What Should I Know About This Dive?
  
Congrats! 
 
You are thinking about pursuing (or continuing your pursuit of) Shanghainese! Awesome you! 
 
If you know any Chinese Mandarin, it’s important to state upfront that Mandarin is very different from Shanghainese.  In fact, many Chinese dialects are mutually unintelligible, each with distinctive vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Learning more than just Mandarin can help you gain a better understanding of Mandarin and Classical Chinese. 
 
Using this skill, you can interact with more people in Shanghai and learn more about their character and culture.  By learning Shanghainese,  your Chinese experience becomes more meaningful, and you will be able to communicate with more local population and learn about Chinese history and culture in ways that are not accessible to Mandarin speakers. 
 
Aside from that, many study a second language in general in order to assist with traveling, career progression, business, entrepreneurship, customer service, and more. Learning or improving your Shanghainese is certainly a great educational investment of time and money, and no doubt because it gives you a unique skill that sets you apart from your peers. 
 
So in answer to your question, the answer is yes, Yes, YES! Learn Shanghainese already! We are proud to share with you this completely free online compendium of 10 resources to help you get started with, improve, and ultimately master the Shanghainese language. To that end, on the pages to come, you will find a bunch of truly helpful Shanghainese language resources, each answering a key question you need the answer to. We also provide a list of resources, broken down by level: beginner, intermediate, and advanced, to ensure you get the support you need, no matter at what level you may find yourself. 
 
Where do the resources come from? Our members and staff. We individually screen every resource prior to posting to ensure high quality and to verify the authenticity of each. If it's listed, it means a) one of our Break Diving members has used the resource and highly recommends it, and b) the listed resource has in some way supported the growth of Break Diving and believes in our mission (or at the very least, has not actively refused to support our mission). You can trust that each resource we list is legitimate, and has our Break Diving seal of approval. 
If you have any issues with any of the resources listed, please reach out and let us know! 

That all being said, it's time to take a deep dive into Shanghainese. Ready?