Wenzhounese, the dialect used in Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province, grabbed the attention of netizens recently and created a long buzz in cyberspace as its level of extreme difficulty got asserted by the upcoming American TV series, “Blindspot.”
The mystery-drama, created by American film and TV writer-producer-director Greg Berlanti and Canadian screenwriter Martin Gero, has a female lead who speaks Chinese, specifically Wenzhounese.
In one scene of the show, one character says that translators are “struggling” to understand the emails written in Wenzhounese. The character further says that Wenzhounese is a “very rare dialect” and a “Devil’s language,” according to the Chinese people themselves.
Jane Doe, the lead character who seemed to speak Wenzhounese effortlessly and played by American actress Jaimie Alexander (“Thor: The Dark World”), also appears in a fight scene with a couple of Chinese guys.
“Blindspot” will have its U.S. premiere on Sept. 21.
An article posted on Dec. 30, 2010 at Wenzhou’s official website described the dialect as “ancient” and even dubbed it a “living fossil.”
Ding Zhimin, a language historian at Wenzhou University, told the Daily Mail Online that Wenzhounese can possibly be 1,500 years old already.
According to an online poll in 2013, the five hardest dialects or languages in the country are: (1) Wenzhounese, (2) Cantonese, (3) a tie between Min Nan and Suzhou dialect, (4) Shanghainese and (5) Shaanxi dialect, reported Want China Times.
There is a Chinese saying that goes like this: "Fear not the Heavens, fear not the Earth, but fear the Wenzhou man speaking Wenzhounese."