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Language - What do people speak in Shanghai?

What do people in Shanghai speak?

Mandarin is the standard spoken language in China. To make life even more difficult, locals also speak the Shanghai dialect, or Shanghainese, which sounds very different from Mandarin, although you probably won’t notice for a while!

English is not yet widely understood by locals - your best bet is to speak to someone young if you need help, as their English tends to be pretty good.

If you don’t speak any Mandarin, you’re destined to get lost at some point so please take a business card of your hotel or a copy of the address written down in Chinese so you can show taxi drivers or anyone else that can help you.

USEFUL PHRASES AND EXPRESSIONS
Listen to the audio clip of each expression by clicking the speaker symbols.
English Chinese pinyin Pronunciation
Mandarin Shanghainese
Hello. ni hao  knee-how  nong haw
Goodbye. zai jian  tsai chee-en  tseh way
Thank you. xie xie  she-eh she-eh  shya shya
Sorry. dui bu qi  do-eh boo chee  tay ver ch'ee
you're welcome. bu ke qi  boo ke chee  ver k'uk ch'ee
correct/right dui  do-eh  tay
telephone dian hua  dee-an hwa  dee woo
surf the Web shang wang  shang hwan  zang mang
toilet ce suo  tsur swo  ts'i soo
turn left zuo zhuan  dzwo joo-an  tsoo tsoe
turn right you zhuan  yew joo-an  yew tsoe
go straight zhi zou  gee dzow  zuk tsew
hotel jiu dian  gee-ow dee-an  jew tee
airport fei ji chang  fay gee charn  fee jee zang
train station huo che zhan  hoo-oh chir ge-an  hoo ts'oo zeh
metro di tie  dee tee-eh  dee t'ik
taxi chu zu che  choo dzoo chir  ts'uk tsi ts'oo
How much? duo shao qian?  dwor shau chien  jee dee
too expensive tai gui  tie gway  t'uk jyu
cheap pian yi  pee-an yee  bee nee
too big tai da  tie da  t'uk doo
too small tai xiao  tie shee-au  t'uk shyo
beer pi jiu  pee gee-ow  bee jew
water shui  shoo-eh  si
tea cha  char  zoo
settle the bill mai dan  my dan  mah teh
bar/pub jiu ba  gee-ow bar  jew pa
restaurant can guan  tsan gwan  veh tee
police jing cha  geen char  jin ts'uh

Have Your Say

David Dalsass
(Italian, 6 months in Shanghai) described his life in Shanghai without the need to speak Chinese.

Number Pronouncer

This feature helps you pronouce, either in Mandarin or in Shanghai dialect, a string of consecutive figures (such as a telephone number) as well as any cardinal number up to 100 billion.

In Chinese numbers are divided by every four digits as opposed to three in English. And multiples of ten are known as:

"x 10" = "shi", "x 102" = "bai", "x 103" = "qian", "x 104" = "wan", "x 108" = "yi"

For example:

356,712,832,197 = 3567,1283,2197 = (3 x 103 + 5 x 102 + 6 x 10 + 7) x 108 + (1 x 103 + 2 x 102 + 8 x 10 + 3) x 104 + (2 x 103 + 1 x 102 + 9 x 10 + 1)

Therefore the number should be read as "san qian wu bai liu shi qi yi yi qian er bai ba shi san wan er qian yi bai jiu shi qi" in Mandarin.