User Comments - ksarvestani
ksarvestani
Posted on: An Introduction!
April 30, 2010, 01:10 AMOkay, so this is probably going to be a very sticky and controversial question, but what exactly do the presenters mean when they say that Shanghainese has "7 or 8 tones, definitely more than Mandarin"?
Everything that I have read before about Shanghainese suggests that it uses a much simpler tone system than Mandarin with no more than two phonemic tones. I have even read that some scholars analyze Shanghainese as not having lexical tone and instead classifying it as a pitch-accent language like Japanese.
I'm not trying to cause a scholarly controversy here, I'm just wondering what exactly the presenters meant to say.
Posted on: An Introduction!
April 30, 2010, 04:47 PMChangye,
I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who has heard this before.
I'm also glad that you enjoy my avatar. You are absolutely correct, and I am surprised that anybody recognizes that it is indeed Naxi Dongba script. I took it during my visit to the Dongba Culture Museum in Lijiang.