User Comments - catherinem

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

I'm curious about your comment, Changye. What do you mean by "young Shanghainese people," children or 20-30 somethings? I ask because in my opinion most 20-30 somethings, when in the company of other Shanghainese, tend to speak Shanghainese together (or a combination of Shanghainese/Mandarin, as discussed by Jason in our introductory podcast). Just the other day I was at a Thai restaurant and noticed that at the table next to us a large group of 20-something locals were trying to teach their non-Shanghainese friend the local lingo, teasing him a little bit for not being able to follow their conversation... It is true that Shanghainese is not technically allowed in public schools. This means the kiddos are all speaking Mandarin all day long...

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

Qing Wen comes out on Saturdays. Last week was an exception. Yesterday we published a Qing Wen about pet names (for loved ones, not for actual pets) in Chinese. You'll find it here.

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

We've got a taxi lesson (giving directions, paying etc.) coming up soon. Next week's Shanghainese lesson is about calling people names... stay tuned!

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

You can say: Zsazsa nong (in IPA: iaja noŋ).

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

Yes there are tones. They are different from the tones in Mandarin. Check out our Introduction to Shanghainese for more information about Shanghainese and its characteristics.

Posted on: What's Your Name?

I would recommend practicing out-loud. I probably look a little crazy, but when I study I read the key words and expansion sentences out-loud, repeating if they are hard for me to pronounce. You can also record yourself on your computer and play it back to hear your tones... Here's a link to our pronunciation guide. If you have specific questions about pronunciation, just let us know!

Posted on: Shanghai Expo: Haibao

Can you check your user groups? If you're not subscribed to the Elementary Group, you won't receive Elementary lessons like this one in your iTunes feed. If that's not the case, then it's problem with the feed itself. I'm looking into it.

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

Not every week - just a temporary series. Please check out our blog post for more information about dialects.

Posted on: Haggling Like a Local

Just a quick note about the PDF transcript - the PDF font sets are limited, so the IPA characters don't all show up correctly. You will find all IPA by mousing over each individual word in the "dialog" and "vocabulary" tabs.

The characters in the PDF are, as noted in our blog post about Shanghainese, commonly used characters whose pronunciation in Mandarin is close to their pronunciation in Shanghainese.

Posted on: Shanghai Expo: Haibao

We had a discussion about this in the office when the image for today's lesson was chosen. It was agreed among our staff that Haibao has no gender! Then again, I don't know what the official decision is... perhaps he can be whatever you want him/her to be (how empowering?)!