Shanghainese - the overview
The Shanghainese dialect. Does it have a future? Can it - should it?? - ever gain a position on a par even with Cantonese and Taiwanese? Who knows? But one thing's for sure - out there on the streets of China's largest city, it is basically Shanghainese that is spoken, that makes the metropolis run, not Mandarin.
The language is very different in pronunciation from Mandarin and Cantonese, there are several sounds that are not found in any other Chinese dialect. The bulk of the vocabulary is the same, but there's lots of variations and unique words and phrases. Like any dialect rooted in one place, it has more colour and richness than an official compromise language such as Mandarin.
Shanghainese is part of the Wu dialect family, one of the five dialect groups into which Chinese can be divided (the others are northern Chinese including Mandarin, Cantonese, the Fujian dialects and Hakka / Kejia). The Wu dialect covers a vast area of eastern China - the whole extended Yangtse River delta - and includes lots of variations in even the most basic words, like I, we, you. There is quite a lot of classical opera-type culture in the Wu dialect - there's "Huju" - Shanghainese opera, and pingtan - the story-telling / singing of Suzhou. There were a couple of novels written in Shanghainese around the turn of the 19th-20th centuries but the experiment was not viewed as successful, and they have sunk without trace with no follow-up.
Which is not surprising considering the overall opinion of Shanghainese people towards their own language (a wise man once said, by the way, that the difference between and a language and a dialect is that a language has an army and a navhy). Getting Shanghainese people to treat Shanghainese seriously is not an easy task. They often describe it as ugly, rough and uncultured. Definitely unsuitable for pop singing, for instance.
One Shanghainese lady, someone highly (overly?) educated outside her place of birth, told me recently that it was impossible to hold a conversation in Shanghainese on a weighty subject - the meaning of life, the future of the Internet, the derivation of the name Haagen-Dazs, things like that. It has to be done in Mandarin, she said. Other Shanghainese I tried this line on poo-poo-ed it. But it seems to be representative of a sense of inferiority that surrounds the language/dialect.
Take music, for instance. I do. All the time.
There are countless kara-oke bars and halls in Shanghai. They have musical selections consisting of thousands of Mandarin tunes and hundreds of others in Cantonese, Taiwanese, English, and Japanese. Shanghainese kara-oke fans love to sing songs in Cantonese, even though they can't speak it. But how about a kara-oke song in Shanghainese? Sorry, Mmm-mat-le.
In Cantonese, you can watch old movies where they speak basically like they do today. There are no old movies in Shanghainese. Even back in the 1930s, they made movies in Shanghai with Mandarin soundtracks. There is Cantonese pop music - it's been going strong for 20 years now, and it's heard far beyond the borders of Hong Kong or even Guangdong province. There is effectively no Shanghainese pop music. In the popular magazines and newspapers of Hong Kong, you will find a written form of Cantonese (barbaric though it looks). Such a thing hardly exists in Shanghainese. Lastly, Cantonese can be heard on radio and on TV, on videos and laser discs. In Shanghai - effectively nothing. It's all Mandarin by government decree.
Very strange.


http://www.earnshaw.com/shanghainese/content.cfm?id=28
后面一段涉及天朝很多闻名遐迩的事情，发不上来，再次bless一下BD的mothaf*cker审查制度

有时间，我会翻译，各位英文比较好的都来看看吧，写得很中肯，很有意思。这个叫Graham Earnshaw的外国人对上海话的历史渊源，甚至对中国话，都很有研究。

闽南吧主Brapian说, 上海话在澳洲就非常强势，这主要得益於老上海人在海外把母语的影响力扩大，这已经有百余年了。

看得好累，一般情况下我不愿意读大段英文

上海话 －－ 概述
      上海方言，能否看到未来？可以吗？应该吗？曾经的地位与广东话与台湾语相当?谁知道呢？但是有一件事情是肯定的，在中国最大的城市的街上，日常生活中，基本上大家是说上海话为主的，而不是普通话。
       粤语和普通话发音有很大的区别，有些语音在中国的其他方言中没有。使用的大多数的词汇都是一样的，但是存在许多变化的和独特的单词和短语。任何一种方言都是来源于一个地域，它比官方的通用语言比如普通话更富有浓烈的色彩性。
       上海话是吴语系的一支，是中国五大方言之一（其他方言是：北方官话为基础的普通话，粤语，闽南话和客家话）。吴方言覆盖了幅员辽阔的华东地区－整个长三角地区，它在不同地区存在很多的语音的变异，哪怕在最基本的词汇方面，如“我”“我们”“你”“你们”。吴方言有不少的古典歌剧文化（传统曲艺文化），“沪剧”－上海剧，评弹－苏州说唱。在19实际末20世纪除出现过一些沪语小说，但是看上去这些尝试并不成功，很快就无人跟进而消沉了。

上海人对于他们自己的语言是怎么样的观点呢，（顺便说一下，有个哲人曾经说过：官方语言和方言的区别在于，官方语言拥有陆军和海军）想知道上海人对待上海话的看法真的不是件容易的事。他们常常把它描述为难懂的，粗俗的，很土的。例如，很明显不适合流行歌曲。
       一位在出生地以外受了高等教育的上海女士，最近告诉我用上海话来举行一个重大的项目会议是不可能的――诸如：生命的意义，因特网的将来，哈根达斯的来由等等项目议题。她说这些议题都必须用普通话来完成。    这看上去就是一种关于官方语言与方言的自卑感的代表。
       在上海有无数的卡拉ok厅。他们提供有包含成千上万的普通话歌曲和成百上千的粤语、台语、英语和日语歌曲可供选择。上海的卡拉ok迷们喜欢用粤语来唱歌，哪怕他们并不会说。但是上海话的卡拉ok歌曲如何呢？对不起，么的了。
        你可以老电影中的广东话和现在基本上差不多。但没有上海话的老电影。即使在30年代，在上海他们也是用普通话来拍电影。有一种粤语的pop乐，20年了，目前它仍很强劲。  而且它的影响力远远跨越了香港和广东省。这比之无pop乐的上海话要有效的多。在香港的流行杂志和新闻报纸，你将能看到粤语的书写格式（barbaric），这种东西不大可能用上海话出现。最后，粤语可以上电视和电台，上CD和VCD。在上海――什么都没有，在政府的法令下，全都是普通话。

杯具 要问我们伟大的祖国，为什么小学生在校不能说上海话

问祖国有什么用 祖国在沉睡 你要问派对

派对在狂欢

ls, don't be so hard on it. Yer too picky. :)

谢谢诚诚爸的翻译，谢谢 苏轼爱鱼儿 的 补充。
请继续。

很奇怪，在一些店铺的店标和广告中，倒也时不时的有一些方言的成分，徐家汇有个百货公司名叫吉帝,照字面解释为幸运的帝王。不过”吉帝”用上海话读起来听上去象是“几佃”，巧合？未必。单词“侬”（你），这个字在商店名字中出现相当多。淮海路有一个婚纱摄影叫“侬侬婚纱影楼”，似在给人营造一种沉醉其中的浓浓的氛围。我想要是它叫“我我”会更好。
造成目前情形的看起来有以下这些缘由：
首先，上海是个年轻的移民城市，仅150年历史，如今的上海所说的话，是受到了各地方言的影响，已经明显有别于1840年时在豫园里能听到的方言了。我了解到，它有宁波口音的成分，无锡和苏州的语调。所以大家对于使用标准音的上海话没有什么共识，而有坚实的文化底蕴使得粤语很强势
第二，这个城市仍继续着移民，根据一份评估报告，有百分之三十的上海人口，并非上海本地人，从其他省市来的人常觉得难以学会上海方言。几年以后，他们可以听懂大部分的意思，但仍不会说。这就像在香港很多人只会粤语而不懂普通话。
第三，上海话自身缺乏活力，事实上所有的电视和电台使用普通话。电台的直播节目，电话接入者被要求用普通话，并渐渐的被引导而使用了北方的语调。学校中只许使用普通话，导致的结果就是语言中的许多词汇逐渐的被普化，目前普化了的上海话和上海话一起存在。许多人，尤其受过教育程度越高的人，他们说的话我认为已经算不上是上海话了 ――上海话语句结构中已经夹杂了普通话词汇，正如香港的粤语中加入了英语单词。很肯定，假以时日很多上海俚语将消失，这将非常可惜。

诚诚爷，耐额英文邪气灵光啊。呵呵，最后一段来了伊古（个）宁紫（主）页廊巷。BD欢喜鸡蛋里挑国（骨）头，发伐上来。哎，中国真真作孽。