SHANGHAI – Popular language-learning app Duolingo has released a Shanghainese course featuring lessons on modern culture and life in old Shanghai as well as offline activities in the city.
The course, launched Thursday, features roughly 50 lessons drawn from everyday life in Shanghai, from ordering street food and taking public transit to exchanging greetings and navigating the city’s landmarks. To access the Shanghainese course, users must first set Chinese as their display language.
Founded in the U.S. in 2011, Duolingo offers courses in over 40 languages. The launch of the company’s Shanghainese course marks its second Chinese dialect offering, following Cantonese released in 2022. China is the company’s fastest-growing and second-largest market.
The course revolves around aspects of modern life in Shanghai like workplace dynamics and coffee culture, while also featuring old Shanghai themes, such as life in the city’s longtang lane houses and local phrases for traditional games, Tan Xiuting, head of the Shanghainese course design team, told Sixth Tone at the launch event in Shanghai on Friday.
Lessons also extend beyond the screen, with offline check-in spots around Shanghai, as well as themed activities on buses and in subway stations. Duolingo has also partnered with local shops; for example, if a user orders a coffee in Shanghainese at a partner café, they will receive a gift.
Wang Chen, head of Duolingo China, said that the course underscores the company’s “long-term commitment” to the Chinese market and its linguistic diversity.
“We want to make dialects cool and help local language and culture stay alive in contemporary life through products that are digital, engaging, and easy to access,” Wang said.
Shanghainese, or the Hu dialect, is a Wu Chinese variety spoken by roughly 10 million people, primarily in Shanghai and the surrounding Yangtze River Delta region. Difficult for native Mandarin speakers to understand, it features more tones and numerous English and French loanwords due to the city’s opening as a treaty port in the mid-19th century. It also preserves many classical Chinese words and structures.
The dialect has declined in recent decades, as national policies have pushed Mandarin use in schools, workplaces, and the media. In the last decade, Shanghai has reintroduced Shanghainese in some kindergartens and on public transportation, and has held speech competitions to inspire younger generations to learn it. TV programs, films, music, and standup comedy shows in Shanghainese have also emerged in recent years.
Zhou Yuwen, a 30-year-old branding manager born and raised in Shanghai, told Sixth Tone that her generation was expected to speak Mandarin both inside and outside the classroom, but over time, Shanghainese-speaking environments decreased.
“I can understand Shanghainese, but when I try to speak it, it comes out so ‘Yangjingbang’ that I feel too embarrassed to keep going,” she said, referencing the colloquial name for the pidgin English used between European and local merchants in Shanghai in the 19th century.
Zhou said she felt “excited” by the release of Duolingo’s Shanghainese course, and shared news of the course’s launch on lifestyle platform Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, hoping to encourage others to learn. “It’s a pity that someone like me, who was born, grew up, and worked my whole life in Shanghai, can’t speak proper Shanghainese,” she said. “I absolutely love the dialect, and I hope to see it not just preserved, but truly flourish.”
Editor: Marianne Gunnarsson.
(Header image: Visuals from Xiaohongshu, reedited by Sixth Tone)