Results tagged “shanghailanguageworkscommission”

Not so long after its crackdown on foreign-language only signs in Xintiandi, the language police are now on to their next target -- the Shanghai Metro! They have objected to plans by the subway operator to train its staff to learn basic phrases in five major Chinese dialects -- a plan that is not without controversy -- so as to help domestic tourists and visitors when they ask for fares and directions.

Shanghaiist is still recovering from a bout of PSVGSS (Post Super Voice Girl Stress Syndrome). Thankfully, the government is here to help us by removing words and phrases such as "PK" from the media. This, along with other well-known phrases such as "MM" (美眉, meaning "pretty girl") are the target of a new law taking effect on March 1 that aims to clamp down on the rampant use of internet and media inspired neologisms. The article (in Chinese) that we read this in also states that only standard Chinese should be used in schools and official documents and that no signs for stores and businesses be purely in foreign (non-Chinese) languages. On the surface, this seems like a rather prissy but otherwise innocuous law, but if you keep digging, as Shanghaiist always does, you will discover that "[t]he invention of new words [is] regarded as a symptom of certain psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia."

The city announced this week that it plans to protect the Shanghai dialect. The dialect skills of 7,000 Shanghai students will be surveyed and a “vocal bank” will be created by Fudan University in the attempts to freeze this unique apect of Shanghai culture, package it up like a box of moon cakes and present it to the world for the 2010 World Expo.