Don’t mimic my accent!” My roommate was so amused by our pale imitation that she could hardly continue with the conversation with her parents on the phone. Actually one of the recreational activities in college is to imitate different dialects. “Where are you from? And can you teach me your dialect? ” This popular prologue has become a social skill to narrow the distance among freshpersons. However, I am rendered speechless when asked because I cannot speak idiomatic Shanghainese even though I am a pure Shanghainese.

To tell the truth, my generation was so “lucky” to catch up the enhanced promotion of Putonghua since 2002. When I was in kindergarten and elementary school, slogans were posted up on the walls in each classroom and on every landing: “Good mandarin, polite and elegant”; “Mandarin spoken, friends following”; “Speaking mandarin starts from me”, etc. I was passively imported standard mandarin only and since dialects are banned in schools, there was no access to Shanghainese most of the time.

The only circumstance where I was immersed in this soft dialect is during festivals when all relatives gathered together. The elders settled themselves comfortably on the sofa, chatting in fluent Shanghainese with one another, and asking about their jobs or children’s study. Once when I was inquired, I tried to imitate their pronunciation and intonation and speak in Shanghainese. I thought it was not that difficult. However, the moment I opened my mouth, I felt too weird to continue. It turned out that I could only respond in Mandarin. A sense of alienation occurred to me as if we were speaking two completely different languages.

Additionally, my grandma became talkative as she grew older. Every time I visited her, she would hold my hands and talk about her life story, recalling those bittersweet days. From her eyes, I knew that she genuinely wanted to communicate with her beloved grandchild. Nevertheless, when I listened to her, I had to take efforts to “translate” Shanghainese into Mandarin in my mind and try to understand. Sometimes I even had no idea what she was actually saying. What I could do was only to make eye contacts with her and smile. I did not speak Shanghainese at home because I thought it was unimportant and out-of-date. But I never thought it would be the obstacle when I communicate with my family.

As time flies by, the day I wandered around SISU, drenched with afternoon sunshine, I heard some familiar sounds. It was the SISU radio station broadcasting a program in Shanghainese, which provides me with a sense of belonging. Then, I found many more situations where Shanghainese is spoken in public. On radio, I hear the announcer giving the correct time in Shanghainese. On the bus, I see a grandma talking to the conductor in vernacular naturally. Then I hear the station report broadcast in Shanghainese. I reckon it is where urban identification is from.

In the past decade, the enhanced promotion of Mandarin aimed to eliminate language barrier in communication among people from different corners of the country. And in this process, dialects are fading away in our daily conversation. But what is dialect? Dialect is the sound you are familiar with. It is the accent of your family members and the accent by which you recognize your fellow-townsman in a strange place.

Dialect is not only the language but also the deposit of human civilization. It witnesses the history. In history, the royal family of the Southern Song Dynasty escaped to Hangzhou, thus creating the “dialect island” in which Hangzhou dialect is different from other Wu dialects. It is also the living fossil of local cultures. For example, traditional Chinese opera is based on dialect. The rhythm along with the dialogue is closely related to it.

Unfortunately, some languages are endangered. In China, the prominent linguist Youguang Zhou says there are at least 80 dialects in the country, some of which are typologically far from mandarin and very difficult to learn. Due to globalization and the promotion of mandarin, dialects are being neglected. Furthermore, some languages endangered around the world. According to Ethnologue, a linguistic data base founded by the most active research agency SIL International, there are 6,912 languages worldwide. The 20 most commonly used languages are spoken by more than 50 million speakers each, but many other languages are endangered. For instance, very few members of the Siletz Indian tribe in the northwestern state of Oregon can speak Inuktitut fluently. Based on the existence status of these endangered languages, linguists predict that half of languages may be at risk of disappearing by the end of this century. That means one language would die every two weeks.

Facing the danger of extinction of languages, people are taking actions. In the case of Siletz, Microsoft translated terms in its Windows operating system and Office software into Inuktitut. In addition, some linguists visit those regions and record thousands of words and phrases in their native tongue. People protect the language and cherish the culture it conveys.

For me, the resurrection of Shanghainese is a gift for all local people. It was a gift inherited and well-preserved by our ancestors. It is a gift reminding us that the land we live on is not a maze composed of concrete and glass. Rather it is where our roots are; it is where our culture forms; it makes what we are.

This is one of the featured articles by SES Writing Workshop. The author, Gu Yunyue, is an undergraduate student of the School of English Studies, Shanghai International Studies University (SISU). The supervisor, Yang Chunlei, is an associate professor of English at SISU. His research areas are syntax, semantics, computational linguistics and translation.