A long painted scroll of tone contours unrolling along a shikumen back lane. Layer one is the bricks and tiles of pronunciation; layer five, the lingering echo of a line from Days of Being Wild — with vocabulary, literary-vs-colloquial readings and street argot in between. Each layer is a melody; strung together they become Shanghainese.
"The grammar skeleton of Shanghainese is a tone table." 26 initials, 22 finals, 5 tones — plus the tone sandhi that daunts every beginner. This layer lays each sound on the workbench with five-level pitch curves and synthesised audio, so why 今朝 shifts to 33-23 becomes arithmetic, not mysticism.
"60+ particles are the hidden level of Shanghainese." From 侬好 to 侬饭吃了伐, the language carries tense, mood and degree through particles and word order, not verb inflection. This layer displays everyday vocabulary by scene, and the Sentence Factory lets you drag-assemble a proper Shanghai sentence.
"The 大 in 大木桥 reads da; the 大 in 大肚皮 reads du." One character, two readings — the fastest way to give away your level. This layer turns homograph readings into scene quizzes across personal names, place names, colloquial and written senses, with "trap alerts" attached.
"轧朋友, 吃生活, 嘎山胡 — these can't be memorised, only soaked in." This layer is true free talk: slang, two-part riddle-sayings, old-Shanghai cant and street argot. Every entry carries a story card — origin, era, who says it — and theatre scenes let you hear it in the lane.
关键:切口 · 俗语 · 语境CANT · SLANG · CONTEXTWHAT YOU CAN'T LOOK UP
转角 · 大戏院之夜INTERLUDE V · A NIGHT AT THE THEATRE
第 五 层 · LAYER FIVE最高境界 · MASTERY化境 MASTERY
化境试炼FINAL STAGE · OLD-SCHOOL · STAGE & STREET
"在沪剧舞台与弄堂闲聊间无缝切换。"
老派 vs 新派音系切换、尖团音训练营、《阿飞正传》潘迪华片段精听、《繁花》方言版鉴赏。
最后一关由 AI 评测口语并颁发"化境"等级——是一份对方言保护的庄重交付。
"Switch seamlessly between the opera stage and lane gossip." Old-school vs new-school pronunciation, sharp-vs-round initial camp, close listening to Rebecca Pan's scene in Days of Being Wild and the dialect cut of Blossoms. The final trial is an AI-scored speaking test awarding the 化境 (Mastery) grade — a solemn delivery for dialect preservation.
This project aims at two things: letting beginners see the patterns, and letting Shanghainese who have lost their voice hear themselves again. All examples now use real Shanghainese recordings, switchable between male and female voices in the top bar — even the hardest old-school pronunciation is on record, before it fades from the lanes for good. Synthesised contours fill in where no recording exists, and you can record your own in the Recording Booth.