Pudong International Airport has begun using Shanghai dialect for announcements, Shanghai Daily reports. Announcements in Shanghai dialect follow Mandarin and English. The local dialect will also be used for boarding information for flights between Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Shanghai Airlines and China Eastern are also helping promote the dialect, printing lyrics to traditional songs on meal boxes to be used on all flights beginning next month. Tips on pronunciation are also printed on the boxes. Both airlines will also broadcast announcements in Shanghai dialect on select flights, alongside Mandarin and English.
Closer to earth, the city's No.49 bus route, which runs across downtown via Nanjing Road and People's Square, has also introduced dialect announcements. Not everyone however, is positive about this promotion of Shanghai's local tongue.
"Local people don’t need to listen to the announcements, while out-of-towners can’t understand them," white-collar worker Huang Yizhou told the Shanghai Daily.
Others said if every province started using its own dialect on airline flights, the communication system would get very confusing.
According to the Shanghai Statistics Bureau, 97 percent of 1,000 people surveyed could speak Mandarin, while 81.4 percent spoke Shanghai dialect. The survey found that the popularity of the local dialect is diminishing as fewer young people are learning to speak it.
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