Sheng Jiong, you have lied about speaking Shanghainese as your native language. I know this because there are large grammatical differences between Shanghainese and Baihuawen that you seem to overlook, suggesting you don't know it at all.
Well, it is extremely impertient of you accusing others of lying when you do not have any proof. I am a native Shanghainese, I was born in Shanghai, both of my parents are Shanghainese, we speak Shanghainese at home.
One example is the existance in Wu of the particle "teuq7" meaning "with", that doesn't exist in Mandarin. There is a character to write it, I have seen it before, but I cannot remember it.
Yes, but that is not a "grammatical difference". It is only a different use of a word. Grammatical difference means there is an entirely different sentence structure. But Shanghainese has almost the same sentence structure as written Chinese. If you take out a book written in Chinese, it is perfectly possible for one to read it out in Shanghainese and be understood by another person who can speak Shanghainese.
Interesting example would be a story I heard: one Taiwan-born Shanghainese(who obviously speak only Shanghainese at home, as Shanghainese always find it more natural to speak Shanghainese than Mandarin with someone close to them) only use Shanghainese to read the novellas by Zhang Ailing, a popular writer who writes a lot about Shanghai in the 1930s and 40s.
Some examples of Cantonese grammar differences:
Mandarin/Baihua: 他給我三本書. Cantonese: 佢俾三本書我. (notice position of "我")
Mandarin/Baihua: 我先上界買東西. Cantonese: 我去界買冶先. (notice position of "先" and use of 去 vs 上, and vocabulary difference of monosyllabic Cantonese word for "things" vs disyllabic Mandarin word)
Mandarin/Baihua: 他比我高. Cantonese: 佢高過我. (notice use of "過" vs "比", entirely different sentence order)
Mandarin/Baihua: 把他叫來 Cantonese: 噭佢來.
Mandarin/Baihua: 我上北京去. Cantonese: 我去北京.
Mandarin/Baihua: 看不見. Cantonese: 唔睇得見.
Mandarin/Baihua: 你吃不吃飯? Cantonese: 你吃飯唔吃?
Yes, I know that Cantonese has slight differences in the order of words compared with Mandarin. But again you are mixing Mandarin with Baihuawen. Hong Kongers speak only Cantonese, but they write in Baihuawen. So whatever the difference there are between Baihuawen and Cantonese, that's the difference between spoken and written language. Many colloquial English is also different from standard, formal English (Take Singapore English as a best example: "Would you be able to attend?" in English would become "You can go or not?" in Singlish. Totally different grammar, but is Singlish a written language? No. It is still a dialect in English). Does that mean we need to have an Colloquial English Wikipedia?
Also there is much differences in Shanghainese too, if you want I can maybe type some examples later.
Pray show me something I have never learnt about my own mother tongue.
formulax