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Shanghainese Is Endangered (Part I) Shanghainese is a member of the Wuu family, mainly spoken in urban Shanghai. It is not mutually intelligible to Mandarin. They are substantially different in vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar. In contrast to that, speakers of many members of the Wuu family, such as Suzhou Vernacular (蘇州言話) Jiaxing Vernacular (嘉興言話) and Ningbo Vernacular (寧波言話) can easily understand Shanghainese and communicate effectively without any extra lingua franca. Because of its historic influence and popularity, Shanghainese still has a remarkable number of speakers. Deducing from the population of urban Shanghai and the estimated proportion of users, at least 10,000,000 speak it. However, considering the following factors, Shanghainese can be rated as severely endangered (Grade Two out of Five). First, Shanghainese is prohibited in Shanghai (Grade Zero). Shanghainese is not officially recognised by the Chinese authority, and has no legal position. To ensure absolute predominance of Mandarin in Shanghai, the authority has introduced a range of policies against Shanghainese. The most obvious of all is an official document issued on 19 March 1990. It bans children from speaking Shanghainese in all activities (including all non-academic activities) at school. See the link below: http://www.shyywz.com/jsp/index/show.jsp?id-2620&newType=127 For 25 years, all schools in Shanghai have been imposing this ban on children, and this document is still in effect today. In Shanghai, Shanghainese is not even tolerated in private domains. In National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference 2015, a congress member Qian Cheng (錢程) proposed lifting the restriction on Shanghainese. Clearly written in his bill was a suggestion to allow the use of Shanghainese in private domains.
Feb 1, 2015 3:12 PM