Shanghainese phrases for visitors
Almost everyone in Shanghai speaks Mandarin, and most people will answer you in it. A few words of Shanghainese are still one of the nicest surprises you can give someone there. These are the ones worth having.
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.
Before you start
Shanghainese is not Mandarin with an accent, so a Mandarin phrasebook sentence is not Shanghainese, even though it is written with the same characters. Every phrase here uses Shanghainese words. The pronunciation under each one follows Verbavia’s course: a final -h is a short catch in the throat, gh is a voiced h, ny sounds like the ny in canyon, and an apostrophe marks a higher pitch.
Expect to be answered in Mandarin. Many younger people in central Shanghai speak little Shanghainese, and most people switch to Mandarin with an outsider without thinking about it. The point of these phrases is not to hold a conversation, but to show that you made the effort.
Hello, thank you, goodbye
| Shanghainese | Meaning | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 侬好。 non hau. | Hello. | Literally ‘you good’. The standard greeting, understood everywhere. |
| 谢谢侬。 zia zia non. | Thank you. | The 侬, ‘you’, belongs in the phrase. Without it you sound like a Mandarin speaker. |
| 再会。 tse we. | Goodbye. | Mandarin says 再见 zàijiàn instead. |
Good morning, how are you, you’re welcome, sorry, never mind and see you tomorrow — each with a recording and the Mandarin phrase that would give you away — are on hello, thank you and goodbye in Shanghainese.
Getting around
| Shanghainese | Meaning | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 请问，地铁站哪能走？ tshin ven, di thih zae na nen tseu? | Excuse me, how do I get to the metro station? | 请问 opens any polite question to a stranger. |
| 厕所辣海啥地方？ tshy su laeh he sa di faon? | Where is the toilet? | Literally ‘toilet is at what place?’ |
| 我听勿懂。 ngu thin veh ton. | I don’t understand. | Literally ‘I hear but don’t understand’. |
| 我上海闲话讲勿来。 ngu zaon he ghae gho kaon veh le. | I can’t speak Shanghainese. | The language comes first: ‘Shanghainese, I can’t manage to speak it’. |
| 侬会得讲英文伐？ non we teh kaon in ven va? | Do you speak English? | 伐 at the end makes it a question. |
Shopping and eating
| Shanghainese | Meaning | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 搿个几钿？ geh gheh ci die? | How much is this? | 几钿 is the Shanghainese ‘how much money’. |
| 忒贵了。 theh kue 'leh. | That’s too expensive. | 忒 means ‘too’. |
| 老好吃个。 lau hau chih gheh. | It’s delicious. | 老 before an adjective means ‘very’. |
The answer to 几钿 is a number, and the numbers are the one part of this list you cannot bluff — twenty has its own word in Shanghainese and the digits sound nothing like Mandarin’s. They are on the numbers page, with prices, dates and telling the time. What to say once the food arrives, and how the dishes are pronounced locally, is on the food and ordering page. The clock, the calendar and the words for money are on the time, dates and money page.
Words you will hear
- 阿拉 a la is the Shanghainese word for we and us. It came into the city’s speech from nearby Ningbo and replaced an older word.
- 嗲 tia means lovely, charming or classy. It can also mean coquettish, so it depends who is saying it about whom.
- 老结棍！ lau cih kuen! means amazing! On its own, 结棍 cih kuen means tough, formidable or impressive.
- 啥辰光？ sa zen kuaon? means when? or what time?
The phrase not to use
帮帮忙 paon paon maon looks as if it should mean please help, and word by word it does. In practice it is almost always used the other way round, to mean something like give me a break or don’t insult my intelligence, said to someone being unreasonable. If you need help, start with 请问 tshin ven ‘excuse me’ or 对勿起 te veh chi ‘excuse me’ instead.
If you want to go further
A few phrases will get you smiles. Understanding the reply takes more, because Shanghainese has its own everyday words for you, not, know and time, and its tones behave differently from Mandarin’s. Shanghainese vs Mandarin explains what is different, and the Shanghainese frequency list is a good place to keep going.