Shanghainese's last gasp
- Source: The Global Times
- [20:43 June 03 2009]
- Comments
Primary students recite poems at the National Putonghua Promotion Week on September 10, 2006 in Fuzhou, the capital city of Fujian Province. Photo: CFP
By Zhang Yuchen
He had his first taste of being an outsider at a kindergarten enrollment interview. Three-year-old Ivan Yu chatted with family members in Shanghainese, but could not understand his teacher's questions in Putonghua (Mandarin). From that day onward, little Ivan was embarking on a bilingual journey.
Ivan is 5 today. He works hard at Putonghua every day, both at kindergarten and at home. His parents help him practice. Children are ordered to use Putonghua at school. Any child who speaks Shanghainese is punished with low scores in their civil behavior rankings, according to Shanghai-based newspaper Wen Hui Bao.
Children at middle school today speak less Shanghainese with their parents, said a postgraduate student at a Shanghai university. Huang Huan said signs with "Please speak in Putonghua" are stationed in the halls of every teaching building.
Huang, a 25 year-old native Shanghainese, said it was not unusual to see parents speaking in Shanghai dialect and their children using Putonghua.
"I have seen parents ask questions in Shanghai dialect while their kids respond in Putonghua. In the end, both switched to speaking Putonghua for convenience."
Huang said she speaks local dialect to fellow Shanghainese: Like most Shanghainese born in the '80s, she still communicates better in her local dialect. But that is changing, and changing fast, she believed: those Shanghainese born in the '90s seemingly prefer Putonghua.
Ivan's parents work in multinational companies and consequently care much more about their son's English. "Many younger kids tend to mix Putonghua and English when they talk. Apparently they are a more fashionable generation," said Huang.
Mass migration into Shanghai in the mid-'90s by non-Shanghainese is the immediate cause of declining use of the Shanghai dialect, said Jia Yanyan, who works at the Youth Academic Exchange Center in the Institute of Literature at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
Before the '90s, outsiders who couldn't speak Shanghainese were regarded as provincials, even despised, said Jia. But talent from outside the city and Shanghai's broadening horizons have made Putonghua increasingly important, according to Zhang Ruiyan, one of Jia's colleagues.
The Chinese government committed to Putonghua as China's lingua franca in 1956 as the part of a nationwide literacy campaign. The 2000 Law of the People's Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language (Order of the President No.37) revised the original 1956 law.
"When the law was first published in the 1950s, it aimed at efficient management for collective action such as military exercises," said Li Lan, deputy chief of the Dialectology Office at the Institute of Linguistics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.
According to the key items 13 and 14, people working in the service sector are encouraged to use Putonghua and broadcasting, films and TV shows must adopt a rigid standard spoken and written language. Practically speaking, the only interesting program on TV for children like Ivan are Putonghua-language cartoons.
"UNESCO once encouraged three levels of language use: mother tongue, official language and another communication vehicle.
"Besides learning English and mastering Putonghua, maybe we should keep in mind the root of our existence – our local dialects across the country," said Zhang Ruiyan.