“France forbids English words with a French equivalent to be used, the insertion of English worlds would be considered as language pollution.”
That’s right for formal written French, like published paper etc… But informally, when talking with or writing to friends for instance, they use more English words you can think, especially with the young generation, they perceive this as to-be-in.

Shanghainese people have every right to speak whatever language they want at home or in the company of friends. There is nothing rude about that. But I’ve witnessed first-hand how Shanghainese intentionally speak Shanghainese to outsiders in order to “gain the upper hand” in arguments. I’ve seen those outsiders smile and politely ask the Shanghainese to communicate in Mandarin to no avail. If that isn’t simply rude and arrogant, I don’t know what is.

To all those Shanghainese I say: keep your language and culture close to your heart. Treasure it all you want. But don’t use it as a tool to harbor ignorance and arrogance. I think that was all that announcer was trying to communicate.

I think English is an international language. I love the language and think it is quite useful and beautiful. I think that some of the brightest and most educated people in today’s world speak English. That being said, I don’t snub my nose at the local store clerk and insist on speaking a language she doesn’t understand. That would be rude and ignorant of me. I speak her language because I realize that communication is a two-way street. Likewise, I drive my car on the appropriate side of the road instead of driving down the center and expecting others to swerve. This is all about respect for others, which some people apparently have never learned.

Why can’t China be a bilingual or multilingual society? A monolingual society is just boring- look at American culture. People speak english, they live an idyllic life, but life is boring.

But the thing is that the trend is that people ONLY speak mandarin- that’s the problem, the problem is not speaking mandarin itself, but the constant reinforcement of monolingual education in mandarin.

Even though I’m part of the so-called ‘new generation’ of shanghainese, but I was born and raised in the US, but somehow, despite all the constant outside influence, I can still speak the Wu Chinese language. When I see monolingual Mandarin-speaking Shanghainese, it just pisses me off. Fucking disgrace to all shanghainese people. they’re throwing thousands of years of history down the drain. They don’t even know about the contributions of the Wuyue kingdom, and i’m proud of being Wuyue Chinese as well as being shanghainese.

Shanghainese aren’t racist or intolerant. We’re just too proud (with emphasis on proud) of speaking Wu Chinese and being part of the Wuyue Chinese culture. And Wu Chinese is the true intellectual’s language with classical chinese words- mandarin is a mongol and turkic influenced language. And Mandarin took a lot of Wu Chinese words and expressions too, because most writers in Mandarin during early 20th century were native Wu speakers, that so many Wu Chinese speakers think that their language is part Mandarin. Shanghainese is basically Suzhou dialect with some marginal influence from Ningbonese and English.

But even so, I think Shanghainese think that they’re superior to their own fellow Wuyue Wu-speaking Chinese (Ningbonese, Hangzhounese) because of this whitewashed colonial mentality. Most native shanghainese came from somewhere else (usually northern Zhejiang or southern Jiangsu, so no one can be truly 100% native shanghainese.)

I’d love to teach shanghainese to the future generations, but the thing is, i’m afraid that i’m no longer fluent in the language.

hearing at least a few words of shanghainese would cure my homesickness to an extent.