Shanghai dialect gains popularity

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-10-27 10:15

Lisa Movius decided to study the Shanghai dialect after a decade in the city and was motivated by "a growing appreciation for the subtleties of Shanghainese culture".

For a long time she was very anti-Shanghainese, belonging to the "please speak Mandarin" school. The dialect sounded "aggressive and sarcastic" to her unaccustomed ear. During her early weeks in Shanghai, she once overheard a conversation between two Shanghai colleagues. A little later she asked them what they were arguing about. "Arguing? We were saying what a nice day it is today!", they told her.

Ten years on, she realized that she could not understand the local culture without also embracing the actual Shanghai vernacular, she writes in her blog Beleaguering the Shanghainese (http://lisamovius.blogspot.com/).

She began to learn the Shanghai dialect with her friends on such websites as www.chinasmack.com and shanghaidialect.com.