The China Mail - Duolingo Adds Shanghainese Course With 50 Lessons and Citywide Activities

Duolingo has introduced a Shanghainese course that combines app-based language instruction with activities around Shanghai. Released Thursday, the program covers contemporary city life and elements of old Shanghai culture, and is available to users who select Chinese as the app’s display language.

The course contains roughly 50 lessons built around situations such as ordering street food, using public transportation, greeting people, and finding well-known places. It is Duolingo’s second course devoted to a Chinese variety after the company added Cantonese in 2022.

Senior course designer Tan Xiuting said at a Shanghai launch event Friday that the material moves between modern and historical settings. Lessons address workplace interactions and the city’s coffee culture, while also introducing life in longtang lane houses and Shanghainese expressions associated with traditional games.

The project also extends beyond the app. Duolingo has set up check-in locations in Shanghai and arranged themed activities on buses and in subway stations. Partnerships with local businesses include an offer under which customers who place a coffee order in Shanghainese at a participating café receive a gift.

Wang Chen, a Duolingo official, said the launch reflects a long-term commitment to China and the country’s linguistic diversity. The developers’ stated aim is to present dialect use as contemporary and appealing while giving local language and culture a place in digital products that are easy to access.

Founded in the United States in 2011, Duolingo now offers instruction in more than 40 languages. The company describes China as its fastest-growing and second-largest market, making the new course both a cultural project and an expansion of its local product range.

Shanghainese, also called the Hu dialect, belongs to the Wu Chinese group and is spoken by an estimated 10 million people, mainly in Shanghai and the surrounding Yangtze River Delta. It is difficult for many Mandarin speakers to understand because it has a different sound system and more tones. The language also contains English and French loanwords linked to Shanghai’s history as a treaty port from the mid-19th century, as well as vocabulary and structures retained from classical Chinese.

Use of Shanghainese has declined over recent decades as Mandarin became dominant in schools, workplaces, and media. During the last decade, city authorities and cultural organizations have reintroduced the dialect in some kindergartens and on public transportation, and have organized speaking competitions aimed at younger residents.

Shanghainese has also gained new visibility through television, film, music, and stand-up comedy. The Duolingo course arrives amid those efforts to make the dialect part of current urban culture rather than treating it only as a subject for preservation.

Zhou Yuwen, a 30-year-old branding manager who was born and raised in Shanghai, said her generation was expected to use Mandarin both in and outside school, while opportunities to speak Shanghainese gradually diminished. She can understand the dialect but said her own speech sounds so much like “Yangjingbang” that she becomes embarrassed and stops.

The term refers to the pidgin English historically used by European and local merchants in 19th-century Shanghai. Zhou shared news of the course on Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, in the hope that more people would try it. She said it was regrettable that someone who had lived and worked in Shanghai throughout her life could not speak the local language properly, adding that she wanted to see it flourish rather than merely survive.

Y.Parker--ThChM