Ancillary 9: Disappearance of the Shanghainese Dialect

I wish to discuss the disappearance of the local Shanghai dialect in my paper and use it as a medium to further explore the phenomenon of “language loss” in an increasingly globalized world today. Following the Chinese central government’s early 2000 attempt to publicize mandarin (“Pu tong Hua”) in all aspects of life, including education and other official uses, the Shanghainese dialect has been pushed to distinction. The central government’s intervention and a burst in immigration from regions outside the Yangtze river delta have resulted in the rapid plunge of Shanghainese use and proficiency among the Shanghainese population. Once used by the Shanghainese people as an ironic tease at the small proportion of those who cannot fluently speak the city’s dialect, “Yang jing bang,” derived from the English word pidgin, can now be widely used applied to more than two-thirds of the city’s residents. Interestingly, such a phenomenon appears to be more globalized than I originally thought. As a fluent Shanghainese speaker who barely speaks the dialect to my parents now, I realized the overlapping experience I share with my Pakistani-Indonesian roommate, who communicates with his parents in English rather than his Urdu mother tongue. The loss of languages appears to be a global issue worth further exploration.

Perhaps a more serious issue than the plunge in the proficiency of languages is the loss of identity. Behind every language or dialect is a sense of belonging attached. With the disappearance of languages like the Shanghainese dialect, the sense of belonging to the city is weaker than ever. Can one regard oneself as Shanghainese if one can’t even speak the city’s dialect fluently? All of the above factors have led me to consider what causes people to stop speaking the language that should be considered their mother tongue and whether or not we can stop that from happening. I want to analyze the issue from both a policy and personal level and hopefully suggest a way to help explain and solve the issue that we have at hand.