Shanghainese may be a dying language, but it’s not dead yet

I forget that I know three languages. Partly because who’s to say what constitutes “knowing,” given the way that language skills degrade without practice? Another reason I forget is because the non-English language I’m most fluent in is losing popularity. My parents immigrated to Canada and then the United States from Shanghai, and I grew up speaking Shanghainese. Spoken in the city and surrounding areas, the language stopped being taught in schools in China in the 1990s, part of a national push for Mandarin standardization.

I’m conversational in Shanghainese, but my vocabulary range is shaped by what I talk to my mom about, so I have no idea how to say anything particularly adult or vulgar. I’m pretty good with food and gossiping about other people (two key pillars of conversation at home) but I flounder if you ask me for words related to politics or science, or any swear words at all. There are specific gaps, like how I forget the word for paternal aunt because my dad doesn’t have sisters. Because the language has been largely confined to the realm of talking to family, the decline of my fluency parallels the adolescent and adulthood decline of frequency I see my family. It’s begun to hit me that the select group of people who know me in Shanghainese is dwindling. I can already feel myself losing fluency, fumbling around for words I once knew like misplaced possessions in my own home. I fear one day I won’t have anyone to call for quick translation help.

The ambiguous grief over losing the language of many of my childhood memories is amplified by the recognition that even in Shanghai, the language is losing relevance due to political and social pressures. I used to visit Shanghai in the summers and find myself equipped to chat with older people and taxi drivers. As the years went by, even those interactions petered out as the city continued to modernize and globalize, and the generation that spoke primarily Shanghainese began to die out. I hated that one of my identities was firmly rooted in a dying language.

Despite my intense sense of loneliness, the reality is that Shanghai is a city of nearly 25 million (though obviously not all are locals or speak the language). Plus, there are many in the Chinese diaspora in the same boat as me, even more when you consider the other non-Mandarin languages spoken across China. When I started looking to interview people who were experiencing a similar language identity crisis, I was met with enthusiasm, which was heartening; so many of us had thoughts and were trying to figure out what to do.

Shanghai in 1980.

Szilas

The words “nostalgic” and “homey” recurred across my conversations whenever people were describing their associations with Shanghainese or other Chinese languages, including Cantonese, Teochew, and Hakka. This was true even among those who only had listening comprehension. These were the means of hearing stories from grandparents, accepting more food onto our plates at dinnertime, and being nagged by relatives. More sass and humor was attributed to these languages than Mandarin—though nobody could parse how much of this was due to the strong associations with family.

In contrast, Mandarin was frequently characterized as formal, transactional, and bureaucratic. Running a country of more than one billion people with one language seems pragmatic, but it’s a tough sell to the fraction of those whose language wasn’t chosen. Heather Chuong, Chinese American and currently living in Taipei, whose family speaks Ngai Hakka, tells me, “learning Mandarin is learning the language of the country, but not the language of my ancestors because my grandfather didn't even know Mandarin.” Mandarin has a clear functional place, but its imposition can clash with regional identity. In the United States, where some non-Chinese people are barely aware that different Asian countries exist, being Chinese American without speaking Mandarin can be alienating because it baffles non-Chinese people and differentiates you from much of the diaspora.

Mandarin was always framed to me as the “useful” language to learn. Conversely, Shanghainese’s lack of “usefulness” had led me to feel it was losing value, but Edna Zhou, who lives in Chicago now, grew up with Shanghainese in her household, turned my assumption on its head. She identifies a sense of romanticism in the fact that there’s no strategic gain to its continued existence—that people continue to preserve it out of genuine care. “It doesn’t really serve you in daily life. There's a love for it and it's a beautiful language,” she says. “You have to really love it to be using it.” It’s cherished, a language that feels like a family secret now—one my parents intentionally passed down to me. I wonder how much of the reverence and perception of comfort we now hold is merely a response to the sense of endangerment.

Practicing and improving my Shanghainese has long been on my to-do list. It always seemed a bit impossible—Shanghainese is a language with no writing system, and is used in only a few pieces of popular media. And I’m unlikely to find a significant other who’s fluent.