Some bus drivers have been using the Shanghai dialect as a working language since 2011. Provided to China Daily
The Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, according to Qian, has acknowledged the proposal and will start a pilot program bringing the Shanghai dialect into a test group of kindergartens and eventually to all when enough experience is gained.
Some of the city's kindergartens have already introduced the Shanghai dialect to their curriculum.
The Modern Baby Kindergarten in Shanghai's Pudong New District gives classes in Mandarin, but uses the Shanghai dialect in other activities and class conversations, said Zhu Jianmin, director of the kindergarten.
Every Friday of the week is "dialect day" when teachers and children only speak the local dialect. The kindergarten also organizes regular trips to the city's historical sites, teaching about them in the Shanghai dialect. Nursery rhyme-singing contests in the local dialect are often held, according to Zhu.
"Children in our kindergarten master the local dialect well, but if primary and middle schools don't offer an environment in which it is spoken, it is possible that they may forget it," she said.
Cao Yanmei, a mother from Suqian in Jiangsu province who has settled her family in Shanghai, sent her 3-year-old son to a kindergarten in Zhabei district in September. She is happy to see that he has learned to sing some nursery rhymes in the Shanghai dialect.
"The teachers are Shanghai natives and they speak the local dialect during games and daily conversations," she said.
"Since my son will live in Shanghai, his mastery of the dialect will help him communicate with the local community and blend in better with society. Moreover, it shows respect to the local culture".
Qian Nairong, director of the Research Center of Linguistics at Shanghai University, said that the loss of a local dialect's popularity with the younger generation means a loss of culture.
"The most vivid words and lively expressions are all born from the local dialect, which is the source of cultural creativity. Protecting the dialect is a key to maintaining cultural diversity," he said.
Qian, who has studied the Shanghai dialect for nearly 50 years, said that most of the city's post-1990 generation has lost the ability to speak in the local tongue.
A report released by Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences last year showed that only 60 percent of Shanghai native students can fully understand their local dialect and only half of them speak it at home.
There are 129 languages in China and 117 are endangered, according to the book China's Languages published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2008.
Li Lan, a linguist in dialect studies with the CASS, said most of the endangered dialects are spoken by ethnic groups. But the nine non-Mandarin dialects still have hundreds of millions of speakers. The Wu dialect, for example, has around 70 million speakers in Shanghai, Zhejiang and Jiangsu.
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