Shanghainese guides

How Shanghainese sounds, how it works, how it differs from its neighbours, and how to learn it.

Shanghainese is the language of Shanghai: a variety of Wu Chinese that shares Mandarin’s characters but not its sounds, its commonest words or the way its tones behave. Very little has been written about it in English, and much of that treats it as Mandarin with an accent.

If you are not sure where to begin, start with Wu Chinese, which explains the family Shanghainese belongs to and links down to every other guide here.

These guides were written alongside Verbavia’s Shanghainese course. Each one lists the research it relies on, and every Shanghainese example is checked against the course’s own deck before the page is built — so a reading here is a reading the course teaches, and no example is quietly Mandarin.

• Shanghainese vs Mandarin: what’s actually differentShanghainese and Mandarin share a writing system but not a spoken language. The words, sounds, tones and grammar that separate them.
• Is Shanghainese a language or a dialect?By the test linguists usually apply, Shanghainese is a separate language from Mandarin. So why is it still called a dialect in Chinese?
• Shanghainese tones and tone sandhi, explained properlyShanghainese has five tones, but inside a word only the first syllable keeps its own. How the tones work, the sandhi patterns, and how to learn them.
• How Shanghainese is written, and why there’s no standardShanghainese is written in Chinese characters, with rival spellings for some common words and several romanisations. Why there’s no standard.
• Is Shanghainese dying?Millions still speak Shanghainese, but fewer young people in Shanghai grow up using it. What the surveys show, why it declined, and what is being done.
• Shanghainese phrases for visitorsThe Shanghainese phrases worth knowing on a trip to Shanghai, with characters, pronunciation and recordings, and the one phrase to avoid.
• Shanghainese pronunciation: the sounds, one by oneEvery Shanghainese initial and final, with IPA, the course’s spelling and a recorded example word — including the voiced consonants Mandarin lost.
• Shanghainese grammar: how sentences actually workThe pronouns, the copula, negation, aspect and where things are — the grammar that makes a sentence Shanghainese rather than Mandarin.
• Shanghainese vs Cantonese: two survivals of Middle ChineseBoth are Chinese languages that are not Mandarin, and they are not close. Tones, consonants, writing and status compared — and what each one kept.
• Is Shanghainese hard to learn?An honest answer: easier grammar and easier tones than Mandarin, a harder sound system, and almost no materials. What it takes, and how long.
• Learn Shanghainese online, free: every resource worth usingEvery free way to learn Shanghainese online — courses, YouTube, podcasts, recorded sentences, dictionaries and flashcards — and what each is good for.
• Wu Chinese: the family Shanghainese belongs toWu is a branch of Chinese with about 83 million speakers, of which Shanghainese is one variety. Its groups, where each sits, and what holds them together.
• Shanghainese vs Suzhou, Ningbo and HangzhouThe three Wu varieties nearest Shanghai, how far each is from Shanghainese, whether they are mutually intelligible, and which one shaped the city’s speech.
• Which Shanghainese romanisation should you use?Three rival systems, none official, and no two textbooks agreeing. Which one to learn, how to read it, and how to convert between them.
• Shanghainese pronounsSix words, no gender and no case — and the fastest way to tell Shanghainese from Mandarin. The full paradigm, possessives, and where 阿拉 came from.
• Shanghainese slang, and the words you will actually hearThe everyday Shanghainese that textbooks leave out: praise, insults, the treaty-port loanwords from English, and what the profanity actually is.
• Shanghainese numbers: counting, prices, dates and timeZero to ten thousand in Shanghainese, with recordings: the one-syllable word for twenty, and what tone sandhi does to a number.
• Shanghainese verbs and aspect: 仔, 勒海 and 过Shanghainese verbs never change form. What they take instead: 仔 for a finished action, 勒海 for one in progress, 过, 脱, and the negators 呒没 and 勿曾.
• Shanghainese classifiers and measure wordsThe Shanghainese classifiers Mandarin doesn’t have (爿 for shops, 桩 for matters, 眼 for a little) and the five different jobs of 个.
• How to type ShanghaineseThe one real Shanghainese input method (Rime with the Wugniu schema) on every platform, the pinyin workaround, and the particle phones can’t draw.
• Blossoms Shanghai in Shanghainese: the dialect versionWong Kar-wai’s Blossoms Shanghai aired in two languages. Which version is which, where to stream it, and the Shanghainese words that caught on.
• Shanghainese on screen and in song: films, TV and musicThe films and series with real Shanghainese dialogue, the ones wrongly listed as Shanghainese, and the music that is actually in the language.
• The foreign words in Shanghainese, and Yangjingbang pidginThe English and Russian words Shanghainese took in through the concessions, the pidgin named after a filled-in creek, and which etymologies are true.
• Literary and colloquial readings in ShanghaineseWhy some Shanghainese characters have two pronunciations, which one goes in which word, and why the everyday reading is usually the older of the two.
• Shanghainese food: dishes and noodles, and how to say themShanghai's famous dishes and noodles with their Shanghainese names and readings, the Mandarin habit to avoid for each, and enough to order.
• Old and new Shanghainese: 170 years of changeShanghainese has lost tones and vowel endings within living memory. How old, middle and new speakers differ, and which one a learner should copy.
• Shanghainese question words: how to ask anythingWhat, who, where, when, why and how in Shanghainese: none is the Mandarin word, one is a false friend, and one particle asks anything.
• Telling the time, dates and prices in ShanghaineseThe clock, the calendar and the cost, in Shanghainese — 礼拜 rather than 星期, 今朝 rather than 今天, 铜钿 rather than 钱, and the coin word Shanghai kept.
• Shanghainese family words: mother, father, grandparentsWhat Shanghai families actually call each other — 姆妈 rather than 妈妈, 阿奶 and 老爹 rather than 奶奶 and 爷爷 — and why the older words are going first.
• Can Mandarin speakers understand Shanghainese?No, and there is an experiment with numbers. Why comprehension runs one way only, and what a Mandarin speaker does and does not catch.
• Shanghainese vs Wenzhounese: two Wu languagesBoth are Wu and they cannot understand each other. What separates northern from southern Wu, and what is actually true about Wenzhounese as a wartime code.
• How long does it take to learn Shanghainese?Nobody has measured it. The FSI has no Shanghainese entry, so every figure online is borrowed from Mandarin. Here is what that number is worth.
• Shanghainese for Mandarin speakers: what transfersThe characters transfer, the readings do not, the pronouns do not at all. An honest inventory of what your Mandarin buys you and what it will cost you.
• What is a Chinese topolect?方言 is not “dialect”, and the mistranslation causes real confusion. Where topolect came from, what it fixes, and the argument on the other side.
• The Chinese languages, by number of speakersMandarin, Min, Wu, Yue, Jin, Gan, Hakka, Xiang — how big each branch is, where it is spoken, and why the numbers you find disagree with each other.
• Which Chinese language has the most tones?Cantonese nine or six, Shanghainese five or two, and a Guangxi variety famous for ten that actually has six. Why the question has no clean answer.
• Are Chinese topolects dying?Putonghua went from about half of China to 80% in twenty years. What that did to the other varieties, and why the big ones aren’t formally endangered.
• Why most Chinese topolects have no written standardWritten Chinese is Mandarin in characters. How Cantonese built its own written form anyway, why Shanghainese didn’t, and how the characters get made.
• What language is spoken in Shanghai?Mandarin is the language of school, work and signs; Shanghainese is the city’s own. Who speaks which, how different they are, and where you hear each.
• Hello, thank you and goodbye in ShanghaineseHow to say hello, thank you and goodbye in Shanghainese, with recordings and pronunciation — and the Mandarin word that gives you away in each.
• 50 words that differ in Shanghainese and MandarinFifty everyday words that are different in Shanghainese and Mandarin, side by side, with characters, pronunciation and a recording of each.
• Which Shanghainese words survive, and which fadedShanghainese words counted in 1868 and 1907 textbooks and in speech today: the core has held, a few old words are gone, and Mandarin has a foothold.
• Chinese New Year greetings in 3 Chinese languagesChinese New Year greetings in Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese, side by side, with characters and pronunciation, for the Year of the Goat in 2027.
• Why does Shanghainese sound like Japanese?Why Shanghainese sounds like Japanese: voiced consonants Mandarin lost, tones that act like a pitch accent, and the old readings the two share.
• What does Shanghai mean? The name and the verbWhat does Shanghai mean? 上海 is read as “on the sea”, but the name came from a creek. Plus Hu and Shen, and why “to shanghai” means to kidnap.
• How to say I love you in ShanghaineseI love you in Shanghainese is 我爱侬 ngu e non. Here it is beside Mandarin and Cantonese, with the gentler ways people say it: I like you, I miss you.
• Happy birthday in Shanghainese, and other wishesHappy birthday in Shanghainese, with cheers, congratulations, Merry Christmas and wedding wishes, beside Mandarin and Cantonese, and how to answer.

• Learn ShanghaineseThe free course: what it teaches, and in what order
• The most common Shanghainese words1,000 words with pronunciation and recordings