Shanghai Dialect
Last updated: 17.12.19
Printed: 1994 Author: Lance Eccles
Publisher: Dunwoody Press ISBN: 1881265110
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An Introduction to Speaking the Contemporary Language
Hardcover (February 1994) Used item.
Amazon Review
The best you can do, this side of Shanghai, September 2, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Bodega Bay, CA
This seems to be the only game in town for learning anything of Shanghainese. A student will certainly learn enough from this book (WITH the accompanying tape) to get around Shanghai and cope with every day situations (which is all I really hoped for). The system of transcription the book uses for the phonics is very nonstandard and difficult to use and so is its way of representing the tones. Also, the grammatical coverage is pretty sketchy and presupposes (perhaps not unreasonably) that the student will also have some prior experience of learning Mandarin. The lessons are given as short dialogues, and following each lesson is a large supplementary vocabulary that you can plug into the sentence patterns that are shown in the dialogue. I would have liked it better if the author had included some exercises and an answer key (and I would have rated the book higher). This is a little bit too do-it-yourself for the only book on the subject. Still, it is a highly usable text within that limitation. Two musts for the learner: First, the time spent mastering the system of transcription will not be wasted (indeed, you really need to over-learn it). Second, don't even think about buying the book without the tapes. That holds true for any language, but nowhere more so than in learning any form of Chinese.