I was cleaning out all my camera phone pics as I switch phones, when I came across the image below from a Shaanxi 陕西 restaurant here in Shanghai.

This is a large sign on one of the main walls in the restaurant. It’s titled 陕西方言, or Shanxi Local Speech (or one of a thousand other ways to translate it which for the sake of simplicity we’ll skip). It teaches you how to speak the local dialect of Mandarin while you sit and stuff your face with the local food.

You’ll notice the tone numbers aren’t what you’d expect in Standard Mandarin. This tends to be the biggest difference aside from accent when dealing with dialects of Mandarin.

In the case of this dialect, first tone becomes a low falling tone instead of a high tone. Second is the same as you’d expect from Mandarin. Third tone becomes a high falling tone as fourth would be in Mandarin and fourth tone in Shaanxi is more like Mandarin’s first tone. At least according to this Wikipedia page on “Xi’an dialect” (in Chinese).

The food is pretty decent depending on what you get. It’s on Dinxi Road 定西路 near West Yan’an Road 延安西路. Pass on the pork roujiamo 肉夹馍 but don’t miss the beef ones.