Can You Understand Mandarin With Different Accents (Chinese Dialect)?

[@JoshPecks500lbDad]

When you said "i have absolutely no idea" on the second sentence. that made me feel so good. to know that a native chinese also couldnt understand what was said this video format was really fun

[@SVmathfarmer]

Nice channel have been watching recently. We are in USA and I am a non Chinese Mandarin Learner and my wife is from 荆州. It is challenging for me to learn to hear the southwestern dialect vs standard mandarin. I am going to try this app thanks for sharing. We go to China several times a year to stay with family so there is real motivation to learn 湖北话

[@Joyful_Mandarin_Story]

So informative and interesting at the same time. Love from Taiwan❤

[@ShuoshuoChinese]

Did you get more sentences correct than I did?

[@johnmofula]

No😅 only got 2/8. This is why I stick to 普通话😂😅😂. This reminds me of the canteen I used to eat at, it's like they took people from all parts of China and put them in the same canteen 🙆🏾‍♂️ and I used to got to people with difficult dialects coz i was fascinated 😂

[@duozuo]

没有，每个句子都特别难 😂。对我只台湾的发音很清楚。

[@glennextics]

学习中国方言太好了！我对中国方言有兴趣，因为我是一个语言爱好者😊

[@thelias91]

This app is so cool ! thank you for making video about chinese languages and dialects

[@00bean00]

How can you get the app?

[@seksityathakarn9721]

This is so fun. Please upload more 方言 videos!

[@duozuo]

Thanks for the recommendation, it's worth giving it a try! It's interesting to note that most Chinese in Spain come from Zhejiang. A friend of mine told me it's also hard for them to understand each other, for example in his town they can't understand people from the next town just 20 Km away. 😅

[@LCST-FS]

非常好方言！

[@Rb_CLeander888]

落雨 sounds so poetic

[@SpanishWorld-zu2nm]

I have been watching 非诚勿扰 like you recommended. It helps to increase my vocabulary. Thank you!

[@邊境-z5r]

7:41 This is Taiwanese Hakka, not Taiwanese Hokkien.

[@ЕвгенияКащеева-к2л]

That was brilliant! Thank you, dear!

[@WangYi9]

Laoshi, due to my Colez exam I didn't watch ur videos . Now, am back . Happy Married Life , 💐🎉❤

[@NotFinnish]

Do not fear the enemy, their guns, or their tanks, Fear the Wenzhou man speaking Wenzhouese

[@StratosFair]

2/8, that was interesting !

[@isaiasramosgarcia9771]

in a chinese novel (春 月) once i read that Su Zhou was the softest and sweetest dialect and Guang Dong the most agresive

[@QueenXKnit]

Such a good idea ❤❤❤

[@ericab3919]

Omg wenzhou sounds like it was recorded in reverse sometimes.

[@jovmil9175]

sexiest dialect is Ya'an Sichuan dialect

[@gagaxueguzheng]

I can understand most dialects that are just having different tones or one or two different words. And I can understand 天津话, because that's where my wife comes from. Listening to such dialects is equally hard as listening to a Chinese-learner who didn't practice tones and uses unusual words in the wrong places. Most 方言 I can't understand a thing.

[@ShuoshuoChinese]

其实我和你一样😅

[@JohnnyLynnLee]

Most f them aren't dialects but languages and you cannot understand without previous exposure. Cantonese, for instance is a COMPLETELY different language than Mandarin.

[@6Uncles]

@@JohnnyLynnLee bruh, you need to chill and learn what 方言 is, and stop shouting at clouds. Lay people aren't aware of technical linguistics terms, especially when something like "topolect" exists.

[@stolzenbutch]

Western linguists consider "dialects" like Shanghainese (a Mandarinized Northern Wu-dialect) and Cantonese as Sinitic languages. There are some 8 of these. The fundamental difference between these languages are in the field of grammar and the tonal SYSTEM (i.e. not the individual tones as such). Southern languages differ most conspicuously from Mandarin dialects by having a more or less intact 'layer' of yin versus yang-tones, hence the phenomenon that Southern languages have more tones than Mandarin. In the field of grammar Sinitic languages for the most part their own distinct grammatical function words, though this even within dialects may be true (words for I, you, possession, grammatical aspect). The southern languages descent to a more or lesser degree from Middle Chinese from the Tang dynasty onwards, superseding the original indigenous languages from the 100 Southern Barbarians (百越). Meaningful in this respect may be the fact that Cantonese refer to themselves as Toong yan (people from the Tang dynasty) where as "pure" Chinese call themselves Hàn rén (people form the Han dynasty).

[@markc6411]

I got 2.5 out of 8!

[@pansaltman]

🤣🤣🤣 Never enough morning fun!

[@natashaadirata9409]

老师，可不可以讲一下 “暂时” 和 “临时” 的区别？我看了很多例句但还是不太明白🤭 谢谢！

[@josephmarrow5598]

Any resources suggestions for learning 成语 for English native speakers?

[@jonwijaya8539]

These are not dialects. They are separate languages.

[@milkman5894]

nice

[@thelias91]

what is the movie at 4:00 😂 ?

[@mohsinjaved1358]

1/8...so embarassing. But not to worry. I've heard raw lemon juice tastes great. Right? Right?

[@ShuoshuoChinese]

It was not bad!

[@efiding97]

It is quite a fun

[@jonysoares150]

haha,,, Great video.

[@danp8321]

I emptied the lemon juice bowl 😂

[@Jhearding]

3/8. That's low, but I'm proud of it, because my 普通话 is awful.

[@PeteR-gn5ep]

3/8 😅✌

[@ShuoshuoChinese]

很棒呀！

[@newcreation1cor517]

广西家乡话不一定是一种汉语，也许是壮语。壮语比较像泰语。（抱歉，我不确定我的语法很清楚）

[@tronix4732]

lmao wenzhounese different language 🤣

[@renanalves3955]

2/8

[@jansonleung3393]

This shows that different Chinese are not just dialects, but completely different languages.

[@artugert]

Yes, if it sounds exactly like Standard Mandarin, except with slight differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, it is a DIALECT of Mandarin. If the pronunciation and vocabulary differs a lot from Standard Mandarin, it is NOT a dialect of Mandarin. It is a separate LANGUAGE. It baffles me that this is so difficult for people to understand.

[@shanhaichinese1528]

@@artugert“dialect of Mandarin”😂dialects are parallel with Mandarin. Chinese is a language branch containing 七大方言: 官话方言、晋方言、吴方言、闽方言、客家方言、粤方言、湘方言、赣方言、徽方言、平话土话. The Chinese language which people learn as second language is 普通话. it is only a standard spoken language for people from different regions to communicate effectively. Do some research because facts and knowledge are sometimes counterintuitive. Don’t judge just based on your personal experience.

[@artugert]

@@shanhaichinese1528 I'm not basing my statement on experience. It is based on my extensive study of linguistics. A dialect can only be a dialect OF a language. What is Cantonese a dialect OF? It's not a dialect. It is a LANGUAGE. Standard Mandarin (普通話) is a DIALECT of Mandarin. Yes, I am very aware of the seven main LANGUAGES that are descended from Old Chinese, one of which is Mandarin. The seven languages are as related to each other as English and German. Each of those seven, including Mandarin, have many dialects, as does every major language in the world. Mandarin is considered to have eight main dialects, including Northeastern, Beijing, Jilu, Jiaoliao, Central Plains, Lanyin, Lower Yangtze, and Southwestern. It is debated whether Jin should be included. Each of these has many sub-dialects. That is how every major language in the world works. The way the word 方言 is used by Chinese people is very different from the way linguists speak about a dialect. They use it to refer to both languages AND dialects of those languages. But I don't think any Chinese person would call Spanish and French dialects of Latin! Anyway, the term is often misused. One major reason for that is political.

[@shanhaichinese1528]

⁠ Oh, so what you mind is that Cantonese is called a dialect, not the relationship between dialects and Mandarin. I don't think you need to mind the word dialect so much. Chinese words and English words don't correspond one to one. Like most of Americans use the word cashew to express cashew nut because they don’t plant it. But if you want to mention cashew nut when you talk to a Brazilian farmer you’d better plus nut after cashew to distinguish from cashew tree. Language is the reflection of peoples concepts of the objective world. My undergraduate major was computer aided translation, and I think that is why even though AI technology is advancing rapidly, it still can't completely replace human translators for the time being. The blogger also made a statement about the wording of the word dialect at the beginning of the video.

[@artugert]

@@shanhaichinese1528 Sorry, I don't understand what you meant by not "minding" the relationship between Mandarin and dialects. But anyways, we are using English to communicate, so yes, it does matter what the word dialect means in English, and that is defined by linguists.

[@gunjchowwiwat8357]

It's not a dialectic if you can't understand. It's different language.

[@QueenXKnit]

You should not have trusted a Taiwanese man and stayed on the Taiwanese women line 😂

[@ปลาทูเรนเจอร์]

0/8 bye

[@pdyq]

7:43 I believe the language should be Taiwanese Hakka, not Taiwanese Hokkien.

[@JohnnyLynnLee]

No linguist disagree that those are different LANGUAGES. It's only politics. The Balkans call different dialect languages and China call different languages dialects. It's about national identity. And it's pretty common in Asia. Funny how ITALY, for instance, also has many different LANGUAGES and, contrary to Asians in general, they get angry if you call them dialects and will immediately correct you that they are in fac languages. I saw in Asia,-China, Vietnam and Thailand in my case mainly, people ashamed of speaking a non standard dialect or a different language. You speak Italian to a person In Napole, Italy, and no rarely they will intentionally talk back in Napoletano (even though they know Italian) and if you can't understand, to them, you just can go to hel. Quite the opposite.

[@Miancheng]

Not really. I mean they do sound like different languages, but we actually have the same writing system. So even I cannot understand what they are talking about, but we still can communicate with each other by writing. I think that this is a very significant difference between Chinese and many other languages.

[@Miancheng]

By the way, in ancient China, our writing system was more different than our speaking system, since the former was more formal, elegant, and effective, and no one would speak like that in the daily life. In every dynasty, Chinese people always used the same writing system, but at the same time, the central government would also select one dialect as the standard speaking language, so those office-holders from different areas could speak with each other, and let the emperor knew what they are talking about.

[@JohnnyLynnLee]

@@Miancheng No you cannot!. If they write in standard, that is based on MANDARIN, you an understand. Id they write for instance, like they TEXT each other in Hong Kong, like they would say things, with their grammatical structures, vocab and such, you won't understand. So YEAS, Chinese is different in this sense that you have this "third language" a literary one. Which is also not unique, since Arabic also have Fusha. But although a Libabese my write in Fusha if they write in Lebanese Arabic other Arabs cannot understand.

[@JohnnyLynnLee]

@@Miancheng so much so that (and that's a thing i just recently learned) Cantonese has characters that are NOT used in Mandarin. They are unique to Cantonese.

[@Miancheng]

@@JohnnyLynnLee I totally can’t understand Cantonese when they speak, but I can understand the basic meaning when they write it down. And Chinese is not like English or French. They write down the sound of what they speak. Chinese language bases on the meaning of Chinese characters, and you can give the character different sounds based on where you live.

[@6Uncles]

4:52 | ”呢樣又唔得， 嗰樣又唔得， 噉你究竟想點呀, 大佬？！“ Lol, if you think Cantonese (or other Chinese languages) are just "accents" where you can just change your pronunciation of the characters, then you're in a for a ride, especially when they use of different characters, word choices etc. Your skit at 6:52 encapsulates it well: "...I don't know what language you're speaking"

[@jixer1956]

But all Chinese people do use the same characters... The word choice differences are like between British and American English. The big difference is the pronunciation.

[@ikelin7938]

粤语很多带口字旁的字是有本字的，别说普通话使用者了就算熟悉汉字的日本人也能看懂，但后来因为复杂的原因喃字化了（只表音不表义）。举个例子：无渠下觜处，问渠那得清如许 渠-->佢

[@artugert]

The title of the video is incorrect. Many of these are NOT Mandarin! It's good that you put the disclaimer, at least. But most of these are different LANGUAGES. It would have been good if you could have included the actual names of the languages, rather than just where the speaker is from. It doesn't help to know the person is from Guangxi, if I don't know whether it is Cantonese, Zhuang, Pinghua, etc. It looks like on the app, they all just either say 普通話 or 家鄉話, but at least it distinguishes between those. The first is Mandarin, the second one is NOT. "Taiwanese" is a dialect of Hokkien, while Taiwanese Mandarin is a dialect of Mandarin. I don't really understand what the point is of mixing them together. If the point of the video was to see if you could understand different languages, why play clips of Mandarin? Or if you wanted to see (like the title says) if you could "understand Mandarin with different accents", why play clips that are not Mandarin?

[@stolzenbutch]

So what does Hanyu 汉语 mean? Only Putonghua? No, also any version of Chinese. But when you say you can speak Hanyu, obviously only Putonghua is meant, not even Pekinese. Same for Zhongwen 中文 en Zhōngguó huà 中国话 So fangyan 方言 may be translated as a Sinitic language. What in the West is called dialect, corresponds to 土话 "local (unrefined) speech".

[@artugert]

I'm not certain how these terms are used by Chinese people, let alone by actual Chinese linguists, but I would like to know. The following information is just from what I have observed and looked up in the dictionary. Apparently, 漢語 and 中國話 can both be used to refer to Sinitic languages in general, but they also often refer to just Mandarin. They seem to be used inconsistently. Apparently, 華夏語 refers only to Sinitic languages, but I’ve never seen it actually being used. 國語，華語，普通話, 中文，as far as I know, only refer to Mandarin, but (other than the last one) sometimes they are used to specifically refer to the Mandarin spoken in Taiwan, Singapore, and Northern China, respectively. 方言 and 家鄉話 and (I think) even 土話, seem to be used by regular Chinese people (not sure what terms linguists use) to refer to both dialects of Mandarin AND to other Sinitic languages and their dialects. 漢藏語系 refers to the Sino-Tibetan language family, and 漢語系 refers to the Sinitic language family (which is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan family). In my opinion, it would be nice if these terms could become standardized and used consistently, so it’s clear what is being referred to. Again, maybe it already is standardized by linguists, but I don’t know. If it were up to me: All Sinitic languages would be referred to as 語言 (a language), and never as a dialect. 方言, 家鄉話 and 土話 would refer to any dialect of any language in the world (including, of course, dialects of all Sinitic languages) 國語 would refer to the “national language(s)” of any country (Mandarin, of course, being one of them) 普通話 would not be used anymore, and would be replaced by 標準中文 (Standard Mandarin) 華語 and 漢語 wouldn’t be used anymore, since there isn’t just one language of the Han people 中文 alone would be used to refer to Mandarin (官話 means the language of government officials, which no longer applies) 漢藏語系 and 漢語系 wouldn’t change, and would still refer to the Sino-Tibetan language family, and the Sinitic branch, respectively Also, in English, “the Chinese language” would cease to be used. Only “Mandarin” would be used to refer to Mandarin, and “the Chinese languages” (plural) would be used to refer to the Sinitic languages, just like how we say “the Romance languages” to refer to languages derived from Latin, etc. Anyway, that’s just my own take on what would make sense to me, and it’s not going to change anything, but if there’s just one thing I could change, it would be to stop referring to languages as dialects.