What Speaking Mandarin with a Cantonese Accent Sounds like

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

💛 My Chinese learning website is now live! Get free resources to improve your language skills ( I'll be adding more resources in the future): gracemandarinchinese.com/ Which accent you'd like me to analyze next? Let me know in the comments! :)

[@jcnavera]

南洋華人。😁

[@patrickpu9630]

Southeastern Asian Chinese accent would be interesting

[@tendocat8778]

Sichuanese accent (even if it's more a dialect) could be nice to analyse, thanks for your videos ☺

[@Weejee456]

taiwanese and chinese haha

Mandarin with a Hokkien accent!😃

[@Sebboebbo]

The queen has returned 👏

[@sw2de3fr4gt]

As a heritage Cantonese speaker, you are totally on point. After learning Mandarin, I think I get mixed up when speaking Cantonese so now both my Mandarin and Cantonese sound strange 🤣

[@siddhiagarwal7216]

she deserves a huge round of applause for the hard work she puts in her videos

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

Aww thank you! 🥰

[@ngcollin88]

@@GraceMandarinChinesetrawling thru KZbin and rest of the net for many video examples seems really tough

[@wonwonchan5683]

I am a native Cantonese speaker and I can’t stop laughing 😂😅😮😅

[@luia3911]

Cantonese is the best 👍 Cantonese doesn’t sound aggressive as Mandarin.

[@brendacollins]

​@@luia3911 chill... both are great

[@NightcoreArtistry]

Same, Cantonese sound smooth.

[@hbfdfgjcyk555]

​@Luia actually I feel like cantonese has more hard sounds than putonghua e.g. in 十，六and so on

[@lheng2474]

samee the tone change part is so relatable for some parts of Malaysian Chinese

[@lyah3550]

I'm so excited for this video! Hokkien and Hakka accents of Mandarin would be super cool in the future.

[@plaidygami]

That's really interesting, I didn't know about these differences. I now realize I have a bit of a Cantonese accent with some words while I'm learning Mandarin, because I've previously studied and learned Cantonese. I think this will help me work on my pronunciation more.

[@errgo2713]

As a Cantonese speaker, this video is so accurate it makes my toes curl. I catch myself using first tone instead of fourth still - I hate this... Also, 古天樂 looks drunk in that clip sat on the sofa.

[@genace]

Thanks for sharing, Grace! I actually think it’s pretty cool how different accents have their own unique characteristics. I can definitely see this video being helpful for Cantonese speakers and it will also help us listeners to better understand whenever we hear this accent. I agree too that more accent videos like this would be interesting🙂

[@yazars]

So many fun possibilities! I'd be most interested in analysis/comparison of the characteristics of: 1. Beijing accent (nar, war, etc.) 2. Taiwanese accent (the lazier 不捲舌頭 style) Credit to them for learning Mandarin Chinese though. Their Chinese is better than I will ever speak Cantonese!

[@赐福-f4w]

And their mandarin is also better then us too lol

[@tupolevi]

Taiwanese accent = Die Wan(t) ax-cent

[@goosehow1950]

pretty much all Southern accents don't roll their tongues, not only taiwanese

[@KJ-mp6uj]

You mean their mandarin? Mandarin is not the only language that is classified as Chinese damn. You do know Cantonese is also Chinese right?

[@barryd7110]

Can you please do a similar video for Malaysian Chinese? Most of the Chinese speakers I interact with are Malaysian, and I’d love a breakdown of the differences.

[@gytan2221]

Malaysian Chinese accent has a very strong Cantonese influence

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

I'll talk about Malaysian Mandarin in my next video! :)

[@alexsiuwh]

You point out every single problem that HK people encountered speaking Mandarin, which no teacher I came acrosss mention them. Thanks for the great lesson👋👍🙏

[@Catistraveling]

Chinese American here! I actually really like hearing non mainland accents! Like Malaysian or Singapore accents in mandarin. I think it’s really unique. I enjoy hearing regional accents from the south too. I can tell where they’re from. If everyone sounded the same how boring would that be.

[@zhen86]

mainland accents you hear is usually from the north, and the educator make the accent the official accent thus many mainlanders sounds that way. the further away from city you go the more the real accent will be heard.

[@davidma8597]

Great video! Two inputs: Regarding ou and ao: you are absolutely right. Words in Mandarin and Cantonese often reverse in terms of pronunciation when it comes to ou and ao. For example, the "歐" in 歐洲 is "ou" in Mandarin but "ngao" in Cantonese, while the " 澳" in 澳洲 is "ao" in Mandarin but "ngou" in Cantonese. 濤 is "tao" in Mandarin but "tou" in Cantonese, while 偷 is "tou" in Madarin but "tao" in Cantonese. Note that "ou" in Mandarin actually sounds more like the capital letter "O" in English, while "au" Cantonese is actually a shorter sound, like "ouch" in English without the "ch". I also agree very much that Cantonese-speaking people often have difficulty distinguishing between the 1st and the 4th tone. This was in fact my biggest obstacle when I tried to learn Mandarin years ago. But I believe there are numerous words that resemble the 4th tone while pronounced in Cantonese, and much much fewer that resemble the 1st tone. Cantonese is typically spoken very bluntly, and this high tone (1st) is uncommon. The reason you find those Cantonese actors/actresses mispronouncing the 4th for the 1st is, I believe, a result of their lack of confidence: hesitating tends to prolong the tone.

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

Hi David! Thank you for sharing your thoughts and all these details!

[@matmagix3845]

I think there's also the aspect that Cantonese pronunciation flows off more quickly relative to Mandarin (i.e. average speed of talking between each character). Thus clear enunciation of tones can get missed.

[@tinhoyhu]

David's examples make more sense for some of the ou-ao confusion. The examples in the video don't make much sense. The Cantonese pronunciation of the words are close to "ou" in the first place (候＝hau6) and shouldn't end up sounding like ao. I think the confusion comes from trying to apply the same conversion of similar sounds incorrectly. 好 is hao in Mandarin, so similar sounding 候 mistakenly gets the "ao" conversion, but with a different tone. My other guess is that the clips are of just poor speakers. The girl in particular just straight up uses Cantonese. Like when she says 有空 as "jau hung" instead of "you kong". I don't think there's a H/K accent ala L/N.

[@mslincantonese]

很開心Grace這次分析了我的母語廣東話 ;) 這些都是廣東話母語學生所犯的錯，說得真好！

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

謝謝Lin老師❤️

[@heiyiplee2800]

This hits the nail on the head for us, the Cantonese speakers😅加油呀❤

[@RenzoCotta]

I love cantonese, it may have more tones but the sounds are more distinguishable than mandarin ... they speak like they are singing

[@lordkent8143]

What I usually notice is that most Cantonese speakers including myself just assume the Mandarin word is pronounced so similar to Cantonese that we just inherently think it's pronounced the same 😂. So we pronounce it like a Cantonese word and it never gets corrected and thus the accent stays.

[@leesir91919]

There is only 1% of mandarin pronounce similar to canto … a large amount of the vocab is significantly different. Most of the time it is flip or the sound tend to drag out longer in canto

[@theSleepyLamp]

​@@leesir91919 I think while it's true that each individual character might sound substantially different, when combined into words and phrases, they sound similar more often than not. Take 一,二,三, for example. jat1, ji6, saam1 vs yi, er, san. One and two individually are nowhere close to their mandarin counterpart. But when you say the phrase out loud, the intonation sounds similar. When you add in how the two have similar sentence structure, it's not hard to see why a lot of cantonese speakers transpose cantonese features into their mandarin.

[@leesir91919]

@@theSleepyLamp when I said similar then I mean they have to pronounce exactly the same. for example something like 飛 if you said this word out in both mandarin and canto then you basically have the same pronunciation. the 1-3 example was not it. unless canto also said yi - er - san but they don’t so I would not compare it like that.

[@sleo3720]

Easier for a foreigner to master speaking mandarin than a Cantonese speaker given a similar level of linguistic skill

[@YorgosL1]

@@theSleepyLampthis 2 ‘JI’ is an old Chinese pronunciation so the mandarin ‘ER’ it is very far from the original. Sound nothing alike

[@chattyparrot3588]

非常感谢 Grace 老师。 很有用的一个视频。请您也做一个 ： What Speaking Mandarin with a Fujianese/taiwanese Accent Sounds like. I think this kind of videos are very useful for us chinese learners. I got oh...that's why/ 原来如此 a lot while I was watching this video. 😀

[@jssmedialangs]

Listening to Jackson Wang (native Cantonese speaker), I've heard him make all of these sounds in Mandarin. 😆 Though his Mandarin has gotten way stronger since his trainee days. I've also practiced with some native Cantonese speakers and had a little trouble catching what they were saying. 😅

[@qq5369]

Wow... all accents you analyzed are so specific. Thank you.

[@davidoberstadt1907]

Very helpful, thank you, Grace. I've heard many of these. When I was learning Mandarin, our class had a native Cantonese speaker and a native English speaker who knew Cantonese quite well. They both had similar accents, but caught on very well. The tones were definitely the most difficult for them.

[@nickshaffer8115]

very helpful! a sichuanese version of this would be awesome.

[@Poe168]

Grace laoshu, thank you for the hardwork you put into making those amazing videos. I am learning Chinese and your videos do help me a lot to pronounce words correctly. 谢谢你！

[@VicAndRoll]

I know certain words like 油, 有, or 老婆 a Cantonese speaker would pronounce the way they normally would say those characters in Cantonese. Perhaps it's because they can't hear the difference or they may have forgotten it's pronounced differently.

[@광동아재廣東大叔]

视频中所讲内容确实是真的。我是韩国的，曾在北京留学，读研时专读语言学。我在广州和深圳常住20多年，老婆是广州本地人。结果除了国语还学会讲粤语。 在我长年的观察中发现广东人的国语水平基本取决于自己的文化水平。 我老婆是复旦大学毕业的，英语相当好，韩语也学的还行，而说国语时基本听不出广东人的口音，但我丈母娘只会讲出结结巴巴的几句。

[@yuenlucia5454]

well.. probably right if that Chinese is only lived in mainland china for their whole life.

[@優秀素質-y2s]

根據我個人的居住過的經驗，可以供參考。廣東人的國語（普通話）水平其實在於平時是不是經常說廣東話而不是說國語（普通話），經常說國語（普通話）的廣東人比較不會有廣東腔，發音也會接近標準國語（普通話）。另外的情況是父母雙方或一方是外省人，那從小的時候口音會比父母是本省人的孩子口音顯得不同，這完全取決於家庭背景的因素（這點可以以廣州與深圳做個例子，廣州本地人還是較多，而深圳外地人早早超過本地人了，在廣州有很大機會能碰到很多說廣東話的，而在深圳卻很少有機會碰到，我深圳朋友父母有一方是外省人，他的口音幾乎沒有廣東腔，而且他自己也不太會講廣東話）。還有兩種可能性：1.年輕時在外省生活或工作多年，口音早已被同化。2. 老師或朋友是外省人，交流多了口音可能潛移默化就會改變。

[@elaineng8035]

Would you also explain the characteristics or problems for Mandarin speakers speaking Cantonese?

[@MzTeenUSA]

I feel so attacked, also can’t stop laughing 😂😂

[@chestonsin]

as a cantonese speaker learning mandarin, i thought you'd be interested in something i recently corrected! 這 in cantonese uses a rising tone, so i would always say 這個 這裡 etc. with a rising tone in mandarin... could only fix it by consciously thinking about it every time i said it 🤣 (i think you can hear it at 11:02 ?)

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

Cool! Thanks for sharing this!!

[@mayzavan]

I love you (as a teacher which provides a huge amount of free Chinese study content)

[@hailuong1905]

It sounds interesting that some Cantonese accent is pretty close to Vietnamese access or at least myself like the mixing up of "z c s" "zh ch sh" and "j q x", mixing up the "l" and "n" (I think this one is common with the people from the Northern Vietnam), getting struggle with the 4th tone and the changing tone, etc.

[@PierreMiniggio]

So in the process, I'm also learning that if I were to forget a tone change while speaking, it might not be that big of a deal since cantonese speakers seem to get their point across just fine despite that 😁

[@lordkent8143]

😂 maybe because Cantonese is so expressive and loud. Somehow people will get it.

[@holliswilliams8426]

Not sure about that lol.

[@bingli8775]

你对舌头的分析好到位，我感觉从来没想过舌头应该摆成什么形状的问题😂😂

[@stephenlam7301]

Love your videos, keep them coming! 👍

[@LingoLizard]

Always love these videos about typical accents when speaking Mandarin!

[@chromaticswing9199]

Wow nice to find you here haha

[@michaellaw5876]

Yep, my dad sounds exactly like this when he goes on business trips to the Mainland or Taiwan.

[@kokolexx]

When I was in China there were actually some people including teachers and random person that I met that guessed that I'm from 广东 because of my accent even thought I mostly learn standard Mandarin and never had any teacher or friend or watched many contents with Cantonese accent.

[@gabrielmendez4349]

For the record, I hear a lot of Taiwanese people pronouncing zh like z, as in 知道 or 中文. Sometimes s instead of sh, as in 是不是. Can be confusing for us foreigners who don't speak enough Mandarin to understand the difference contextually. 😅

[@ci813]

😂zhi dao la!!! Thanks! Love your video

[@GameFuMaster]

a lot of these "mix ups" probably happen because the Cantonese version is pronounced with the "wrong" initial letter, and they're kind of just mixing the two, e.g. nu li in Cantonese is lou lik (I don't know Cantonese pin yin)

[@hobomoon3441]

I love your channel 😊

[@2022minangaymoi]

Grace, thanks so much for this kind of video, I found some of my pronunciation mistakes and the ways to improve thêm. Really appreciate for what you have been doing for us. Wish you all the best ❤❤❤❤❤

[@shuujiaqi]

I definitely see 道，有，好 especially since in cantonese it'd be do, yao, and ho which is slight enough of a difference to mix up your sounds. i think there is also a specific accent/dialect that (fluent) mandarin speakers of guangdong use (not to be confused with the accents in this video) which is sort of similar to taiwanese mandarin. like omitting 'h' in 是

[@jeffreysommer3292]

When I was in Mandarin class in college, I was one of only two American students--all the rest were Cantonese speaking Chinese from the PRC. I pronounced X as "Sh," and the Chinese students pronounced it as "Sy." Our teacher asked the class why only "these two white boys" were pronouncing X properly!

[@Weeping-Angel]

That’s amazing😂

[@spicyreyes]

I read a novel once where one of the characters was Cantonese and everyone roasted his accent all the time sp I love hearing the breakdowns of the difference and knowing what the hell they were talking about lmao

[@ericscavetta2311]

Really interesting video! I’d also be interested in hearing about Min Nan accents (Hokkien, Teochew, etc) in Mandarin. Some similarities with Cantonese?

[@EvilDogProductions]

That kind of reassures me that I can mess up a lot of things while speaking mandarin and stilll be understood :)

[@supertrouper]

About the words 你 and 努力. The original Cantonese sounds are better yet to say the original Guangzhou Cantonese are Nei and Nou Lik. But the problem is a lot of Hong Kong people have gotten so lazy with their tones when pronouncing words that have N sounds that it has become like L sounds which in the examples I said now sound like Lei and Lou Lik. That is why these Hong Kong actors were pronouncing these words in Mandarin they way they were with the L sounds and influence from their former British colonizer played a role as well. The Guangzhou Cantonese speakers have retained most of the original way of speaking Cantonese as they have had very little foreign influence whereas Hong Kongers have changed their way of speaking Cantonese all over the many decades.

[@magnoliastate8274]

I like their accent, it actually seems simpler to pronounce

[@wumengzhao718]

真的很喜欢这种最基础的语音学，雖然我而家都識講廣東話嘅

[@aoshi000]

Nice video. The reason for this is mostly because mandarin was not a mandatory subject in school back then in Hong Kong, it was an elective in middle school. What kid would want to go to school to learn putonghua or guoyu on a Saturday. So most HKers who "attempted" to speak Mandarin in interviews were just kinda "winging" it, semi-guessing how the words should be pronounced based on their Cantonese knowledge, without studying either pinyin from mainland or zhuyin fuhao from Taiwan. Nowadays most HK actors who have business in China have improved their Mandarin a lot. I myself have gotten better over the years as well as I always look up pinyin for any character I'm not sure about (google is much easier now than flipping thru a dictionary by counting the strokes or looking up by radicals), and by practicing with friends and coworkers from China and Taiwan. Though i still sound very southern almost like a Taiwanese as I'm lazy with my zh ch sh as z c s. If I force it on purpose, it would just sound phony or unnatural like chow yun-fat in crouching tiger hidden dragon lol The opposite is true when I listen to Chinese or Taiwanese who could speak Cantonese, or attempt to sing oldies from HK, you could hear they always mistakenly fall back to the Mandarin pronunciation. BTW, HKers learned Cantonese without pinyin or zhuyin or even jyutping, we just learned by rote memorization. So yeah, one can't really master Mandarin without the building blocks pinyin or zhuyin. Years ago I didn't know how the last name 孫 Sun was pronounced so I said Suan like 酸, the friends were all laughing at me i didn't know why at the time. It's not really Cantonese people can't pronounce certain sound, rather they mostly don't know a word or character need to be pronounced a certain way. So when a Hker was just winging it, it could indeed sound embarrassing. I wish my mandarin was as good as now 20 or 30 years ago, but what can you do, live and learn. That's why as much as I like standardized pinyin, zhuyin really is the clearest system that separate the initial, medial, and finals clearly. Yes the last name say 歐陽 ouyang, is indeed Au yeung in Cantonese in your example, which explains the habit. Funnily enough, with the l and n, even Cantonese speakers interchange when speaking Cantonese while technically they aren't supposed to. Like你is Nei in Cantonese but most people just say Lei which is easier rolling off your tongue and commonly accepted, but it's technically wrong. Or last name 郭 or國 should be Gwok in Cantonese but most people just say Gok because it's a lazy sound. The 1st and 4th tone is still a pet peeve of mine even to this day lol

[@wongcoller144]

beautiful teacher

[@Yuunarichu]

I've always been wanting a video on this! I follow a Hoa Chinese girl (like myself) on TikTok who speaks Cantonese with a Viet accent (tone-wise) and Mandarin with a Cantonese accent, I thought it was super interesting how they pass it along with each other. I sometimes say random Mandarin words and I realize they sound quite Cantonese in their intonation like 恭喜发财 😂 compared to my cousin, who's a native Mandarin speaker.

[@carlosortegaalvarez2172]

I really like how Cantonese sounds more than Mandarin. As also I like Cantonese music. Regards. Saludos

[@chris_gangyi]

Es verdad, pero los norteños (de China) no les gusta escuchar eso.

[@pinkatyou888]

​@@chris_gangyi It's just personal interest, I also like how cantonese sounds in music because i grew up hearing those old cantonese music. But personally i like how the "standard" mandarin sounds, it sounds like poem. I am an overseas hakka chinese.

[@SnakePlissken-gk7ix]

I grew up speaking both Mandarin and Canto dialects. I just speak Mandarin to everyone even to my family in HK though they reply back in Canto. It just makes talking easier for me.

[@astrum5299]

As someone who speaks Cantonese and English at native levels and accents, the ㄘ(c) and ㄑ(q) initials remain the most difficult to differentiate even when consciously listening for it in everyday speech, let alone trying to replicate the difference in pronunciation. Cantonese speakers may also have a tendency to pronounce N sounds as L sounds because many of us do that even in Cantonese, to the point where it's not only generally accepted but, in some cases, is even more common. For example, when cursing at someone, 你 is rarely pronounced properly as nei5 but is more commonly pronounced like 理 (lei5). All of the examples used (你、努、能、年) also have an N initial consonant in Cantonese but are often mispronounced as L in common use, even by native speakers. This unfortunately carries over when we try to use the words in Mandarin.

[@arachnid4910]

Is it easier to learn Cantonese or mandarin, as an English native speaker?

[@astrum5299]

@@arachnid4910 Mandarin will be easier to learn for two big reasons, and not because of tones as many would say, as English doesn’t have any at all. Learning to differentiate 4-5 in Mandarin vs 6-9 in Cantonese will be difficult either way. There are significantly more learning resources available for Mandarin, especially for resources available in English. The romanization system for Mandarin is also far more standardized and easier to pick up than any of the romanization systems in Cantonese. The other, and perhaps even more significant, barrier is that written Cantonese is still relatively limited in use. Cantonese learners will have to learn the language as well as standard written Chinese, which have vastly different grammar structures and vocabulary.

[@majormorgue263]

随便来油管搜视频看，就看到up主的视频了，讲的可以啊，相当到位，加油

[@RonLarhz]

Is so nostalgic to hear canto speakers speak mandarin 🤣🤣🤣 All the hk movies we watch during childhood.

[@wenyuankuo5695]

Good presentation!

[@ddo5583]

omg yes so true, you make me laughed. It is so true because I speak Cantonese lol

[@a.m.4479]

Grace the best 🙌🏻

[@StanleyKN]

As a Cantonese, I am struggling with Cantonese words and Mandarin words all the time. Sometimes, I don't even understand how to pronounce the word in Mandarin, so I rely on Cantonese pinyin to transform the word into Mandarin. 😂😂😂

[@supertrouper]

I also wanted to add this as well that their way if speaking Mandarin has been heavily influence by their Cantonese language and another problem is many of the Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong that were born in the 1980s or earlier were never introduced to pinyin and not very good at learning to read it. And since Cantonese was the main medium of instruction before the 1997 handover, they were hardly exposed to Mandarin and when they learned to read Chinese characters, they were all in Cantonese and they just memorized the pronunciations of the Chinese words with no help of romanizations, therefore when it came to learning Mandarin later on for them, they just did it without the help of romanizations and figured they can just memorize the pronunciations just like they did with Cantonese and many of them have had hard times learning to speak Mandarin correctly without the help of pinyin and even if they try to use the pinyin system, they do not know how to read it the right way because they were never exposed to learning pinyin. Cantonese pinyin has always existed in books, but it was not highly formally taught in educational settings until like maybe the 1990s.

[@Ahmed-ob6ec]

Is Cantonese not the medium of instruction in Hong Kong?

[@supertrouper]

@@Ahmed-ob6ec It still is for the time being even though it was given back to China because it is under the one country two system government, therefore it is still like a separate country to some extent. Almost like how Puerto Rico and US Virgin islands are USA territories, but have their own separate local government. But now Mandarin is included along with Cantonese with the medium of instruction in Hong Kong, though some schools have entirely switched to Mandarin.

[@MillennialsafloatBlogspot2015]

Not entirely true. I was born in 80's and went through the education system until Form 3 before I left for another country. I vividly remember having PTH classes in my primary school and secondary school years, and we were drilled with the pinyin system all the way through. I have a feeling that it has more to do with what schools you go to vs. the education system as a whole, but I am pretty sure that the PTH curriculum has always been there since the late 80s and early 90s. You are correct that the main mode of communication before the 90's was in fact pretty much purely Cantonese. It is the lack of daily immersion and the need that our Mandarin gets rusty. That, plus even within native Cantonese speakers ourselves we are known to pronounce our words with "lazy tones" 懶音. The n/l and n/ng distinctions have always been our bane of existence even within Cantonese itself, and it very evidently gets transferred to our Mandarin speaking. The other influential factor is that we watched/listened to way more Taiwanese media than the Mainland media back in the days. Many pronunciations were influenced by them, e,g, for the 期 in 星期, I am more used to hearing 2nd tone vs 1st tone. Cantonese pinyin (jyutping) was non-existence in school curriculums in my days. Pretty sure it is still not something the schools actively teach nowadays.

[@zhen86]

In Singapore, the older gen can speak canto and mandarin and had never used pinyin to learn. Reason is they are expose to mandarin and will need to speak it. Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong never felt the need to speak mandarin until they have to work with "Taiwanese" or Mainlanders, which means they most likely learn after 20. P.S those older gen do not have Cantonese accent.

[@ww3k]

Very helpful! Thanks

[@ABChinese]

That girl that couldn't hold back from laughing is my spirit animal lol 3:14 😯🫢🤭😅🤣Why do they all sound so cute??

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

😂 I also like this accent!

[@Link4750]

As an American learning Mandarin from my wife, this sounded like a completely different dialect altogether! I think the “n” and “l” mixups plus omitting medials is what gets me lol

[@skwb1973]

It is these accents that makes all of us same same but different

[@광동아재廣東大叔]

I've been living in Guangzhou and Shenzhen for more than 20 years, which means you hear this kind of accent almost every day in the street. This has actually been greatly improved since the beginning of the 21st century. In fact, the proficiency of standard Mandarin mostly depends on one's academical background and age. This is also true for other dialect regions throughout China. There's an old saying that goes like this, namely " 天不怕，地不怕，只怕广东人说普通话 ". This is often used to denote the terrible accent here in Guangdong.

[@choisamwon2344]

Mandarin speakers commit more errors to speak Cantonese !

[@choisamwon2344]

@Helehelexx ____ Most Chinese people have not been educated to speak standard Mandarin. Like English, most speakers can not speak Royal English. No big deal at all to speak so-called accurate Mandarin in real life or in the world.

[@lloydhao4074]

that's it hahaha but actually there's little difference between Guangdong accent and Hong Kong accent

[@MrHkl8324]

@Helehelexx ____ vice versa.

[@MrHkl8324]

@Helehelexx ____ "Standard" just mean dialect with political power. But...it is never voted to be like that. So...it is just forced into your throat. Or, literally, forced out of your throat.

[@porschecarrera3684]

You can't imagine how funny it is to hear Mandarin speaker speaking Cantonese rofl. (I was born and raised in Hong Kong)

[@hawkins55]

一邊聽一邊覺得尷尬，聽到很多自己常犯的錯誤：）。不過想提出一點，廣東話“你”的聲母也是“n"，把“ni" 說成“li"不是廣東口音的問題。那些說“li"的人是因為他說廣東話的時候也說錯了，可能是懶音，把“你”說成“理”，“年”說成“連”，“難”說成“蘭“，所以他們說國語的時候把錯誤也搬過去。Most other words are mispronounced because, as you said, they simply used the cantonese pronunciations for Mandarin, perhaps raising the pitch a bit at times. :). Other issues are Cantonese and Mandarin place different emphases and tones on different parts of a sentence. So sometime it sounds funny hearing Cantonese speakers speaking Mandarin and vice versa. Individual words can be pronounced correctly by the tones/emphases/pitches can be off. To be fair, the people in the sample clips did exceptionally poorly! Very funny though!

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

我也觀察到懶音的現象，原本以為這是語言的演變（n跟l在廣東話裡合流之類的），現在才知道這算是一種發音錯誤。謝謝你的分享！

[@apple-on5pq]

應該是懶音的問題，就像“我”這個字 很多人都說錯

[@sourcecreator2222]

loved it. the accent is so cute.

[@commenter4898]

4:30 The guy (關聰) have been living in Taiwan for decades and in this clip he was being interviewed in Taiwan. His accent is a mix of Cantonese and Hokkien.

[@tyiu5629]

I also couldn't stop laughing. (I actually cringed so many times LOL). Thank you, Grace - Great video!!! People of my generation use to say something like this: 使乜學國語啫,廣東話講歪啲埋得囉. ;-) Many of the examples of mispronunciation in your video were literally HK celebs pronouncing Chinese words in Cantonese but with a messed up tone.

[@RoosterEmbargo]

In Sichuanese /n/ and /l/ sounds also exist as one sound, while being not exactly either of them.

[@Luofeng222]

Thanks for the video. This seems interesting knowing how Cantonese speaking mandarin 😤😅😅😎 no wonder whenever I am watching most Chinese videos I keep hearing strange pronunciation

[@alexparis4589]

My teacher 👩‍🏫🤗👌👍

[@Weeping-Angel]

I realize that sometimes, I would get the H and F sounds mixed up. For 文化, I said wénfà and for 花，I said fā😂

[@뿅기]

哈哈哈你可能是个福建人或者是台湾人

[@Weeping-Angel]

@@뿅기 我(算)是广东人😂

[@ryanr8121]

I work with a lot of clients from Fuzhou and they seem to have very similar pronunciation. I remember when I was first taking Mandarin. There was someone from Canton with a heavy accent. My first time hearing her say 老師早。 it sounded like 老洗澡。 I was like “old shower? “ 😅

[@cooknengr]

Fuzou has a long Ng sound..for example 明天 Min Tian, would be a MingTiang

[@vivaciousmyosotis]

Yes, my parents are fuzhounese and I see a lot of similarities. For example we also mix up the zh, ch, sh, and turn them into z, c, s. We also sometimes mix up n and l and h and f. Like tou fa as tou hua.

[@izzyneubs]

My boyfriend's father is from 福州 and I can literally never understand his Fuzhou accent when he speaks Mandarin. I feel so dumb 😭 it's just so different, especially the vocab and nasal sounds

[@waynechong5574]

U made me recall Cecilia Cheung sing "我要控寂我几几“

[@MissNulis]

Ooohhh waaaahh this is how many Indonesian Chinese speak too (if they can speak Mandarin). Because this simplifies the pronunciation. It is easier for me to understand the Cantonese speaker speaking Mandarin than Chinese mainland speaking Mandaring (such as is films). Also, the Cantonese they speak Mandarin a lil bit slower.

[@MishalMehdi-m2h]

As a Chinese learner, I'm kinda scared to talk to Cantonese accented Mandarin Speakers now, but then again, I can still understand, but I have to work twice as hard.

[@chengyanslc]

Wow this is comprehensive

[@GameFuMaster]

7:17 she's just straight up speaking Cantonese at this point lol, saying "yao hong". Which is basically how that is read in Cantonese

[@zaihaiyang4156]

好好学习，天天向上！

[@Maplecook]

I work with a lot of Cantonese people, and can speak it myself. I can tell you this much: you will have a hard time finding another group of people who will learn a foreign language to such complete fluency, and yet still insist on using only phonemes from their native language. That is, (not all, of course) Canto speakers will MASTER (say, for example) English, get really good at speaking it hella quickly, but all the sounds will still be wrong for English. Examples: "Cold," becomes, "code." "Video," becomes, "weejo." "Birthday," becomes, "burfday." When getting into an argument, it becomes next-level: "Yudohnno wut chew tokking Esso!"

[@aleman1788]

This happens in other languages when there are native speakers in a language that isn't the state language. Like in Spain there are around 8 languages, and when people speak Spanish, their native language changes their Spanish pronunciation. Some people accept it and don't try to change it, and some people might, but it's a spectrum.

[@pandabugdiaries2384]

this is a really interesting video! I didn't notice a lot of the things in the clips until you mentioned it (I need to work on my listening a lot), hopefully I can use this to improve my mandarin pronunciation. I actually noticed that a lot of my second generation classmates (American Born Chinese) in Chinese class seem to make similar pronunciation mistakes when it comes to the sh --> s sounds.

[@salvadorsanchez5057]

im always curious about how you find the demonstrative video examples. do you stumble upon them when watching tv, or do you actively search for them somehow?

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

I actually actively search for those clips. It can take quite a bit of time to find good examples though! 😅

[@huaiwei]

@@GraceMandarinChinese can imagine you having to watch hours of these shows just to catch clear samples of those few words. ;)

[@wsudance85]

I also heard in 有空, the 空 being pronounced as ㄏㄨㄥ.

[@fantomgo6925]

5:02 he also said ngo not wo because the pronoun I in Cantonese is similar to Mandarin.

[@jw1731]

yep in that case he was straight up using Cantonese

[@clankb2o5]

Hi Grace, there were two more things that I noticed in the video and I am wondering whether they're also accent-related. The pronunciation of you-kòng that is given in the video is actually hòng with an h. It might be hypercorrection because certain words in Mandarin have h while they still have k in Cantonese. Similarly, huì is pronounced as wèi (at least to my ears), and this might be related to the fact that certain Cantonese words have w where their Mandarin cognate has hu, such as wang vs. huáng. If I ever reach fluency in Mandarin I'd love to learn another Chinese language... possibly Cantonese, maybe Shanghainese... but fluency in Mandarin is already borderline wishful thinking :')

[@chris_gangyi]

Interesting. Now I understand why people in KL say yi den den （一点点）

[@ShenShen88]

For XYZ reasons I learned cantonese before learning mandarin. And when I ended up learning mandarin years later, it was a bit of a challenge at first. My brain would always reference the cantonese... which really is not that helpful. Interestingly, later on I found out that in some cases knowing one would help me better understand the other.

[@misubi]

Oh yes, as a Cantonese speaker, listening to fellow Cantonese speakers in Mandarin is one of life's great pains.

[@Jellyfish999]

Awesome your English is great. How did you learn it.

[@Quadraginta1337]

I’m ABC and I primarily speak English. I’ve been trying to reconnect with Cantonese and also I just started picking up Mandarin. I can’t imagine how horribly American-Cantonese (AmeriCantonese?) my Mandarin must sound.

[@KinHallen]

Lots of Cantonese speakers mix up n and l even when speaking Cantonese. Like 你 is pronounced nei5 but most but most say lei5 so I'm not surprised they do the same when speaking Mandarin.

[@anisaguine]

I think this is so ubiquitous that it's more an accent than an error. Just like saying "ya" instead of "you" in English...

[@馬珮瑄-v1e]

有趣！很喜歡！ 還想看客家人跟台語人講話的accent分析！

[@hectoralvarado9359]

Very very good examples.I am a Cantonese and a Mandarin learner.Ibwas told by a Mandarin language exchange that I have a Cantonese accent hahahahahaha.I am fluent in Spanish and English but he way.Spanish being my native tongue but I have been raised and bred in NY city.So am more fluent in English.Go figure haahjaha

[@JulianCipher-gr4qz]

10:38 My man straight up just spoke Cantonese for a moment.

[@33hunting]

Young Cantonese people in Guangdong can speak Mandarin without the accent now due to the Mandarin education. In fact, they don't speak Cantonese anymore or they speak terrible Cantonese. Only the old people have accent.