software for Shanghainese

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Professor Qián Nǎiróng (Qian Nairong / 錢乃榮) of Shanghai University has just issued free software to help with the writing of Shanghainese (上海话). People may now download the 1.3 MB zip file of the program.

Some examples:

shanghe 上海
shanghehhehho 上海闲/言话（上海话）
whangpugang 黄浦江
suzouhhu苏州河
shyti 事体（事情）
makshy 物事（东西）
bhakxiang 白相（玩）
dangbhang 打朋（开玩笑）
ghakbhangyhou 轧朋友（交朋友）
cakyhangxiang 出洋相（闹笑话，出丑）
linfhakqin 拎勿清(不能领会)
dhaojiangwhu 淘浆糊（混）
aoshaoxhin 拗造型（有意塑造姿态形象）
ghe 隑（靠）
kang 囥（藏）
yin 瀴（凉、冷）
dia 嗲
whakji 滑稽

The program offers two flavors of romanization. Here are some examples of the differences between the two styles:

New Folk Old Timers
makshy 物事（东西）
bhakxiang 白相（玩）
dangbhang 打朋（开玩笑）
ghakbhangyhou 轧朋友（交朋友）
cakyhangxiang 出洋相（闹笑话，出丑）
linfhakqin 拎勿清(不能领会) 		mekshy 物事（东西）
bhekxian 白相（玩）
danbhan 打朋（开玩笑）
ghakbhanyhou 轧朋友（交朋友）
cekyhanxian 出洋相（闹笑话，出丑）
linfhekqin 拎勿清(不能领会)

Here’s a brief story on this:

Xiànzài, wǒmen zài wǎngluò zhōng liáotiān de shíhou yuèláiyuè duō de péngyou dōu kāishǐ xǐhuan yòng Shànghǎihuà. Dànshì yǒushíhou shìbushì juéde xiǎng biǎodá dehuà bùzhīdào zěnme dǎ, nòng de yǒudiǎn bùlúnbùlèi ne? Xiànzài, yī ge kěyǐ qīngsōng dǎchū Shànghǎihuà de chéngxù chūlai le.

Jīngguò liǎng nián nǔlì, Shànghǎi dàxué Zhōngwénxì Qián Nǎiróng jiàoshòu jí tā de yánjiūshēng hé dādàng zhōngyú yú běnyuè wánchéng le Shànghǎihuà shūrùfǎ de zhìzuò. Zhíde guānzhù de shì, zhè tào shūrùfǎ hái bāokuò xīn-lǎo liǎng ge bǎnběn, 45 suì yǐshàng de lǎo Shànghǎi rénhé niánqīng yī dài de Shànghǎirén dōu kěyǐ zhǎodào zìjǐ de “dǎfǎ.”

Háishi tóngyàng 26 ge zìmǔ de jiànpán, 8 yuè 1 rì qǐ xiàzài le Shànghǎihuà shūrùfǎ zhīhòu, nín jiù kěyǐ tōngguò shūrù “linfhakqin” dǎchū “līn wù qīng,” shūrù “dhaojiangwhu” dǎchū “táo jiànghu” děng yuánzhī yuán wèi de Shànghǎihuà le. Zuótiān, jìzhě tíqián xiàzài dào gāi ruǎnjiàn. Ànzhào shǐyòng shuōmíng, yòng quánpīn de fāngshì chángshì shūrù “laoselaosy” zhèxiē zìmǔ, píngmù shàng, lìjí chūxiàn le “lǎo sānlǎo sì” (Shànghǎihuà, yìsi shì “màilǎo, chōng lǎochéng de yàngzi”).

Jùxī, yóuyú Shànghǎihuà yǔ Pǔtōnghuà de dúfǎ yǒusuǒbùtóng, suǒyǐ zài pīnyīn pīnxiě fāngshì shàng háishi xūyào shǐyòng shuōmíng de bāngzhù. Bǐrú jìzhě fāxiàn, fánshì yǔ Pǔtōnghuà shēngmǔ, yùnmǔ xiāngtóng de zì, zài Shànghǎihuà shūrùfǎ zhōng zuìzhōng yòng de háishi Pǔtōnghuà pīnyīn, bùtóng de zé cǎiyòng Shànghǎihuà shūrùfǎ de pīnxiě fāngshì. Rú “chénguāng” de “chén,” “huātou” de “tóu” dōu fāchéng zhuóyīn, Shànghǎihuà pīnyīn shūrùfǎ zhōng yàozài shēngmǔ zhōng jiā yī ge zìmǔ h, pīnchéng “shen,” “dhou;” fánshì rùshēng zì, zé zài pīnyīn hòu jiā zìmǔk, rú “báixiāng” de “bái” jiù pīnchéng bhek.

Bùguò, dàjiā bùyào juéde tài nán. Jìzhě fāxiàn, Shànghǎihuà shūrùfǎ yǔ Pǔtōnghuà de shūrùfǎ zuìdà xiāngtóng zhī chǔzài yú, zhǐyào liánxù shūrù shēngmǔ hé yùnmǔ jiù kěyǐ, bùxū shūrù shēngdiào. Cǐwài, Shànghǎihuà pīnyīn shūrù xìtǒng háiyǒu lèisì “zhìnéng” yōudiǎn, kěyòng suōlüè fāngshì bǎ cíyǔ pīnxiě chūlai.

Zhǔchí Shànghǎihuà shūrùfǎ kāifā de Shànghǎi dàxué Zhōngwénxì Qián Nǎiróng jiàoshòu gàosu jìzhě, zhè tào shūrùfǎ bùjǐn néng dǎchū Shànghǎihuà dà cídiǎn zhōng 15,000 duō ge cítiáo, érqiě hái néng yòng Shànghǎihuà pīnyīn dǎchū Shànghǎihuà zhōng shǐyòng zhe de, yǔ Pǔtōnghuà cíyì xiāngtóng dàn yǔyīn bùtóng de chángyòng cíyǔ. Rú “Huángpǔ Jiāng” shūrù “whangpugang” , “lǐxiǎng” zéshì lixiang děng, gòngjì 10,000 duō ge cítiáo.

sources:

11 thoughts on “software for Shanghainese”

  3. Hmm… it will take me some time to get used to the Pinyin used here… but still I am very happy to have any type of Shanghainese support. By the way, what is the site’s opinion on dealing with Romanization systems of forms of Chinese with 3-way distinctions in plosives (Wu, Minnan)? Hanyu Pinyin-style Romanization works well for forms of Chinese with 2-way distinction (Mandarin, Cantonese) where the pairs such as b/p, d/t, and g/k can be used instead of p/p’, t/t’, k,k’. However, Shanghainese and other dialects of Wu Chinese contrast voiced, tenuis, and aspirated stops, which means a different system must be used.

    Usually, I see Romanization systems which try to follow the IPA as much as possible, thus using b/p/ph, d/t/th, and g/k/kh. This is generally what I’ve seen for Shanghainese both on the internet in random forums as well as the occasional Shanghainese language book I find here and there, with the exception of some coming out of the mainland, which assume knowledge of Hanyu Pinyin and thus use the cumbersome bh/b/p, dh/d/t, gh/g/k instead.

    For someone like me who is studying languages of South Asia such as Hindi, b/p/ph, d/t/th, and g/k/kh is definitely most comfortable and natural, as it corresponds to the standard usage of Roman alphabet for languages of India. In contrast, bh/b/p, dh/d/t, and gh/g/k totally screw up my feeble brain, as now I have to remember that bh isn’t IPA bh- it’s b, b isn’t IPA b, it’s p, and p is actually ph. It’s easier to get away with this in Mandarin’s Hanyu Pinyin because you’re only contrasting two consonants, and all you have to do is remember one thing- aspirated or unaspirated.

    I would imagine this system would also mess with people who use both English and Mandarin, seeing as “sh” now maps to English “z.” Overall, I understand that the creator of this romanization system is trying to help people who are already familiar with Hanyu Pinyin for Mandarin, but I think that the streamlined feel of Mandarin’s Hanyu Pinyin can be used for Shanghainese without such cumbersome consonant systems such as using an “h” to indicate voicing instead of aspiration. In fact, there are Romanization systems for Shanghainese which I find more user friendly on the web.

    Having said all that, I am definitely exicited at the possibilities for Shanghainese in the future now that it has made a move towards modernity with a typing input system, since due to the nature of Chinese characters, a monolingual Shanghainese speaker could only type with a difficult structure-based system such as Cangjie. I hope that in the future, standard pronunciation can be agreed on for Shanghainese.

  4. what is the site’s opinion on dealing with Romanization systems of forms of Chinese with 3-way distinctions in plosives (Wu, Minnan)?

    As frustrated as I get sometimes with Wade-Giles (or, rather, how badly Wade-Giles is usually written) I recognize that its use of apostrophes had its virtues, esp. when dealing with older forms of Sinitic languages and modern languages other than Mandarin. But, unfortunately, I don’t know nearly as much about Sinitic languages other than Mandarin as I would like, so I’m hesitant to venture an opinion.

    I had a lot of admiration for the late, great zanhe.com, which had lots of good information on Shanghainese. Its approach to romanization of Shanghainese is probably worth looking at.

    (BTW, if anyone knows those who made Zanhe.com please let me know. I’d like to get in touch with them.)

  5. Hello dear Pinyin: I am Penkyamp, one of the members active on the zanhei Shanghainese lingustics forum.
    I am also one of the Cantonese romanization researchers that designed software and teaching materials for the Cantonese Pinyin. I’d like to inform you that there is a wealth of discussions and articles produced on the Penkyamp system recently, many of them on the Cantonese Linguistics forum. Also, a software designed to input special characters for Penkyamp has been published. All these can be found on several user pages as links listed at the very bottom of each page.
    The Penkyamp system is the very first Cantonese romanization system that utilizes both concepts from the Hanyu Pinyin: 1. marking tones by diacritics only 2. following Pinyin rules on linking syllables into words.
    I hope you’ll find the new info on Penkyamp to be valuable supplement to your website on Pinyin.

    Following are the Penkyamp intro pages maintained by my team:

    http://cantonese.wikia.com/wiki/User:Penkyamp

    http://penkyamp.pbwiki.com/
    ????????

    http://penkyamp.pbwiki.com/Seuyap+Gonkgoy+Foxs
    Please click to download Penkyamp special characters input software. Password: share

    http://blog.sina.com.cn/penkyamp
    penkyamp???

    http://www.cnic.org/wiki/Penkyamp
    ??????

    http://www.cnic.org/wiki/User:Penkyamp
    ??????

    http://wiki.keyin.cn/index.php/User:Penkyamp
    ??? ????

    ?????????????

    * ???????, ??????????????????????????.
    * ??: PENKYAMP ? JYUTPING ????????: 1. ???”??????”? ? 2. ???”????”? http://bbs.cantonese.asia/viewthread.php?tid=11459&pid=98523&page=1&extra=#pid98523
    * ???? http://www.gophor.com/cjkv/read.php?tid=9270&page=1&toread=1
    * ?????????:
    o http://penkyamp.pbwiki.com/Seuyap+Gonkgoy+Foxs
    o http://bbs.cantonese.asia/viewthread.php?tid=11180&extra=page%3D1&page=1
    o http://www.gophor.com/cjkv/read.php?tid=9330&page=1
    o http://www.somdom.com/viewthread.php?tid=3194&page=2&extra=page%3D1#pid12089
    o http://www.emus.cn/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=8856&page=1&extra=#pid34824
    o http://www.salars.cn/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=1777
    o http://fujian.qq.topzj.com/thread-403764-1-1.html
    o http://www.gzee.net/viewthread.php?tid=2728&extra=page%3D1&page=2
    o https://free.twforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=92527
    o http://www.tuerqi.info/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=1030&page=2#pid38423

  7. I found a Wikipedia user page possibly know William Yin. Naus is also a Chinese medical science student at U of Chicago. But his political views are very different from William’s, who goes by the internet nickname of Nishishei. Please message Naus on his talk page. I haven’t been in touch with William for two years. However, I am sure he is in one of these Wu dialect forums participating in the romanization program.

    Wikipedia user page:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Naus

    Wu-Chinese forum
    http://wu-chinese.com/bbs/index.php

  11. I’ve just changed the link above to my own old copy of the file. I haven’t used this myself and can offer no guarantees about it, esp. in terms of how this software from 2008 behaves on modern computers.

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