苏州闲话 Whisper of WU Dialect

苏州闲话还是蛮有劲的。

有这么一天，办公室刚刚吃好中饭，讲到苏州闲话。正巧我们有一位同事不是苏州人，来了也没有多久，兴致勃勃地想学。

从数字开始吧。一二三四，刚到“二”就碰到点问题。在苏州话里，“二”读音比较复杂。像在表示时间2：22的读法中就各不相同。而且就是在报数中，读成”liang“或者”ni“两者也都可以。

同事张着嘴，把那读音来回过了过，像是不知道把舌头往哪放似的。

可别说她了。就是土生土长的年轻人，又有多少人还讲的好呢？多少带点”洋泾浜“的口音。不晓得以后就是洋泾浜的苏州话也还听不听得到。

The Wu Dialect is disappearing.

Though many of the localsare still capable of the Wu dialect, more and more young people are losing the language skill with the wide dissemination of Mandarin.

For now, the 20s are able to communicate, usually with their family, in the Wu dialect, idiomatically or not. However, for those younger generations, those who were born after the millennium in particular, the dialect is distant and unfamiliar as they grow up in a Mandarin environment.

The beautification of the language is usually accompanied by doom and gloom. Perhaps for one day, the whisper of Wu dialect, e.g. the four ways to pronounce number"2" or the soft goodbye, would only echo in the videos.