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149-591: The Shanghainese language , also known as the Shanghai dialect , or Hu language , is a variety of Wu Chinese spoken in the central districts of the city of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. It is classified as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family . Shanghainese, like the rest of the Wu language group, is mutually unintelligible with other varieties of Chinese , such as Mandarin . Shanghainese belongs to

298-445: A glottal stop . Wu varieties also have noticably unique morphological and syntactic innovations, as well as lexicon exclusively found in the Wu grouping. It is also of note that the influential linguist Chao Yuen Ren was a native speaker of Changzhounese , a variety of Northern Wu. The Wu varieties, especially that of Suzhou, are traditionally perceived as soft in the ears of speakers of both Wu and non-Wu languages, leading to

447-853: A Wu language, Shanghainese has a large array of vowel sounds. The following is a list of all possible finals in Middle Period Shanghainese, as well as the Wugniu romanisation and example characters. The transcriptions used above are broad and the following points are of note when pertaining to actual pronunciation: The Middle Chinese nasal rimes are all merged in Shanghainese. Middle Chinese /-p -t -k/ rimes have become glottal stops, /-ʔ/ . Shanghainese has five phonetically distinguishable tones for single syllables said in isolation. These tones are illustrated below in tone numbers . In terms of Middle Chinese tone designations ,

596-570: A basic knowledge of English (the dominant language in film and TV) and thus prefer to hear the original dialogue. Nevertheless, in Spain, for example, only public TV channels show subtitled foreign films, usually at late night. It is extremely rare that any Spanish TV channel shows subtitled versions of TV programs, series or documentaries. With the advent of digital land broadcast TV, it has become common practice in Spain to provide optional audio and subtitle streams that allow watching dubbed programs with

745-436: A branch known as Suhujia ( 蘇滬嘉小片 ), due to them sharing many phonological, lexical, and grammatical similarities. Newer varieties of Shanghainese, however, have been influenced by standard Chinese as well as Cantonese and other varieties, making the Shanghainese idiolects spoken by young people in the city different from that spoken by the older population. Also, the practice of inserting Mandarin into Shanghainese conversations

894-569: A captioner to caption them using offline methods. Because different programs are produced under different conditions, a case-by-case basis must consequently determine captioning methodology. Some bulletins may have a high incidence of truly live material, or insufficient access to video feeds and scripts may be provided to the captioning facility, making stenography unavoidable. Other bulletins may be pre-recorded just before going to air, making pre-prepared text preferable. News captioning applications currently available are designed to accept text from

1043-463: A closed caption stream that only displays through standard-definition connections. Many HDTVs allow the end-user to customize the captions, including the ability to remove the black band. Song lyrics are not always captioned, as additional copyright permissions may be required to reproduce the lyrics on-screen as part of the subtitle track. In October 2015, major studios and Netflix were sued over this practice, citing claims of false advertising (as

1192-564: A collection of folk songs gathered during the Ming dynasty by Feng Menglong in southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang, where Northern Wu is today spoken, shows clear signs of modern Wu Chinese in its lexicon. Other Ming documents that are either written in Wu or contain parts where Wu is used include: These works contain a small handful of unique grammatical features, some of which are not found in contemporary Mandarin, Classical Chinese , or in contemporary Wu varieties. They do contain many of

1341-451: A common language have been attempted many times. Therefore, the language issue has always been an important part of Beijing's rule. Other than the government language-management efforts, the rate of rural-to-urban migration in China has also accelerated the shift to Standard Chinese and the disappearance of native languages and dialects in the urban areas. As more people moved into Shanghai,

1490-408: A continuous flow of text as people speak. Stenography is a system of rendering words phonetically, and English, with its multitude of homophones (e.g., there, their, they're), is particularly unsuited to easy transcriptions. Stenographers working in courts and inquiries usually have 24 hours in which to deliver their transcripts. Consequently, they may enter the same phonetic stenographic codes for

1639-485: A depressor that lowers the pitch of the entire syllable's realization. Creaky voice, on the other hand, is found in Taizhounese , and is associated with the rising tone category ( 上聲 ). Xuanzhou Wu is phonologically very unique and has a host of complex syllables, such as: Subtitle (captioning)#East Asia Creating, delivering, and displaying subtitles is a complicated and multi-step endeavor. First,

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1788-776: A direct result of the geography. Coastal varieties also share more featural affinities, likely because the East China Sea provides a means of transportation. The same phenomenon can be seen with Min varieties . It has also been noted that Huizhou Chinese and the Tongtai branch of Huai Chinese share significant similarities with Wu Chinese. Wu is divided into two major groups: Northern Wu ( Chinese : 北部吳語 ; pinyin : Běibù Wúyǔ ) and Southern Wu ( Chinese : 南部吳語 ; pinyin : Nánbù Wúyǔ ), which are not mutually intelligible. Individual words spoken in isolation may be comprehensible among these speakers, but

1937-405: A film or television program, the picture and each sentence of the audio are analyzed by the subtitle translator; also, the subtitle translator may or may not have access to a written transcript of the dialogue. Especially in the field of commercial subtitles, the subtitle translator often interprets what is meant, rather than translating the manner in which the dialogue is stated; that is, the meaning

2086-430: A five-step design and editing process, and does much more than simply display the text of a program. Offline captioning helps the viewer follow a story line, become aware of mood and feeling, and allows them to fully enjoy the entire viewing experience. Offline captioning is the preferred presentation style for entertainment-type programming. Subtitles for the deaf or hard-of-hearing (SDH) is an American term introduced by

2235-407: A foreign language into the native language of the audience. It is not only the quickest and cheapest method of translating content, but is also usually preferred as it is possible for the audience to hear the original dialogue and voices of the actors. Subtitle translation may be different from the translation of written text or written language. Usually, during the process of creating subtitles for

2384-408: A language family and are mutually intelligible with each other, while those of Southern Wu neither form a phylogenetic language family, nor are mutually intelligible with each other. Historical linguists view Wu of great significance due to its obviously distinct nature. The Wu languages typically preserve all voiced initials of medieval Chinese , as well as the checked tone in the form of

2533-473: A language that was not only phonologically and lexically different to the Wu Chinese of the time, but was syntactically and morphologically distinct as well. This Old Mandarin influence manifested in the form of the modern literary layer , as it was also the court language of the time. Coblin believes that this literary layer is also the origin of Huai Chinese . Unlike the previous periods,

2682-611: A native Shanghainese himself, reportedly supported her proposal. Shanghainese has been reintegrated into pre-kindergarten education, with education of native folk songs and rhymes, as well as a Shanghainese-only day on Fridays in the Modern Baby Kindergarten . Professor Qian Nairong , linguist and head of the Chinese Department at Shanghai University , is working on efforts to save the language. In response to criticism, Qian reminds people that Shanghainese

2831-553: A note on the screen, even after the character has finished speaking, to both preserve form and facilitate understanding. For example, Japanese has multiple first-person pronouns (see Japanese pronouns ) and each pronoun is associated with a different degree of politeness. In order to compensate during the English translation process, the subtitle translator may reformulate the sentence, add appropriate words or use notes. Real-time translation subtitling usually involves an interpreter and

2980-539: A null tone ( Chinese : 輕聲 ) or be part of another chain. 我 ngu /ŋu˩˩˧ 1SG 紅 顏 色 ghon- nge- seq- ɦoŋ˩˩˧꜖ ŋe˩˩˦꜓ səʔ˦꜕ red Wu Chinese Wu ( simplified Chinese : 吴语 ; traditional Chinese : 吳語 ; pinyin : Wúyǔ ; Wugniu and IPA : wu-gniu 6 [ɦu˩.nʲy˦] ( Shanghainese ), ghou-gniu 6 [ɦou˨.nʲy˧] ( Suzhounese )) is a major group of Sinitic languages spoken primarily in Shanghai , Zhejiang province , and parts of Jiangsu province , especially south of

3129-454: A potential proto-system for Wu using the several varieties included in these boundaries. A similar attempt was attempted by William L. Ballard, though with significantly fewer localities and a heavy skew towards the North . The sole basis of Li Rong 's classification was the evolution of Qieyun system voiced stops . This was also Chao's only "necessary and sufficient" requirement for

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3278-591: A result of regulations that stipulate that virtually all TV eventually must be accessible for people who are deaf and hard-of-hearing. In practice, however, these "real time" subtitles will typically lag the audio by several seconds due to the inherent delay in transcribing, encoding, and transmitting the subtitles. Real time subtitles are also challenged by typographic errors or mishearing of the spoken words, with no time available to correct before transmission. Some programs may be prepared in their entirety several hours before broadcast, but with insufficient time to prepare

3427-458: A separate group of the Taihu Wu subgroup. With nearly 14 million speakers, Shanghainese is also the largest single form of Wu Chinese. Since the late 19th century it has served as the lingua franca of the entire Yangtze River Delta region, but in recent decades its status has declined relative to Mandarin, which most Shanghainese speakers can also speak. Like other Wu varieties, Shanghainese

3576-479: A short subtitled presentation projected onscreen, while completing a response worksheet. To be really effective, the subtitling should have high quality synchronization of audio and text, and better yet, subtitling should change color in syllabic synchronization to audio model, and the text should be at a level to challenge students' language abilities. Studies (including those by the University of Nottingham and

3725-665: A singular nasal and a glottal stop . Some varieties however, may deviate from this and have features such as the addition of -/k/ , or the omission of the glottal stop. Wu varieties typically preserve Qieyun system voiced initials ( /b/ , /d/ , /ɡ/ , /z/ , /v/ , etc.) though some varieties have lost this feature. Implosives are also occasionally found in Wu varieties, primarily in suburban Shanghainese varieties , as well as in Yongkangese  [ zh ] . Wu languages have typologically high numbers of vowels and are on par with Germanic languages in having

3874-530: A stenographer working concurrently, whereby the former quickly translates the dialogue while the latter types; this form of subtitling is rare. The unavoidable delay, typing errors, lack of editing, and high cost mean that real-time translation subtitling is in low demand. Allowing the interpreter to directly speak to the viewers is usually both cheaper and quicker; however, the translation is not accessible to people who are deaf and hard-of-hearing. Some subtitlers purposely provide edited subtitles or captions to match

4023-486: A timecoded caption file for automatic play-out. Pre-prepared captions look similar to offline captions, although the accuracy of cueing may be compromised slightly as the captions are not locked to program timecode. Newsroom captioning involves the automatic transfer of text from the newsroom computer system to a device which outputs it as captions. It does work, but its suitability as an exclusive system would only apply to programs which had been scripted in their entirety on

4172-497: A top-level financial center among the world, the promotion of the official language, Standard Mandarin, became very important. Therefore, the Shanghai Municipal Government banned the use of Shanghainese in public places, schools, and work. Around half of the city's population is unaware of these policies. A survey of students from the primary school in 2010 indicated that 52.3% of students believed Mandarin

4321-476: A transcription rather than a translation, and usually also contain lyrics and descriptions of important non-dialogue audio such as (SIGHS) , (WIND HOWLING) , ("SONG TITLE" PLAYING) , (KISSES) , (THUNDER RUMBLING) and (DOOR CREAKING) . From the expression "closed captions", the word "caption" has in recent years come to mean a subtitle intended for the deaf or hard-of-hearing, be it "open" or "closed". In British English, "subtitles" usually refers to subtitles for

4470-418: A two-way phonemic tone contrast, falling vs rising, and then only in open syllables with voiceless initials. Therefore, many romanisations of Shanghainese opt to only mark the dark level tone, usually with a diacritic such as an acute accent or grave accent . Tone sandhi is a process whereby adjacent tones undergo dramatic alteration in connected speech. Similar to other Northern Wu dialects, Shanghainese

4619-415: A usually translucent band for easier reading; however, this is rare, since most subtitles use an outline and shadow instead, in order to block a smaller portion of the picture. Closed captions may still supersede DVD subtitles, since many SDH subtitles present all of the text centered (an example of this is DVDs and Blu-ray Discs manufactured by Warner Bros. ), while closed captions usually specify position on

Shanghainese - Misplaced Pages Continue

4768-487: A variety of homophones, and fix up the spelling later. Real-time stenographers must deliver their transcriptions accurately and immediately. They must therefore develop techniques for keying homophones differently, and be unswayed by the pressures of delivering accurate product on immediate demand. Submissions to recent captioning-related inquiries have revealed concerns from broadcasters about captioning sports. Captioning sports may also affect many different people because of

4917-526: A variety of inputs: stenography, Velotype, QWERTY, ASCII import, and the newsroom computer. This allows one facility to handle a variety of online captioning requirements and to ensure that captioners properly caption all programs. Current affairs programs usually require stenographic assistance. Even though the segments which comprise a current affairs program may be produced in advance, they are usually done so just before on-air time and their duration makes QWERTY input of text unfeasible. News bulletins, on

5066-497: A variety to be Wu. This definition is problematic considering the devoicing process has occurred in many Southern Wu varieties and in Northern Wu varieties situated near Huai Chinese . It furthermore would place unrelated varieties such as Old Xiang in this category, and also includes Hangzhounese despite its linguistically complex situation. Therefore, more elaborate systems have developed, but they still mostly delineate

5215-664: A video file with programs such as VirtualDub in combination with VSFilter which could also be used to show subtitles as softsubs in many software video players . For multimedia-style Webcasting , check: Some programs and online software allow automatic captions, mainly using speech-to-text features. For example, on YouTube , automatic captions are available in Arabic , Dutch , English , French , German , Hebrew , Hindi , Indonesian , Italian , Japanese , Korean , Portuguese , Russian , Spanish , Turkish , Ukrainian , and Vietnamese . If automatic captions are available for

5364-534: A whole include: It is believed that Han Chinese peoples first arrived at the area during pre-dynastic history . After the migrations proceeding the Upheaval of the Five Barbarians , the vernacular that would later lead to modern Wu Chinese started taking shape, though the court language of Jiankang (today Nanjing ) was still noticably different to that of the commonfolk. A second migration wave during

5513-430: Is a work for electronic media (e.g., TV, video, DVD) or on film length (measured in feet and frames) if the subtitles are to be used for traditional cinema film. The finished subtitle file is used to add the subtitles to the picture, either: Subtitles can also be created by individuals using freely available subtitle-creation software like Subtitle Workshop, MovieCaptioner or Subtitle Composer, and then hardcode them onto

5662-468: Is above rather than below the main display area, the subtitles are called surtitles . Sometimes, mainly at film festivals , subtitles may be shown on a separate display below the screen, thus saving the filmmaker from creating a subtitled copy for just one showing. Professional subtitlers usually work with specialized computer software and hardware where the video is digitally stored on a hard disk, making each frame instantly accessible. Besides creating

5811-454: Is accepted that these readings would have been loaned from the language variety of medieval Jiankang. One prominent historical speaker of the medieval Wu language was Emperor Yangdi of the Sui dynasty and his Empress Xiao . Emperor Xuan of Western Liang , a member of Emperor Wu of Liang 's court, was Empress Xiao's grandfather and he most likely learned Wu at Jiankang . It is also noted in

5960-416: Is also available, but programs seldom use it. The two alternative methods of 'translating' films in a foreign language are dubbing , in which other actors record over the voices of the original actors in a different language, and lectoring , a form of voice-over for fictional material where a narrator tells the audience what the actors are saying while their voices can be heard in the background. Lectoring

6109-406: Is characterized by two forms of tone sandhi: a word tone sandhi and a phrasal tone sandhi. Word tone sandhi in Shanghainese can be described as left-prominent and is characterized by a dominance of the first syllable over the contour of the entire tone domain. As a result, the underlying tones of syllables other than the leftmost syllable, have no effect on the tone contour of the domain. The pattern

Shanghainese - Misplaced Pages Continue

6258-706: Is common for television in Russia, Poland, and a few other East European countries, while cinemas in these countries commonly show films dubbed or subtitled. The preference for dubbing or subtitling in various countries is largely based on decisions made in the late 1920s and early 1930s. With the arrival of sound film, the film importers in Germany , Italy , France , Switzerland , Luxembourg , Austria , San Marino , Liechtenstein , Monaco , Slovakia , Hungary , Belarus , Andorra , Spain , Canada , New Zealand , Ireland , United States and United Kingdom decided to dub

6407-558: Is common in all taped television programs and films. In these countries, written text remains mostly uniform while regional dialects in the spoken form can be mutually unintelligible. Therefore, subtitling offers a distinct advantage to aid comprehension. With subtitles, programs in Mandarin or any dialect can be understood by viewers unfamiliar with it. According to HK Magazine , the practice to caption in Standard Chinese

6556-466: Is considered a part of the genre, and has evolved beyond simply capturing what is being said. The captions are used artistically; it is common to see the words appear one by one as they are spoken, in a multitude of fonts, colors, and sizes that capture the spirit of what is being said. Languages like Japanese also have a rich vocabulary of onomatopoeia which is used in captioning. In some East Asian countries, especially Chinese-speaking ones , subtitling

6705-446: Is decoded by the end-user's closed caption decoder. Most anime releases in the U.S. only include translations of the original material as subtitles; therefore, SDH subtitles of English dubs ("dubtitles") are uncommon. High-definition disc media ( HD DVD , Blu-ray Disc ) uses SDH subtitles as the sole method because technical specifications do not require HD to support line 21 closed captions. Some Blu-ray Discs, however, are said to carry

6854-404: Is easier than Shanghainese for communication, and 47.6% of the students choose to speak Mandarin because it is a mandatory language at school. Furthermore, 68.3% of the students are more willing to study Mandarin, but only 10.2% of the students are more willing to study Shanghainese. A survey in 2021 has shown that 15.22% of respondents under 18 would never use Shanghainese. The study also found that

7003-430: Is generally described as tone spreading (1, 5, 6, 7) or tone shifting (8, except for 4-syllable compounds, which can undergo spreading or shifting). The table below illustrates possible tone combinations. As an example, in isolation, the two syllables of the word 中國 ( China ) are pronounced with a dark level tone ( tsón ) and dark checked tone ( koq ): /tsoŋ⁵³/ and /koʔ⁵⁵/ . However, when pronounced in combination,

7152-414: Is more important than form. Especially in fansubs , the subtitle translator may translate both form and meaning. The subtitle translator may also choose to display a note in the subtitles, usually in parentheses (" ( " and " ) "), or as a separate block of on-screen text—this allows the subtitle translator to preserve form and achieve an acceptable reading speed; that is, the subtitle translator may leave

7301-405: Is more important than the form—the audience does not always appreciate this, as it can be frustrating for people who are familiar with some of the spoken language; spoken language may contain verbal padding or culturally implied meanings that cannot be conveyed in the written subtitles. Also, the subtitle translator may also condense the dialogue to achieve an acceptable reading speed, whereby purpose

7450-475: Is not uncommon to encounter children who grew up with a regional variant of Mandarin as their parent tongue with little or no fluency in a Wu variety at all. This led to a step up in the preservation and documentation of Wu Chinese, with the first major attempt being the Linguistic Atlas of Chinese Dialects , which surveyed 2,791 locations across the nation, including 121 Wu locations (an increase from

7599-469: Is poorly enunciated, delivered quietly, in unfamiliar dialects, or spoken by background characters. A 2021 UK survey found that 80% of viewers between 18 and 25 regularly used subtitles, while less than a quarter of those between 56 and 75 did. Same language subtitling (SLS) is the use of synchronized captioning of musical lyrics (or any text with an audio or video source) as a repeated reading activity. The basic reading activity involves students viewing

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7748-557: Is rich in vowels and consonants , with around twenty unique vowel qualities, twelve of which are phonemic . Similarly, Shanghainese also has voiced obstruent initials , which is rare outside of Wu and Xiang varieties. Shanghainese also has a low number of tones compared to other languages in Southern China and has a system of tone sandhi similar to Japanese pitch accent . The speech of Shanghai had long been influenced by those spoken around Jiaxing , then Suzhou during

7897-452: Is seen in the Book of Wei , which unflatteringly compares the speech of Jiangdong to the calls of wild animals. The court language of Jiankang at this time would not have been the same as the civilian Wu language, though it would have been closely related. This would also mark the time where Japanese Go-on ( 呉音 ; Hepburn : go-on ; pinyin : Wúyīn ) readings were loaned, and it

8046-421: Is today, and its southern limits may have reached as far as Fujian , as Proto-Min may have been a daughter language to Ancient Wu, though this is not fully accepted. As early as the time of Guo Pu (275–324), speakers easily perceived differences between dialects in different parts of China, including the area where Ancient Wu was spoken. The language slowly receded from the north due to growing pressure from

8195-522: Is used. For example, 炒 ( tshau , /tsʰɔ³³⁴/ , "to fry") and 麪 ( mi , /mi¹¹³/ , "noodle") when pronounced /tsʰɔ³³ mi⁴⁴/ (i.e., with left-prominent sandhi) means "fried noodles". When pronounced /tsʰɔ⁴⁴ mi¹¹³/ (i.e., with right-prominent sandhi), it means "to fry noodles". Nouns and adjectives attached to nouns tend to start right-prominent sandhi chains, whereas left-prominent chains are triggered by verbs and adverbs. Grammatical particles cannot start chains of their own, but instead can be realised as

8344-723: Is very common, at least for young people. Like most subdivisions of Chinese, it is easier for a local speaker to understand Mandarin than it is for a Mandarin speaker to understand the local language. It is also of note that Shanghainese, like other Northern Wu languages, is not mutually intelligible with Southern Wu languages like Taizhounese and Wenzhounese . Shanghainese as a branch of Northern Wu can be further subdivided. The details are as follows: The following are often collectively known as Bendihua ( 本地話 , Shanghainese: 本地閒話 , Wugniu: pen-di ghe-gho ) Following conventions of Chinese syllable structure, Shanghainese syllables can be divided into initials and finals. The initial occupies

8493-498: The yin–yang (light-dark) split still exist in Shanghainese, as they do in most other Wu lects: light tones are only found with voiced initials, namely [b d ɡ z v dʑ ʑ m n ɲ ŋ l ɦ] , while the dark tones are only found with voiceless initials. The checked tones are shorter, and describe those rimes which end in a glottal stop /ʔ/ . That is, both the yin–yang distinction and the checked tones are allophonic (dependent on syllabic structure). With this analysis, Shanghainese has only

8642-646: The Central Plains , until its northern limit was set near the Yangtze River towards the end of the Western Jin dynasty . Note, however, that due to the fact that all modern Wu varieties work within the Qieyun system , this Old Chinese dialect cannot be the primary origin of Wu Chinese today. It is known that Wu languages inherited a significant number of loanwords of Kra-Dai origin. A study of

8791-594: The Eastern Wu dynasty , commentators criticized the speech of the Southern aristocracy (ie. that of the Wu-speaking areas), noting that it is neither Wu-sounding nor Northern. However, evidence suggests that the primary language among the populace was, in fact, Sinitic, although not one that was perceived as "civilized". This possible civilian language would be a common Jiangdong Sinitic language ( 古江東方言 ), as

8940-603: The Jianghuai area due to events such as the Red Turban Rebellions . The Hongwu Emperor ordered for people from Jiangnan , primarily in Suzhou , Songjiang , Jiaxing , Hangzhou , and other Northern Wu -speaking areas, to resettle the now depopulated areas in modern central Jiangsu . More migration happened several decades later to avoid wokou pirates. These migrations are believed to have contributed to

9089-623: The Qing dynasty . Suzhounese literature, Chuanqi , Tanci , and folk songs all influenced early Shanghainese. During the 1850s, the port of Shanghai was opened, and a large number of migrants entered the city. This led to many loanwords from both the West and the East, especially from Ningbonese , and like Cantonese in Hong Kong, English . In fact, "speakers of other Wu dialects traditionally treat

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9238-577: The Southern Song dynasty , this time to Lin'an (Hangzhou), led to the formation of the modern literary layer , and during the Yuan and Ming dynasties , many operatic traditions and vernacular texts began to appear. Later, during the Qing dynasty , missionaries began translating the Bible into various local varieties, recording the exact pronunciations of many varieties for the first time. This

9387-505: The Wenqiji ( 问奇集 ; 問奇集 ; Wènqíjí ) includes a chapter called Gedi Xiangyin ( 各地鄉音 ) that records the local pronunciations of terms in various areas. Unlike the Qieyun preface, it separates the early Southwestern Mandarin of Huguang , ie. that of Chu, from Wu Chinese. The chapter records typical features of modern Wu, such as: Texts in the early Qing dynasty remained much

9536-751: The Wu Hu uprising and the Disaster of Yongjia during the Western Jin dynasty , collectively known as the Upheaval of the Five Barbarians , the imperial court from the Heluo region , along with a large migration wave from the North that lasted 150 years, primarily northern Jiangsu and much of Shandong , entered the Jiangnan region , establishing a new capital at Jiankang , modern-day Nanjing . Migrants went as far south as central Zhejiang , though many settled in

9685-502: The Yangtze River , which makes up the cultural region of Wu . The Wu languages are at times simply called Shanghainese , especially when introduced to foreigners. The Suzhounese variety was the prestige dialect of Wu as of the 19th century, but had been replaced in status by Shanghainese by the turn of the 20th century , coinciding with a period of rapid language change in the city. The languages of Northern Wu constitute

9834-513: The northern Wu-speaking areas occurred, which some believe created the north-south geographical divide we see today. Yongjianese  [ zh ] , a variety of Oujiang Wu , was first recorded during the Song dynasty . Yongjianese is the variety in which the Liushugu  [ zh ] ( 六書故 ) by Dai Tong  [ zh ] ( 戴侗 , 1200-1285) is written. This treaty of calligraphy

9983-449: The 1990s, it was still common for local radio and television broadcasts to be in Shanghainese. For example, in 1995, the TV series Sinful Debt featured extensive Shanghainese dialogue; when it was broadcast outside Shanghai (mainly in adjacent Wu-speaking areas) Mandarin subtitles were added. The Shanghainese TV series Lao Niang Jiu ( 老娘舅 , "Old Uncle") was broadcast from 1995 to 2007 and

10132-526: The 2010s, many achievements have been made to preserve Shanghainese. In 2011, Hu Baotan wrote Longtang ( 弄堂 , " Longtang "), the first ever Shanghainese novel. In June 2012, a new television program airing in Shanghainese was created. In 2013, buses in Shanghai started using Shanghainese broadcasts. In 2017, Apple 's iOS 11 introduced Siri in Shanghainese, being only the third Sinitic language to be supported, after Standard Mandarin and Cantonese. In 2018,

10281-631: The Americas. Some shows even place sound effects over those subtitles. This practice of subtitling has been spread to neighbouring countries including South Korea and Taiwan. ATV in Hong Kong once practiced this style of decorative subtitles on its variety shows while it was owned by Want Want Holdings in Taiwan (which also owns CTV and CTI ) during 2009. Translation basically means conversion of one language into another language in written or spoken form. Subtitles can be used to translate dialogue from

10430-674: The Chinese. It is said in Master Lü's Spring and Autumn Annals that the customs and languages of the states of Wu and Yue were the same. This refers not just to the Baiyue language of the area, but also of that of "Ancient Wu", a Sinitic language likely only used by the nobility. The northern border of this Ancient Wu language is at the Huai River rather than the Yangtze like it

10579-453: The DVD industry. It refers to regular subtitles in the original language where important non-dialogue information has been added, as well as speaker identification, which may be useful when the viewer cannot otherwise visually tell who is saying what. The only significant difference for the user between SDH subtitles and closed captions is their appearance: SDH subtitles usually are displayed with

10728-561: The Huai variety was confined inside the town itself until the 1960s; at present, it is overtaking the Wu variety even in rural areas. Several important proponents of vernacular Chinese in official use, such as Lu Xun and Chao Yuen Ren , were speakers of Northern Wu varieties, in this case Shaoxingese and Changzhounese respectively. Wenzhounese was used during the Second World War to avoid Japanese interception. After

10877-618: The Japanese-Chinese animated anthology drama film Flavors of Youth had a section set in Shanghai, with significant Shanghainese dialogue. In January 2019, singer Lin Bao released the first Shanghainese pop record Shanghai Yao ( 上海謠 , "Shanghai Ballad"). In December 2021, the Shanghainese-language romantic comedy movie Myth of Love ( 愛情神話 ) was released. Its box office revenue was ¥260 million, and response

11026-602: The Shanghai vernacular somewhat contemptuously as a mixture of Suzhou and Ningbo dialects." This has led to Shanghainese becoming one of the fastest-developing languages of the Wu Chinese subgroup, undergoing rapid changes and quickly replacing Suzhounese as the prestige dialect of the Yangtze River Delta region. It underwent sustained growth that reached a peak in the 1930s during the Republican era , when migrants arrived in Shanghai and immersed themselves in

11175-791: The Sino-Austronesian language family (not to be confused with Austroasiatic) due to a scattering of cognates between their ancestral forms, and there is also some, albeit much more tenuous, evidence to suggest that Austroasiatic should also be included. However, his views are but one among competing hypotheses about the phylogeny of these languages, and is not widely accepted. See the Sino-Austronesian languages article for some further detail. It does appear that Wu varieties have had non-Sinitic influences, and many contain words cognate with those of other languages in various strata. These words however are few and far between, and Wu on

11324-708: The What Works Clearinghouse of the United States Department of Education ) have found that use of subtitles can help promote reading comprehension in school-aged children. Same-language captioning can improve literacy and reading growth across a broad range of reading abilities. It is used for this purpose by national television broadcasters in China and in India such as Doordarshan . In some Asian television programming, captioning

11473-412: The Wu of today and that of the 13th century . The Ming dynasty saw continued development of local operas, such as Suzhou pingtan , and more vernacular texts being written. In particular, the contemporary Classic Chinese Novels , such as Water Margin , are believed to have significant lexical and syntactic influence from Hangzhounese . The Yuan-Ming transition saw a tremendous loss of life in

11622-616: The Wu-like features in western Huai Chinese groups, such as Tongtai . Dialectal differences were not as obvious in textual sources until Ming times, and thus regional linguistic distinctions were only seen in media after the fall of the Yuan. These differences are largely found in musical sources such as historical folk songs and tanci (a kind of ballad or lyric poem). For instance, the Shange ( 山歌 ; Shāngē ; 'Mountain songs'),

11771-486: The Wu-speaking area. Xuanzhou Wu therefore significantly receded, which is reflected in the fact that it is now only spoken in the mountainous highlands of southern Anhui . Some territorial changes and stratification occurred, primarily near the Yangtze River . The newly-arrived Huai Chinese varieties have been slowly overtaking the suburban and rural Wu varieties. For instance, in Lishui county, Nanjing prefecture,

11920-673: The Wugniu romanisation and example characters. Shanghainese has a set of tenuis , lenis and fortis plosives and affricates , as well as a set of voiceless and voiced fricatives . Alveolo-palatal initials are also present in Shanghainese. Voiced stops are phonetically voiceless with slack voice phonation in stressed, word initial position. This phonation (often referred to as murmur) also occurs in zero onset syllables, syllables beginning with fricatives , and syllables beginning with sonorants . These consonants are true voiced in intervocalic position. Sonorants are also suggested to be glottalised in dark tones (i.e. tones 1, 5, 7). Being

12069-408: The audience. Open subtitles are added directly to recorded video frames and thus cannot be removed once added. On the other hand, closed subtitles are stored separately, allowing subtitles in different languages to be used without changing the video itself. In either case, a wide variety of technical approaches and formats are used to encode the subtitles. Third, subtitles need to be displayed to

12218-434: The audience. Open subtitles are always shown whenever the video is played because they are part of it. However, displaying closed subtitles is optional since they are overlaid onto the video by whatever is playing it. For example, media player software might be used to combine closed subtitles with the video itself. In some theaters or venues, a dedicated screen or screens are used to display subtitles. If that dedicated screen

12367-928: The collection Zhuibaiqiu ( 綴白裘 ), and the legends written by Shen Qifeng  [ zh ] or what are known as Shenshi Sizhong ( 沈氏四種 ), as well as huge numbers of tanci ( 彈詞 ) ballads. From the late Qing period to Republican China (the 19th and early 20th centuries), long-form vernacular novels ( 蘇白小說 or 吳語小說 ) such as The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai ( 海上花列傳 ) and The Nine-tailed Turtle ( 九尾龜 ) started appearing. Both above examples are pornographic in nature. Other works include: Wu-speaking writers who wrote in vernacular Mandarin often left traces of their native varieties in their works, as can be found in Guanchang Xianxing Ji and Fubao Xiantan ( 負曝閒談 ). Works in this period also saw an explosion of new vocabulary in Wu varieties to describe their changing world. This clearly reflects

12516-564: The critical historical factors for these boundaries lies in the movement of the population of speakers. This is often determined by the administrative boundaries established during imperial times . As such, imperial boundaries are essential for delineating one variety from another, and many varieties' isogloss clusters line up perfectly with the county boundaries established in imperial times, although some counties contain more than one variety and others may span several counties . Another factor that influences movement and transportation, as well as

12665-410: The dark level tone of 中 ( tsón ) spreads over the compound resulting in the following pattern /tsoŋ⁵⁵ koʔ²¹/ . Similarly, the syllables in a common expression for 十三點 ( zeq-sé-ti , "foolish") have the following underlying phonemic and tonal representations: /zəʔ¹²/ ( zeq ), /sɛ⁵³/ ( sé ), and /ti³³⁴/ ( ti ). However, the syllables in combination exhibit the light checked shifting pattern where

12814-418: The dark tone category has three tones (dark rising and dark departing tones have merged into one tone), while the light category has two tones (the light level, rising and departing tones have merged into one tone). (only with coda) voiceless initials only marked with acute voiced initials only Numbers in this table are those used by the Wugniu romanisation scheme. The conditioning factors which led to

12963-524: The deaf or hard-of-hearing (SDH); however, the term "SDH" is sometimes used when there is a need to make a distinction between the two. Programs such as news bulletins, current affairs programs, sports, some talk shows, and political and special events utilize real time or online captioning. Live captioning is increasingly common, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States , as

13112-457: The dialect family as a whole. This is typically done by affixing 話 ('speech') to a location's endonym. For example, 溫州話 ( Wu Chinese pronunciation: [ʔy˧꜖ tɕiɤu˧꜖ ɦo˩꜒꜔] ) is used for Wenzhounese . Affixing 閒話 is also common, and more typical of Northern Wu, as in 嘉興閒話 ( Wugniu : ka-shin ghae-o ) for the Jiaxing variety  [ zh ] . Names for the group as

13261-509: The economic center of China, Shanghainese has been threatened despite it originally being a strong topolect of Wu Chinese . According to the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau, the population of Shanghai was estimated to be 24.28 million in 2019, of whom 14.5 million are permanent residents and 9.77 million are migrant residents. To have better communication with foreign residents and develop

13410-428: The establishment of administrative boundaries, is geography. Northernmost Zhejiang and Jiangsu are very flat—being in the middle of a river delta , and as such are more uniform than the more mountainous regions farther south towards Fujian . The Taihu varieties, like Mandarin in the flat northern plains , are more homogeneous than Southern Wu, which has a significantly greater diversity of linguistic forms, likely

13559-458: The exclusive use of Mandarin as well as certain Mandarin promotion measures, promotion and regularization of Wu languages became improbable and left them more prone to Mandarinization. In 1992, students in Shanghai were banned from speaking Shanghainese at all times on campuses. As of now, Wu has no official status, no legal protection and there is no officially sanctioned romanization . It

13708-418: The expense of the local language. Since 2005, movements have emerged to protect Shanghainese. At municipal legislative discussions in 2005, former Shanghai opera actress Ma Lili moved to "protect" the language, stating that she was one of the few remaining Shanghai opera actresses who still retained authentic classic Shanghainese pronunciation in their performances. Shanghai's former party boss Chen Liangyu ,

13857-611: The extent of subtitles "fall far short of demonstrating that reasonable consumers would actually be deceived as to the amount of subtitled content provided, as there are no representations whatsoever that all song lyrics would be captioned, or even that the content would be 'fully' captioned." Although same-language subtitles and captions are produced primarily with the deaf and hard-of-hearing in mind, many others use them for convenience. Subtitles are increasingly popular among younger viewers for improved understanding and faster comprehension. Subtitles allow viewers to understand dialogue that

14006-454: The first language at home, but only 17.3% of them use Shanghainese to communicate with their parents. However, the same study from 2021 has shown that more than 90% of all age groups except 18–29 want to preserve Shanghainese. A total of 87.06% of people have noted that the culture of Shanghai cannot live without its language as it is used as a mechanism to bring people together and create a sense of community and warmth. Moreover, around half of

14155-439: The first part of the syllable. The final occupies the second part of the syllable and can be divided further into an optional medial and an obligatory rime (sometimes spelled rhyme ). Tone is also a feature of the syllable in Shanghainese. Syllabic tone, which is typical to the other Sinitic languages, has largely become verbal tone in Shanghainese. The following is a list of all initials in Middle Period Shanghainese, as well as

14304-655: The first-syllable light checked tone shifts to the last syllable in the domain: /zəʔ¹¹ sɛ²² ti²³/ . Phrasal tone sandhi in Shanghainese can be described as right-prominent and is characterized by a right syllable retaining its underlying tone and a left syllable receiving a mid-level tone based on the underlying tone's register. The table below indicates possible left syllable tones in right-prominent compounds. For instance, when combined, 買 ( ma , /ma¹¹³/ , "to buy") and 酒 ( cieu , /tɕiɤ³³⁴/ , "wine") become /ma³³ tɕiɤ³³⁴/ ("to buy wine"). Sometimes meaning can change based on whether left-prominent or right-prominent sandhi

14453-479: The flowing discourse of everyday life mostly is not. Another lesser group, Western Wu , is synonymous with the Xuanzhou division, which not only has a larger influence from the surrounding Mandarin varieties than much of Northern Wu, but also has very unique phonetic innovations, making it typologically quite different to the rest of Wu. Southern Wu is well known among linguists and sinologists as being one of

14602-457: The foreign voices, while the rest of Europe elected to display the dialogue as translated subtitles. The choice was largely due to financial reasons (subtitling is more economical and quicker than dubbing), but during the 1930s it also became a political preference in Germany, Italy and Spain; an expedient form of censorship that ensured that foreign views and ideas could be stopped from reaching

14751-547: The formation of modern Wu, with many early coincidental strata that are hard to differentiate today. It is unclear as to when exactly the language of the Baiyue became extinct, though during the Eastern Han dynasty , Kra-Dai words were recorded in the everyday vernacular of people in the region, and by the end of the Western Jin, the common language of the region was Sinitic, as will be explained below. As early as

14900-567: The founding of the People's Republic of China , the strong promotion of Mandarin in the Wu-speaking region yet again influenced the development of Wu Chinese. Curiously, Wenzhounese was used again during the Vietnam War to avoid enemy comprehensibility. Wu varieties were gradually excluded from most modern media and schools. With the influx of a migrant non-Wu-speaking population, the near total conversion of public media and organizations to

15049-603: The geographically less challenging areas in the north, that is to say, the Yangtze Delta and the Hangjiahu Plain . Early stages of this period of change was likely marked by diglossia , with the commonfolk typically speaking Ancient Wu or their native Shandong or northern Jiangsu Chinese, and the nobility, both new migrants and old aristocracy, typically speaking a varity not dissimilar to that of early medieval Luoyang . This linguistic situation eventually led to

15198-486: The great social changes which were occurring during the time. At the same time, missionary Joseph Edkins gathered large amounts of data and published several educational works on Shanghainese , as well as Bibles in a few major Wu varieties, including Southern Wu varieties such as Jinhuanese and Wenzhounese . Following the Taiping Rebellion , many migrants from Mandarin -speaking areas migrated into

15347-517: The greater scope of Sinitic languages is less easily typified than prototypically northern Chinese varieties such as Mandarin or prototypically southern Chinese varieties such as Cantonese . Its original classification, along with the other Sinitic varieties, was established in 1937 by Li Fang-Kuei , whose boundaries more or less have remained the same, and were adopted by Yuan Jiahua in his influential 1961 dialect primer. These limits were also adopted by Chao Yuen Ren , and he even further created

15496-575: The history of Wu Chinese after the Mongol conquest of China becomes a lot clearer, due to the emergence of vernacular texts. Following the Mongol conquest of China , a period of relative stability followed, and vernacularism started being further embraced. This is evident in the fact that Chinese opera productions, including those of both the Northern and Southern Wu-speaking regions, started using their local varieties rather than Classical Chinese , as

15645-592: The idiom "the tender speech of Wu" ( 吴侬软语 ; 吳儂軟語 ). Speakers of Wu varieties are mostly unaware of this term for their speech, since the classificatory imposition of "Wu" used in linguistics today is a relatively recent coinage. Saying someone "speaks Wu" is therefore akin to saying someone "speaks a Romance language"; it is not a particularly defined entity like Standard Mandarin or Hochdeutsch . Most speakers are only aware of their local variety's affinities with other similarly classified varieties, and will generally only refer to their local Wu variety rather than to

15794-418: The issue, although major international databases , such as Glottolog and Ethnologue , do not share similar sentiments. Although more TV programs are appearing in Wu varieties, they are no longer permitted to air during primetime. They are generally more playful than serious and many of these shows, such as Hangzhou 's " 阿六頭説新聞 " ("Old Liutou tells you the news"), provide local or regional news in

15943-577: The language, they will automatically be published on the video. Automatic captions are generally less accurate than human-typed captions. Automatic captions regularly fail to distinguish between similar-sounding words, such as to, two, and too. This can be particularly problematic with educational material, such as lecture recordings, that may include uncommon vocabulary and proper names. This problem can be compounded with poor audio quality (drops in audio, background noise, and people talking over each other, for example). Disability rights groups have emphasised

16092-559: The largest vowel quality inventories in the world. The Jinhui variety , spoken in Shanghai's Fengxian District , can be analyzed to have 20 vowel qualities. The abnormal number of vowels in Wu is due in part to rimes ending in glottal stops may be analysed as a short vowel in many varieties, as well as unique sound shifts, such as the tensing of Qieyun system shan ( 山 ) and xian ( 咸 ) rimes, among other factors. Both breathy and creaky voice are also found in Wu varieties. Breathy voice appears in Northern Wu and may act as

16241-497: The latter of which even having international titles. Today, popular support for the preservation of Wu languages is very strong, while feature-length movies such as B for Busy and highly successful TV shows such as Blossoms Shanghai have been filmed in Wu varieties (in both aforementioned cases, Shanghainese ). It is now not uncommon to see advertisements and billboards, as well as government media, using Wu Chinese written in non- ad hoc orthographies. Wu's place within

16390-470: The local audience, as dubbing makes it possible to create a dialogue which is totally different from the original. In larger German cities a few "special cinemas" use subtitling instead of dubbing. Dubbing is still the norm and favored form in these four countries, but the proportion of subtitling is slowly growing, mainly to save cost and turnaround-time, but also due to a growing acceptance among younger generations, who are better readers and increasingly have

16539-480: The local tongue. Migrants from Shanghai also brought Shanghainese to many overseas Chinese communities. As of 2016, 83,400 people in Hong Kong are still able to speak Shanghainese. Shanghainese is sometimes viewed as a tool to discriminate against immigrants. Migrants who move from other Chinese cities to Shanghai have little ability to speak Shanghainese. Among the migrant people, some believe Shanghainese represents

16688-549: The most internally diverse among the Sinitic groups , with very little mutual intelligibility between varieties across subgroups. In the first edition of Li 's Language Atlas of China , Wu was divided into six groups ( 片 ): Cao Zhiyun rearranged some of the Southern Wu divisions based on a larger corpus of data. According to Cao, it can be divided into three broad divisions: Taizhounese remained unchanged as it

16837-467: The most popular films, allowing moviegoers to choose between dubbing or subtitles. Animation and children's programming, however, is nearly universally dubbed, as in other regions. Since the introduction of the DVD and, later, the Blu-ray Disc, some high budget films include the simultaneous option of both subtitles and dubbing. Often in such cases, the translations are made separately, rather than

16986-498: The need for these captions to be reviewed by a human prior to publishing, particularly in cases where students' grades may be adversely affected by inadequate captioning. Same-language captions, i.e., without translation, were primarily intended as an aid for people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Closed captioning is the American term for closed subtitles specifically intended for people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. These are

17135-406: The needs of their audience, for learners of the spoken dialogue as a second or foreign language, visual learners, beginning readers who are deaf or hard of hearing and for people with learning or mental disabilities. For example, for many of its films and television programs, PBS displays standard captions representing speech from the program audio, word-for-word, if the viewer selects "CC1" by using

17284-561: The newsroom computer system, such as short interstitial updates. In the United States and Canada, some broadcasters have used it exclusively and simply left uncaptioned sections of the bulletin for which a script was unavailable. Newsroom captioning limits captions to pre-scripted materials and, therefore, does not cover all of the news, weather and sports segments of a typical local news broadcast which are typically not pre-scripted. This includes last-second breaking news or changes to

17433-475: The official language of all of China, Shanghainese had started its decline. During the Chinese economic reform of 1978, Shanghainese has once again took in a large number of migrants. Due to the prominence of Standard Mandarin, learning Shanghainese was no longer necessary for migrants. However, Shanghainese remained a vital part of the city's culture and retained its prestige status within the local population. In

17582-785: The original audio and subtitles. In addition, only a small proportion of cinemas show subtitled films. Films with dialogue in Galician , Catalan or Basque are always dubbed, not subtitled, when they are shown in the rest of the country. Some non-Spanish-speaking TV stations subtitle interviews in Spanish; others do not. In many Latin American countries, local network television will show dubbed versions of English-language programs and movies, while cable stations (often international) more commonly broadcast subtitled material. Preference for subtitles or dubbing varies according to individual taste and reading ability, and theaters may order two prints of

17731-539: The other hand, can often be captioned without stenographic input (unless there are live crosses or ad-libbing by the presenters). This is because: For non-live, or pre-recorded programs, television program providers can choose offline captioning. Captioners gear offline captioning toward the high-end television industry, providing highly customized captioning features, such as pop-on style captions, specialized screen placement, speaker identifications, italics, special characters, and sound effects. Offline captioning involves

17880-657: The percentage of people that would use Shanghainese with older family members has halved. The study also shows that around one third of people under the age of 30 can only understand Shanghainese, and 8.7% of respondents under 18 cannot even understand it. The number of people that are able to speak Shanghainese has also consistently decreased. Much of the youth can no longer speak Shanghainese fluently because they had no chance to practice it at school. Also, they were unwilling to communicate with their parents in Shanghainese, which has accelerated its decline. The survey in 2010 indicated that 62.6% of primary school students use Mandarin as

18029-644: The preface of the Qieyun , a Sui dynasty rime dictionary , that the speech of Wu, as well as that of Chu , is "at times too soft and light". A "ballad–narrative" ( 說晿詞話 ) known as The Story of Xue Rengui Crossing the Sea and Pacifying Liao ( 薛仁貴跨海征遼故事 ), which is about the Tang dynasty hero Xue Rengui , is believed to have been written in the Suzhounese . After the An Lushan rebellion , significant migration into

18178-441: The representing audio, must caption anything which is purely live and unscripted ; however, more recent developments include operators using speech recognition software and re-voicing the dialogue. Speech recognition technology has advanced so quickly in the United States that about half of all live captioning was through speech recognition as of 2005. Real-time captions look different from offline captions, as they are presented as

18327-513: The respondents stated that a Shanghainese citizen should be able to speak Shanghainese. More than 85% of all participants also believe that they help Shanghainese revitalization. Shanghainese macroscopically is spoken in Shanghai and parts of eastern Nantong , and constitutes the Shanghai subranch of the Northern Wu family of Wu Chinese . Some linguists group Shanghainese with nearby varieties, such as Huzhounese and Suzhounese , which has about 73% lexical similarity with Standard Mandarin, into

18476-488: The same as that of the Ming dynasty. Works of the time include the Qingzhongpu ( 清忠譜 ) and Doupeng xianhua ( 豆棚閒話 ), an early Qing baihua novel. During the 18th century , significant lexical shifts away from that seen in Shange took place; many sources we have of the period are operatic in nature. Representative works from this section include the operas (especially kunqu operas) by Qian Decang ( 錢德蒼 ) in

18625-484: The same proportional font used for the translation subtitles on the DVD; however, closed captions are displayed as white text on a black band, which blocks a large portion of the view. Closed captioning is falling out of favor as many users have no difficulty reading SDH subtitles, which are text with contrast outline. In addition, DVD subtitles can specify many colors on the same character: primary, outline, shadow, and background. This allows subtitlers to display subtitles on

18774-502: The same regions. Regardless of the justification, the Wu region has been clearly outlined, and Li's boundary in some ways has remained the de facto standard. In Jerry Norman 's usage, Wu dialects can be considered "central dialects" or dialects that are clearly in a transition zone containing features that typify both northern and southern Chinese varieties. Dialectologists traditionally establish linguistic boundaries based on several overlapping isoglosses of linguistic features. One of

18923-652: The screen: centered, left align, right align, top, etc. This is helpful for speaker identification and overlapping conversation. Some SDH subtitles (such as the subtitles of newer Universal Studios DVDs and Blu-ray Discs and most 20th Century Fox Blu-ray Discs, and some Columbia Pictures DVDs) do have positioning, but it is not as common. DVDs for the U.S. market now sometimes have three forms of English subtitles: SDH subtitles; English subtitles, helpful for viewers who may not be hearing impaired but whose first language may not be English (although they are usually an exact transcript and not simplified); and closed caption data that

19072-550: The scripts, ad-lib conversations of the broadcasters, and emergency or other live remote broadcasts by reporters in-the-field. By failing to cover items such as these, newsroom style captioning (or use of the teleprompter for captioning) typically results in coverage of less than 30% of a local news broadcast. Communication access real-time translation (CART) stenographers , who use a computer with using either stenotype or Velotype keyboards to transcribe stenographic input for presentation as captions within two or three seconds of

19221-403: The subtitles, the subtitler usually tells the computer software the exact positions where each subtitle should appear and disappear. For cinema films, this task is traditionally done by separate technicians. The result is a subtitle file containing the actual subtitles and position markers indicating where each subtitle should appear and disappear. These markers are usually based on timecode if it

19370-423: The superiority of native Shanghainese people. Some also believe that native residents intentionally speak Shanghainese in some places to discriminate against the immigrant population to transfer their anger to migrant workers, who take over their homeland and take advantage of housing, education, medical, and job resources. After the People's Republic of China 's government imposed and promoted Standard Chinese as

19519-544: The television remote control or on-screen menu; however, they also provide edited captions to present simplified sentences at a slower rate, if the viewer selects "CC2". Programs with a diverse audience also often have captions in another language. This is common with popular Latin American soap operas in Spanish. Since CC1 and CC2 share bandwidth , the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recommends translation subtitles be placed in CC3. CC4, which shares bandwidth with CC3,

19668-515: The text of the subtitles needs to be written. When there is plenty of time to prepare, this process can be done by hand. However, for media produced in real-time, like live television , it may be done by stenographers or using automated speech recognition . Subtitles written by fans , rather than more official sources, are referred to as fansubs . Regardless of who does the writing, they must include information on when each line of text should be displayed. Second, subtitles need to be distributed to

19817-462: The two locations in PKU's earlier surveys). This also led to the formation of an elaborate database including digital recordings of all locations, however, this database is not available to the general public. The atlas's editor, Cao Zhiyun, considers many of these languages "endangered" and has introduced the term 濒危方言 ('languages in danger' or 'endangered local languages') to raise people's attention to

19966-496: The unique features in its vocabulary present in contemporary Wu, such as pronouns , but clearly indicate that not all of the earlier unique features of these Wu varieties were carried into present varieties. These works also possess a number of characters uniquely formed to express features not found in the classical language and used some common characters as phonetic loans (see Chinese character classification ) to express other uniquely Wu vocabulary. A 16th century text called

20115-906: The variety spoken in Maqiao , a suburb of Shanghai , found that 126 out of around a thousand lexical items surveyed were of Kra-Dai origin. Terms such as 落蘇 ( Wugniu : loq-su 1 " aubergine ") are also shared between other Sinitic languages (eg. Teochew , Peng'im : lag sou ) as well as Kra-Dai languages (cf. Standard Zhuang lwggwz ). Shared terms with Austroasiatic languages have also been suggested, though many of them, such as Vietnamese đầm , bèo , and kè , have also been argued to be areal features , Chinese words in disguise, or long shots. Though Sino-Tibetan , Kra-Dai, Austronesian and Austroasiatic are mostly considered to be unrelated to each other, Laurent Sagart has proposed some possible phylogenetic affinities. Specifically, Tai–Kadai and Sino-Tibetan could possibly both belong to

20264-402: The variety, but most are limited to fifteen minutes of airtime. Popular video sites such as Youku and Tudou also host a variety of user-uploaded audio and visual media in many Wu varieties, most of which are regional TV shows, although some are user-created songs and the like. A number of books are also appearing to teach people how to speak Wu varieties such as Suzhounese and Shanghainese ,

20413-731: The weather outside of it. In much sport captioning's absence, the Australian Caption Centre submitted to the National Working Party on Captioning (NWPC), in November 1998, three examples of sport captioning, each performed on tennis, rugby league and swimming programs: The NWPC concluded that the standard they accept is the comprehensive real-time method, which gives them access to the commentary in its entirety. Also, not all sports are live. Many events are pre-recorded hours before they are broadcast, allowing

20562-403: The whole is most strongly influenced by other Chinese languages rather than any other linguistic influence. This period is bookended by two major migration waves into the Wu-speaking area. The first was in the 4th century CE from primarily the mountains of Shandong , whereas the second happened during the 12th century CE , and originated from the Heluo region. Due to events such as

20711-489: The work is henceforth not completely subtitled) and civil rights violations (under California's Unruh Civil Rights Act , guaranteeing equal rights for people with disabilities). Judge Stephen Victor Wilson dismissed the suit in September 2016, ruling that allegations of civil rights violations did not present evidence of intentional discrimination against viewers with disabilities, and that allegations over misrepresenting

20860-470: Was also when the economic boom of Shanghai happened, leading to its urban variety becoming the prestige variety over that of Suzhou . The 20th century marked a pivotal moment of Wu linguistic change, as Standard Mandarin was promoted nation-wide , though the 21st century is seeing revival efforts for many Wu Chinese varieties. Before the migration of the Han Chinese peoples, the Jiangnan region

21009-493: Was generally positive. Similarly, in December 2023, the TV show Blossoms Shanghai ( 繁花 ) aired with the primary language being Shanghainese. Today, around half the population of Shanghai can converse in Shanghainese, and a further quarter can understand it. Though the number of speakers has been declining, a large number of people want to preserve it. Due to the large number of ethnic groups of China , efforts to establish

21158-508: Was inhabited by Kra-Dai or Austroasiatic peoples, which were dubbed barbarians by the early Chinese. According to traditional history, Taibo of Wu settled in the area during the Shang dynasty , bringing along a large section of the population and Chinese administrative practices to form the state of Wu . The majority population of the state would have been the ancient Baiyue peoples, who had very different customs and practices compared to

21307-693: Was not included in the study. This was later adopted by the second edition of Li's Atlas . Minor adjustments were also made regarding Northern Wu subdivisions. Wu varieties typically possess a larger phonological inventory than many Sinitic languages . Many varieties also have tone systems known for highly complex tone sandhi . Phonologies of Wu varieties are diverse and hard to generalize. As such, only typologically significant features will be discussed here. For more information, refer to individual varieties' pages. In terms of consonants , those in initial positions are more plentiful than those in finals . Finals typically only permit two consonant phonemes ,

21456-402: Was once fashionable, saying, "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". Qian has also urged for Shanghainese to be taught in other sectors of education, due to kindergarten and university courses being insufficient. During

21605-424: Was pioneered in Hong Kong during the 1960s by Run Run Shaw of Shaw Brothers Studio . In a bid to reach the largest audience possible, Shaw had already recorded his films in Mandarin, reasoning it would be most universal variety of Chinese . However, this did not guarantee that the films could be understood by non-Mandarin-speaking audiences, and dubbing into different varieties was seen as too costly. The decision

21754-421: Was popular among Shanghainese residents. Shanghainese programming has since slowly declined amid regionalist-localist accusations. From 1992 onward, Shanghainese use was discouraged in schools, and many children native to Shanghai can no longer speak Shanghainese. In addition, Shanghai's emergence as a cosmopolitan global city consolidated the status of Mandarin as the standard language of business and services, at

21903-598: Was published in 1320. After the Jingkang incident , the imperial capital of the Song dynasty was moved from Bianjing (modern-day Kaifeng) to Lin'an (Hangzhou), starting the Southern Song period. This also coincided with a large migration wave mostly from the Heluo region, a strip of the Central Plains south of the Yellow River that roughly stretches from Luoyang to Kaifeng , which also brought

22052-545: Was the norm during and before the Song dynasty. The Tō-on ( 唐音 ; Hepburn : tō-on ; Pinyin : Tángyīn ) pronunciations introduced during the Japanese Kamakura period were largely rooted in the vernacular of northern Zhejiang at around the end of the Song dynasty or start of the Yuan dynasty , despite what its name may suggest. Analyses on texts of the time reveal stark phonetic differences between

22201-617: Was thus made to include Standard Chinese subtitles in all Shaw Brothers films. As the films were made in British-ruled Hong Kong , Shaw also decided to include English subtitles to reach English speakers in Hong Kong and allow for exports outside Asia. On-screen subtitles as seen in Japanese variety and other reality television shows are more for decorative purpose, something that is not seen in television in Europe and

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