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Shanghainese
Shanghainese (上海话, 沪语) belongs to the Wu group of Chinese, with Suzhou and Ningbo speech, and is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin: 我们 is 阿拉, 你 is 侬, and the tones and sounds are different. For most of the twentieth century it was the language of the city's homes, markets and lanes. Since the 1950s, Mandarin (普通话) has been the language of school, broadcasting and public life, and many younger Shanghainese now understand the dialect better than they speak it. There are efforts to keep it alive — radio programs, comedy, children's rhymes, recordings of older speakers — and views differ on how much it matters and what should be done. Older residents like 顾阿婆 often switch: Mandarin for outsiders, Shanghainese among neighbors, and a mixture when, as here, they are among both. For the documentary, that mixture is the sound of the lane.