Shanghainese

The Shanghai language or Shanghainese (上海閒話) is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai and the surrounding region.

Considered part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages and similar to other Wu Chinese dialects, Shanghainese is not easily understandable by Mandarin and Cantonese speakers. 

In the 1890s, due to Shanghai’s blossoming economy, Shanghainese had become an increasingly growing dialect of Wu Chinese. It continued to grow into the 1930s. In 1950, Mandarin became the official language of China.

With approximately 14 million speakers, Shanghainese contains only two tones (high and low) where Mandarin (which is what makes the Mandarin language extremely difficult) contains four different tones. Unlike Shanghainese, both Mandarin and Cantonese are both tonal contour languages where the distinguishing feature of the tones is their shifts in pitch such as rising, falling, dipping, or level. For example, if you say ma with the first tone, it means “mother” but if you say ma with the fourth tone, it means “horse”.

From 1992, Shanghainese use was discouraged in schools and so many children native to Shanghai can no longer speak Shanghainese. Shanghai's emergence as a cosmopolitan city further promoted Mandarin as the official language of business and services.

It is now thought that very few people under 60 years old can speak the original Shanghai dialect and many attempts are being made to preserve the language. Professor Qian Nairong is promoting the Shanghainese language and he has recently reminded people that, "the popularization of Mandarin doesn’t equal the ban of dialects. It doesn’t make Mandarin a more civilized language either. Promoting dialects is not a narrow-minded localism, as it has been labeled by some netizens.”

Here are some Shanghainese phrases (from Omniglot);

English	上海闲话 (Shanghainese)
Welcome	欢迎 (hueugnin)
Hello	侬好 (nong23 hao34) 大家好！(dâka-hô!) - hello everybody 饭吃过伐？ (ve23 qik3 gu5 va1?) - "have you eaten?" (common greeting)
How are you? Reply	侬好伐? (nong23 hao34 va?) 侬过得还好伐？ (non kûteq re-hôva?)
	我蛮好，谢谢 (ngû mhehô, jâja) 蛮好。侬呢？ (me51 hao34. nong2 nak4?)
Long time no see	长远勿看见侬 (ssang2 yyu4 vak2 koe5 ji3 nong1)
What's your name? My name is ...	请问尊姓大名？ (chînmen tzenxin-dâmin) 请问侬信啥？ (chînmen nong2 xin sa?)
	我信 ... (ngû xin ...) 我叫 ... (ngû ciô ..

The United States Foreign Service Institute and its language categorization

According to its official Facebook page, the U.S. Department of State: Foreign Service Institute “develops the men and women our nation requires to fulfill our leadership role in the world affairs and to defend U.S. interests.”

The FSI was founded on March 13, 1947, in compliance with the Foreign Service Act of 1946 passed by Congress. The Director of the Foreign Service Institute is equivalent in rank to an Assistant Secretary of State, and is appointed by the current Secretary of State.

United States Federal Government's primary training institution for officers and support personnel of the U.S. foreign affairs community, the FSI prepares American diplomats and other professionals to advance U.S. foreign affairs interests overseas and in Washington.

At the George P. Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center, the FSI provides more than 600 courses in approximately 70 foreign languages to more than 100,000 enrollees a year from the State Department and more than 40 other government agencies and the military service branches.

Organized like a university, it consists of five schools: The School of Language Studies, the School of Applied Information Technology, The School of Leadership and Management, The School of Professional and Area Studies and The Transition Center. 

The FSI has sorted non-English languages into three categories based on the average time it takes an English speaker to achieve general proficiency/fluency in the language.

Category I languages : These languages are the most similar to English and the least difficult to learn, requiring anywhere from 23-24 weeks to learn (Spanish) to 30-36 weeks to learn (German).

Examples are:

French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Danish, Catalan, Dutch, Norwegian, German

Category II languages: These languages contain significant linguistic or culture differences from English requiring 44 or more weeks to learn.

Examples are:

Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Polish, Russian, Finnish (which is one of the more difficult Category II languages)

Category III languages: These languages are considered the most difficult languages to learn, requiring about 88 weeks of study with about half of that time studying in-country.

These languages are:
Arabic, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Taiwanese and Wu.

Chicken Feet, Bubble Tea and Durian: Adventures in Chinatown

A couple of weekends ago, I accompanied my Mandarin teacher and several of her students from other classes to Chinatown in Boston. Having lived in and around Boston for 28 years, I had been to Chinatown every so often but never really spent too much time there.

We arrived at the China Pearl (one of the larger restaurants that has been in business since 1960) for Dim Sum at 11AM. Dim Sum literally means “a bit of the heart”. I had normally thought of Dim Sum as a selection of fried Chinese appetizers. We did not order one fried item although many were passed around. There were steamed dumplings filled with shrimp and bamboo called har gau, many types of baozi (steamed buns-one of the first words we learned in Mandarin was “baozi”) and jiaozi (steamed dumplings of many varieties) and chrysanthemum tea (júhuā chá) was served.  Then, the chicken feet (ji jiao) arrived.

Have fully intended to immerse myself in the Chinese experience all day (most of the shopkeepers speak very little/broken English to add to the authentic experience); I decided to try the chicken feet. They are also eaten in Peru, Mexico and South Africa, to name just a few. Surprisingly, they were quite flavorful but a bit gelatinous. The biggest surprise of the day was to see that the Chinese use jalapeno peppers (Mòxīgē làjiāo) and cilantro in their cooking. That was a very pleasant surprise as those are my two favorites!

The Chinese bakeries reminded me of bakeries found during one of my several trips to Japan, where you commonly see corn, cake and other oddities (for Americans) baked into the bread.

Then it was on to try bubble tea. I had no idea what this was but knew it was very popular in Taiwan. The bubbles are actually small balls of tapioca placed at the bottom of fruit or milk-based tea drink. You are given a large straw and with every sip of your cold tea, two-three of these “bubbles” end up in your mouth. Soft and chewy and not all that pleasant. I tried a pineapple green bubble tea but I saw a sign for durian bubble tea and almost, ALMOST tried it. Durian is a large, spiny, very foul-smelling fruit that is an acquired taste. I will try durian one day but that day was not the day.

Next it was on to a very large, all-Asian supermarket in Quincy (a small city south of Boston). This place is amazing. Rows and rows of Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Taiwanese foods, clothes, house wares, school supplies, etc. Heavenly! There was also a large Asian bakery section selling a variety of desserts and steamed buns and a mini-Chinese takeout section selling authentic Chinese cuisine. Buddhas and Kuan Yins were beckoning to me everywhere! I ended up leaving with very cool bracelet with the prayers for the Buddha written in Cantonese on it and a Kuan Yin hanging protector for my car.

Back to Chinatown after that for an authentic Chinese dinner at Jade Garden. Yes, this was the eating tour of Chinatown! We were served platters of stuffed lobster, beef and vegetables and my personal, favorite, salt and pepper squid. Imagine a lightly breaded calamari (rings and tentacles) lightly sprinkled with salt and pepper with a layer of jalapeno peppers.I will go back just to have this dish again.

All the sights, sounds, smells felt like I was in Beijing for the day. While we didn’t do much conversing in Mandarin (although a lot of Cantonese was spoken by those around us), we did a lot of socializing, learning, talking about why we are studying Mandarin and laughing. I realized that language learning isn't just about learning the words, tones and sounds; it's about learning and absorbing the culture, the food and the customs.

A truly enjoyable experience!

Japan, China, Taiwan and the battle for the Senkaku islands

Earlier this week, I had read that 14 Chinese activists were arrested for placing a Chinese flag on the Senkaku islands. Not fully understanding what this debate was all about, I decided to do some research.

Known as Senkaku in Japanese, Diaoyu in Mandarin and Diaoyutai in Cantonese, there is an archipelago of eight islands being claimed by China, Japan and Taiwan. This archipelago is currently uninhabited and controlled by Japan and is located in the East China Sea (northeast of Taiwan and west of Okinawa). These islands are commonly thought to sit atop oil deposits, and are surrounded by rich fishing grounds. 

The Chinese claim that these islands were discovered during the Ming Dynasty; the Japanese claim that they discovered them in the late 1800s. Japan annexed the islands then in 1895 after winning the First Sino-Japanese War. China feels it was forced to sign the post-war treaty which handed the islands over to the Japanese.

In 1900, a brief attempt to make the island functionable by housing a bonito plant quickly failed; the islands remain vacant.

After World War II, the Senkaku islands were temporarily controlled by the United States. However, China does not recognize this Treaty of San Francisco.

In 1972, the Japanese regained control of the archipelago.

Earlier this year, Tokyo’s governor, Shintaro Ishihara raised three million with the help of private investors to purchase three of the islands. This has reignited the dispute.

Time magazine recently published a report which concluded that Japan needs to “resolve the ownership dispute over a tiny group of islands or risk an honest-to-goodness shooting war with China”. A former prime minister of Japan also said that “Where China sees an unrepentant Japan clinging to a legacy of colonial expansion, Japan sees an arrogant and erratic China once again bullying its smaller neighbors”.

The idea of war between China and Japan in this day and age seems unthinkable but the bigger question is, if it happens, will America get involved?

The Navajo Code Talkers of World War II

Although it is a largely unknown story, August 14, 2012 is the day set aside to remember and give thanks to the Navajo Code Talkers of the second World War.

These young Navajo men changed the course of history by transmitting secret communications on the WWII battlefield, at a time when America’s best cryptographers were falling short. They came up with the most ingenious and successful code in military history.

At the beginning of WWII, Japanese intelligence was able to decipher every code that the US devised. With plenty of fluent English speakers among their ranks, the Japanese broke code at an alarming rate. They were also able to send false commands and sabotage messages. Due to this, increasingly difficult codes were produced which led to complaints that the codes were taking hours to encrypt. The military had to come up with a better way to communicate.

When a missionary’s son who grew up on a Navajo reservation named Phillip Johnson heard of the crisis, he remembered that the Navajo language had no alphabet and was impossible to decipher without early exposure. He led the first test group to try out this language for use as military code.

In 1942, 29 Navajo men of all ages were recruited for this mission. The code originated with 200 terms but grew to 600 by the end of the war. The Navajo men could communicate in 20 seconds what often had taken the coding machines 30 minutes. The code consisted of Najavo terms that were associated with the respective military terms they resembled. The Navajo word for turtle meant "tank," and a dive-bomber was a "chicken hawk."

In the first 48 hours alone in the battle for Iwo Jima, the Navajos coded over 800 transmissions with perfect accuracy.

Although their undecipherable code played a pivotal role in saving lives and helping to end WWII, the Navajo Code Talkers did not receive proper recognition when they returned home. Their secret was thought of as too precious to divulge. The code was declassified in 1968 but it still took many years to be officially recognized.

In 2001, almost 60 years after they created their remarkable code, the Navajo Code Talkers finally received their Congressional Medals of Honor.

Balinese, Bahasa and some other languages of Indonesia

Indonesia is made up of over 17,500 islands (6,000 of which are inhabited) which are home to over 300 ethnic groups. The Indonesian people are a mixture of Chinese, European, Indian, and Malay. 

There are at least 365 active languages spoken in Indonesia but the official language is Bahasa Indonesia. It is a relatively easy language to pronounce and understand and without verb conjugations or structures. Indonesian is a standardized dialect of the Malay language and became the official language during the start of the Indonesian independence in 1945. Malay and Indonesian remain very similar.

It may be the official language, but due to the size and island make-up of the country, most people speak regional dialects such as Minangkabau or Javanese. These languages are used informally at home and in the neighborhood but usually at work or at school, Indonesian is spoken. Interesting fact: Bahasa Indonesian actually has 12 ways of saying "No" and several other ways of saying "Yes" when the actual meaning is "No".

Most of the words in the Indonesian language originate from the Austronesian languages. Approximately 80% of the words come from Malay. There is also influence from Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, Portuguese, Sanskrit and Tamil.

Balinese (simply known as “Bali”) is spoken by approximately 3.3 million people on the Indonesian island of Bali (the lesser Sunda island chain in the southern part of the archipelago of Indonesia) and is the colloquial language of the island. It is a Malayo-Polynesian language also spoken in eastern Java, western Lombok and northern Nusa Penida. Most Balinese speakers can also speak Bahasa Indonesia.

Unlike the relatively straightforward Indonesian language, Balinese is made up of lots of unusual sounds that can be difficult for foreigners to pronounce. Balinese also does without the verb conjugations and tenses but it does contain a sort of lingual caste system where your choice of speech is based on with whom you are speaking.

Some examples of other regional dialects or languages spoken in the archipelago of Indonesia are as follows:

* Rejang (South Sumatra)

* Dairi Batak (North Sumatra)

* Toraja (South Sulawesi)

* Lampung (South Sumatra)

* Makassarese (South Sulawesi)

* Toba Batak (North Sumatra)

* Sasak (Lombok)

* Banjarese (South Kalimantan)

* Acehnese (North Sumatra)

* Buginese (South Sulawesi)

* Minangkabau (Central Sumatra)

* Mature (Madura and Java)

* Sundanese (Java)

* Javanese (Java)

For the brave, here are some basic greetings in the Indonesian language.

Indonesian

Apa kabar? -how are you?

Selamat pagi-Good morning

Selamat sore-Good afternoon

Selamat malam-Good evening

About Bahasa Iban

Iban is a tribal language of western Borneo, spoken in Malaysia's state of Sarawak, the Indonesian state of West Kalimantan, and Brunei.

A branch of the Dayak ethnic group formerly known as "Sea Dayak" who live in Sarawak, the Indonesian province of Kalimantan Barat and in Brunei, Iban (also known as "Bahasa Iban") belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family.

It is closely related to Malay. Iban is also known as a the "headhunters language" in some, unflattering, circles. The language is mostly taught to students in rural areas with a large Iban population, such as Baleh (Kapit), Betong, Saratok, Lubok Antu and Pelagus (Kapit).

According to my research, during the colonial regime (1946-1963), the Iban language was recognized/used during the Council Negeri meetings.The Borneo Literature Bureau was set up to help popularize the language through its Iban magazine called Nendak and through the printing of Iban books. When Sarawak obtained independence through the formation of Malaysia, the Borneo Literature Bureau (BLB) was abolished and in its place, in 1978, the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) took over. The abolishment of BLB saw several hundreds of Iban books and magazines destroyed.

The Iban committee tirelessly worked to get this language back in schools, although it is still difficult to find publications in the Iban language. However, just this month, an Iban dictionary was to be published containing "17,000 core words and over 60,000 imitatives from the different regions of Sarawak". "There are English-Iban, Iban-Bahasa Malaysia and Iban-English dictionaries, but as far as we know, it is the first of its kind. It is possibly the first in the country, if not the world", according to Dr Robert Menua Saleh (the research director at The Tun Jugah Foundation).

Some sample Iban phrases, courtesy of Omniglot, are as follows:

Welcome Selamat datai
Good morning Selamat pagi
Good afternoon Selamat tengah hari
Good night Selamat lamai
Long time no see Udah lama enda betemu