints in music. Taiwan is in the midst of a Shanghainese fad with Shanghainese language books in every bookstore. There are over one million people from Taiwan living in and around Shanghai today. The fate of the dialect is still uncertain although it has become increasingly apparent that the unique identity attached with the Shanghainese dialect is something that will continue to be cherished by the Shanghainese as they try to re-carve a cultural niche for themselves.

This post has been edited by rudeboy: Aug 28 2004, 12:31 PM