There exists a niche, sub-genre of the Chinese language spoken solely in Shanghai. Although it’s considered a declining language, I have found within it a rich and diverse community.
This summer I visited Shanghai for an internship, as well as to see family and friends. Shanghai, to me, is like a second home apart from Nanjing in China. While my mom is natively from Nanjing, my dad grew up in Shanghai. Every summer, a visit to his home is mandatory!
The two sides of my family are very different- while my mom’s side spoke purely traditional Mandarin with typical tonations, my dad spoke a mixture of “Shanghainese” and Mandarin. I never learned Shanghainese as a child, so this language was mostly used to communicate with his side of the family, or his friends and buisness partners in Shanghai.
My dad’s childhood home was almost like a different world to me, in this sense. Shanghainese is almost completely distinct from regular Mandarin. This is much different from Cantonese and Mandarin; while Canto and Mandarin had somewhat similar phrases, and a speaker of each form could mostly understand each other, Shanghainese was the complete opposite. Only being fluent in Mandarin, I could barely decipher what my dad and my grandma were saying to each other, or what him and his friends were talking about. It reminds me, once again, of the sheer diversity of Chinese culture and languages. After all, Shanghainese is only one of many small languages in China.
It turns out that despite the relatively small community of Shanghainese speakers, there are close bonds and strong friendships between those who speak it. Everytime I made a friend from Shanghai, my dad would always ask me if they could speak Shanghainese. Passing by a stranger on a road trip who could speak the language was like instant friendship. People in this community look out for each other and It was sort of like a test, to see if they embodied true Shanghai culture.
After the influx of foreigners to the city of Shanghai, the language started dying out. In the past, a big majority of people living in the city could speak Shanghainese. Now, it’s much more so a minority of people. Even more so, many Shanghainese speakers (like my dad) chose to just teach their children Mandarin, further contributing to its decline. However, there exists efforts to preserve this language and the culture behind it, like schools, lessons you can sign up for, etc.