I also didn't realize how different Shanghainese and Putonghua were. Probably too difficult for me; so I'll probably just stick with Mandarin for now.
On the plus side, the Dialogue tab has been a great resource for me to test my wife with. She's from Zhejiang province. She was able to listen to all the Shanghainese sentences and translate to English. She also immediately understood the characters were for Shanghainese and could translate.
I find it very interesting that while she can understand Shanghainese, her hometown language just a few hours away is different and not mutually intelligble to the average person. She understands Shanghainese (and can speak some but not fully), but the average person from her hometown can't (but she lived in Shanghai for a while). And most Shanghai people don't understand her hometown dialect. America is much simpler. I can drive 30 hours and the language is 99% the same.
Posted on: Haggling Like a Local
September 27, 2010 at 1:23 AMI also didn't realize how different Shanghainese and Putonghua were. Probably too difficult for me; so I'll probably just stick with Mandarin for now.
On the plus side, the Dialogue tab has been a great resource for me to test my wife with. She's from Zhejiang province. She was able to listen to all the Shanghainese sentences and translate to English. She also immediately understood the characters were for Shanghainese and could translate.
I find it very interesting that while she can understand Shanghainese, her hometown language just a few hours away is different and not mutually intelligble to the average person. She understands Shanghainese (and can speak some but not fully), but the average person from her hometown can't (but she lived in Shanghai for a while). And most Shanghai people don't understand her hometown dialect. America is much simpler. I can drive 30 hours and the language is 99% the same.