听新闻学汉语 2012年04月20日

今日话题： * 李长春抵达渥太华开始访问加拿大* 印度总理辛格就成功试射"烈火-5"导弹表祝贺* 从普通人的幸福瞬间读懂中国 (本节目由iMandarinPod.com和央视网英语频道CNTV.com联合制作) [Learning Guide] [Other Languages] {audio}sc20120420.mp3{/audio} Read More @ Source

Dict.cn does Shanghainese

by John Pasden

I was recently informed (thanks, Mark!) thatDict.cn, one of the popular, free online Chinese-English dictionaries, now offersShanghainese content. I was pleasantly surprised to see a big list of mini-dialogs in Shanghainese! The bad news is that the dialog text is in characters (切 for 吃, etc.), and there’s no IPA or other phonetic transcription. They only have one speaker doing the audio, but there’s audio for every sentence (tip: mouse over the little speaker rather than clicking on it), so that’s not bad.

I asked my wife what she thought about the speaker’s accent. She said it was 新派上海话(the form of the dialect spoken by modern young Shanghainese), and she felt that the female speaker was too 嗲 (cutesy-sounding). But, hey… it’s Shanghainese.

I also recently did a little research on Shanghainese lessons in Shanghai. Interestingly, some of the schools that I know used to offer Shanghainese classes no longer do. Is the demand dropping? Have any readers out there taken Shanghainese lessons at a local university?