Shanghainese verbs and aspect: 仔, 勒海 and 过

A Shanghainese verb has one form. Whether the action is finished, in progress, or something you have done at some point in your life is carried by a handful of small words around it — and they are not Mandarin’s 了, 在 and 着, even where the idea is the same.

Updated 20 September 2026 · 5 min read

Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Shanghainese examples play the recordings from Verbavia’s course, made with a Shanghainese voice; Mandarin examples play a Mandarin voice.

No conjugation, so aspect does the work

Zhu Xiaonong’s grammar, as summarised on Wikipedia, puts it in one sentence: Shanghainese verbs “are analytic and as such do not undergo any sort of conjugation to express tense or person”. 吃 chih ‘to eat’ is eat, ate, eats and eating. The time is given by a time word if it matters — 昨日 zoh nyih ‘yesterday’, 明朝 men tsau ‘tomorrow’ — and what the verb marks instead is aspect: how the action sits in time. Completed, ongoing, experienced, or gone.

Mandarin works the same way, which is why the four markers below will feel familiar. But only one of them, 过, is the Mandarin word. That is the trap: a Mandarin speaker reaching for 了 and 在 produces sentences that are understood and are not Shanghainese.

Completed: 仔

The completed-action marker is 仔 tsy ‘(completed action)’, also written 子 or 之. It goes straight after the verb, before the object, where Mandarin puts its verb-suffix 了:

• 我吃仔饭哉。 ngu chih tsy vae tse ‘I’ve eaten’
• 伊买仔两本书。 yi ma tsy lian pen syu ‘she bought two books’
• 门关仔。 men kuae tsy ‘the door’s been shut’

Wikipedia lists the perfective markers as “了 (leq), 仔 (tsy), 好 (hau) or 唻 (le)”, and notes that 仔 “is seen as dated and younger speakers often use 了, likely through lenition and Mandarin influence”. So you will hear both, and older and younger speakers differ. Separately from the post-verbal 仔 there is a particle that closes the sentence and announces that the situation has changed — this course writes it 哉 tse ‘(sentence-final particle)’, and you will also see 了 'leh ‘(completed action; change of state)’ for the same slot. Both can share a sentence with 仔, as in the first example above, exactly as Mandarin’s two 了s do.

In progress: 勒海

The progressive is 勒海 leh he ‘in the middle of doing’, placed before the verb, where Mandarin has 在 or 正在. Wikipedia gives the same marker in a different spelling — “辣 (laq), 辣辣 (laq-laq) or 辣海 (laq-he), which occur pre-verbally” — because the particle has no agreed character; 勒海, 辣海 and 勒浪 are all the same word written three ways.

• 伊勒海吃饭。 yi leh he chih vae ‘he’s eating’
• 我勒海看电视。 ngu leh he khoe die zy ‘I’m watching television’
• 落雨勒海。 loh yu leh he ‘it’s raining’

The same word is also a verb of place: Wiktionary glosses 勒海 as “to exist; to be at; to be in” as well as “be …-ing”. That is not a coincidence — the progressive grew out of the locative, he is at eating. The full locative verb is 垃拉 laeh la ‘at, in; to be at’, as in 伊垃拉屋里。 yi laeh la oh li ‘he’s at home’, and 勒 leh ‘at, in’ is its short form after a verb. Move 勒海 to the far side of the verb and it stops meaning in progress and starts meaning and it is still like that — 坐勒海 zu leh he ‘sitting there’ — which is the job Mandarin gives 着. The position does the work, not the word.

Ever done: 过

The experiential — done at some point, at least once — is 过 ku ‘(experiential)’, after the verb, and this one is the Mandarin construction with a Shanghainese reading. Wikipedia: “marked post-verbally by the particle 過/过 (ku)”.

• 我去过。 ngu chi ku ‘I’ve been’
• 侬吃过伐？ non chih ku va ‘have you ever had it?’

Gone: 脱

脱 theh ‘(completive suffix)’ after a verb says the action removed, finished off or lost something — the job Mandarin gives 掉. It is one of the most Shanghainese sounds in the language, and it turns up on verbs where an English speaker would not expect any particle at all:

• 忘记脱哉。 maon ci theh tse ‘I’ve forgotten’
• 吃脱哉。 chih theh tse ‘it’s all been eaten’
• 门关脱哉。 men kuae theh tse ‘the door’s shut, and that’s that’

好 hau ‘good; well’ after a verb marks a job brought to completion — 饭吃好哉。 vae chih hau tse ‘the meal is finished’ — and Wikipedia counts it among the perfective markers. Between 仔, 脱 and 好 a speaker chooses by what kind of ending it was: simply over, gone, or done properly.

Negating each of them

This is where the two languages part company most clearly. The basic negator is 勿 veh ‘not’, not 不. But a completed action is negated with 呒没 m meh ‘not to have; didn’t’ — Wikipedia: “nouns and verbs can be negated by the verb 嘸沒/呒没 (m-meq), ‘to not have’, whereas 勿 veq is the basic negator” — and not yet has a word of its own, 勿曾 veh zen ‘not yet’.

Wiktionary’s example for 呒没 is the last pattern: 粢饭团我呒没吃过, “I’ve never eaten cifantuan”. The 过 stays; the negator changes.

There is a compact alternative for the plain past negative, 朆 fen ‘did not, have not’, which is 勿 and 曾 fused into one syllable and one character: 伊朆来。 yi fen le ‘he didn’t come’. Beside it sits 甮 vion ‘no need to’, the fusion of 勿 and 用, which waves a suggestion away — 甮去。 vion chi ‘no need to go’. Both are on the grammar page with the rest of the negation system.

Will, can, want

The future has no marker. A time word does it, or 要 iau ‘will; want to’, which Wikipedia glosses as “would like” and which also carries plain futurity: 伊要来。 yi iau le ‘he’s coming / he’ll come’. Ability is 会 we ‘can, know how to’ — 我会讲上海闲话。 ngu we kaon zaon he ghae gho ‘I can speak Shanghainese’ — and 好 hau ‘may; can’ doubles as may: 好走了。 hau tseu 'leh ‘we can go now’.

The whole system on one verb

Everything else in the sentence — word order, the copula, questions — is on the grammar page, and how much of this a Mandarin speaker can lean on is set out on the Shanghainese vs Mandarin page.

Sources

1. Wikipedia: Shanghainese — Grammar (verbs analytic; perfective 了/仔/好/唻; progressive 辣/辣辣/辣海 pre-verbal; experiential 过; negation with 呒没 and 勿; modals), citing Zhu Xiaonong (2006), A Grammar of Shanghai Wu
2. Wiktionary: 勒海 — “to exist; to be at; to be in”; “be …-ing; in the middle of doing something”
3. Wiktionary: 嘸沒 — “to not have; have not; did not”, with the example 粢饭团我呒没吃过
4. Wiktionary: 勿曾 — “have yet to; to have not done something”
5. Wiktionary: 過 — Wu reading 5ku, experiential marker
6. Jia, W. Temporal information in sentence-final particles: tse and keh in Modern Shanghai Wu (abstract)