Shanghainese: A Dialect of Wu Chinese
Shanghainese is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken by about 14 million people in the city of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. It is also one of the most influential and widely used varieties of Chinese in the modern world. However, Shanghainese is not a standardized or official language, and it faces many challenges and pressures from Mandarin, the national language of China. In this article, I will introduce some basic features and history of Shanghainese, and discuss its current situation and future prospects.To get more news about shanghainese, you can citynewsservice.cn official website.

Features of Shanghainese
Shanghainese belongs to the Taihu subgroup of Wu Chinese, which is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It has many distinctive phonological, lexical, and grammatical characteristics that make it different from other Chinese dialects. For example:

Shanghainese has a low number of tones compared to other Southern Chinese languages. It has only two basic tones: high and low. However, the tones are affected by various factors, such as syllable length, stress, and tone sandhi. Tone sandhi is a process that changes the tone of a syllable depending on its position and context.

Shanghainese has many words and expressions that are unique to its culture and history. Some of them are borrowed from other languages, such as English, Japanese, or French, while others are derived from local slang or dialects. For example, the word for “bus” is /pɔsɦi/, which comes from the English word “bus”.
History of Shanghainese
Shanghainese developed from the speech of the people who lived in the area around Shanghai since ancient times. However, it was greatly influenced by other dialects and languages due to historical events and migrations. Some of the major influences are:

During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), many people from southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang moved to Shanghai to escape wars and famines. They brought their dialects with them, which formed the basis of modern Shanghainese4
During the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Shanghai became a prosperous port city and a center of trade and commerce. Many foreigners came to Shanghai and established concessions and settlements. They introduced their languages and cultures to Shanghai, which enriched Shanghainese vocabulary and grammar4
During the late 19th and early 20th century, Shanghai became a cosmopolitan metropolis and a hub of modernization and innovation. Many intellectuals and writers from Shanghai promoted a common Chinese language movement to create a vernacular medium for national communication. They chose Mandarin as the base language, but also borrowed many words and usages from Shanghainese and other Wu dialects. As a result, many modern Mandarin words have their origins in Shanghainese5
During the mid 20th century, Shanghai experienced political turmoil and social unrest due to wars and revolutions. Many Shanghainese people fled to other parts of China or overseas, especially to Hong Kong and Taiwan. They spread their language and culture to these places, which influenced the development of Cantonese and Taiwanese.