ONE sentence, THREE different Mandarin accents

Struggling to understand Chinese outside of the classroom? While Chinese teachers typically speak slowly and clearly, in daily life, people often speak quickly and with a variety of accents. This video aims to improve your listening skills by introducing different Chinese accents, including Northern, Southern, and Taiwanese.
⭐️ Our amazing guests for today:
- ShuoshuoChinese: youtube.com/@ShuoshuoChinese?...
- Mandarin Melon: youtube.com/@themandarinmelon...
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| Learning Resources 📝 |
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▪️15 Must-Know Chinese Slang → gum.co/OPXqS
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▪️ 78 common components of Chinese characters → gracemandarinchinese.com/the-...
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﹝Real-life Chinese﹞
→ Understand FAST Chinese Conversations: is.gd/MBJOGm
→ 20 Chinese Slang You Need to Know: is.gd/YaS9MT
→ Understanding Different Mandarin Accents: is.gd/tI0aZe
→ TOP 5 Chinese Filler Words in Everyday Speech: is.gd/ZhmbJL
→ 15 COMMON Interjections in Mandarin: is.gd/a19K6Q
Japanese subtitles provided by Andrew Haynes. Many thanks for his outstanding work and assistance
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Some of the materials in this video include content from MotionElements.com
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[@IKEMENOsakaman]

I lived in Taiwan for 4 years and studied Mandarin. Last year, I moved to Beijing, and I could understand absolutely nothing the first two weeks! It was as if my brain was melting! Now I'm used to the "er" and "sh" sounds, but in the beginning, it was such a linguistical culture shock!

[@sususegar]

You're not the only one. Even other overseas Chinese who may consider themselves as native speakers could occasionally encounter confusing moments in Beijing too.

[@viapuso1967]

No worries. I am Taiwanese and sometimes I have to ask my Qindao friend to slow down and say it again😂.

[@airi7004]

ここで“Ben”-sanを会ってびっくりしたわ〜〜！お久しぶりです！昨年から今までべんさんのチャンネルのの大阪弁の動画がめちゃくちゃ好きで、よく見ています. Actually, I spent some time in Taiwan during the last few years too before moving to the US. I really like the Taiwanese accent because it reminds me of my grandparents. I traveled to Osaka this past year and I loved feeling the warmth and friendliness of Osakans. Your videos continue to help many language learners around the world! Good luck with your Mandarin language learning and I hope you stay happy and healthy 😊🐙🍡

[@class6aa]

⁠@@sususegar😂😂😂😂 my singaporean boss went to Beijing and one can understand her Chinese

[@user-rt6ip4kb1i]

@@class6aayou mean no one?

[@rsainz1296]

Everyone is different. For me, the Taiwanese accent is the easiest to understand and the northern the hardest. But I listen to all of them because I want to learn! Thank you for the examples 😊

[@kame9]

same for me even i dont know nothing from chinese or mandarin, just few words and always hear chinese in shops or restaurants

[@smoothbanana]

I learned Beijing Mandarin first. Going to Taiwan I couldn't catch what most people were saying. But after a few years dedicated to Taiwanese Mandarin, I then realised I developed the same problem with (non-Southern) Chinese from China. Now I feel more comfortable with both. It's all about training your ears/brain, and for most of us, it just takes (a lot of) time.

[@jonathanmatthews8862]

Every English speaker I have spoken with has agreed that the Taiwanese accent is the easiest for us to understand. Maybe some English speakers disagree but I haven’t met any yet.

[@tzatzikiv812]

Yeah, I find the Taiwanese accent the easiest to understand, too! 😊

[@pharmaceuticalsnow]

Northern hardest ? Haha I did not expect that, I thought northern Chinese is super easy to understand but I am northern Chinese🥲 Didn’t realize it was so hard to understand

[@xuexizhongwen]

There can be some big differences in accents, but in these particular examples from these particular speakers, the differences were very small.

[@erotzoll]

Exactly my impression. That isn't surprising since all three are teaching Mandarin

[@eslnoob191]

As someone who has lived in China for almost 15 years, I agree that the differences in their accents were minimal. I live in Southern China, so the southern accent sounded most familiar to me and I only felt a little bit "weird" listening to the girl with the northern accent in like two sentences. @@erotzoll

[@mirandazhang1359]

Yeah, among older Chinese people, provincial accents can sound like completely different languages. For younger people though, I think this is generally accurate

[@missalicesmiles]

As someone who isn't a native Mandarin speaker because my family speaks a different dialect of Chinese, I really can't tell at all After they started emphasizing the er for the northern accent, it becomes a little more obvious. I'm more used to hearing Beijing people using a very obvious er lol

[@ceemartin5624]

Yep, they sounded exactly the same.

[@jaredf6205]

Finally! A real accent comparison video! This so perfect. Every time i try and find comparison if accents in other languages, all they do is list words that are different in each area. Like no lol, thats not what accent means, i want to hear the same words spoken with different accents. Thank you for this!

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

I’m glad you like the idea! 🥳

[@alexanderkenway]

I lived in Beijing for 7 years and that was the first Mandarin I was ever exposed to. Can you believe my shock when I realized that other parts of China don't speak like pirates lol. I still love the Beijing accent though and find it the most appealing to my ears

[@JustLIkerapunzel]

Same! Althou I did not live THAT long in Beijing, I am mostly used to that accent and I actually struggle with other ones a bit more.

[@lingfengge6666]

I'm a Beijinger, and I was also shocked when I moved to the south for university and heard how they speak. I was so mad that some university lecturers spoke poor Mandarin and confused me a lot during lectures.

[@6Euphoria6]

Pirates 😂😂

[@fuqwytes6458]

it's only "pirates" because you're white and that's what you're used to in movies

[@lapprentice]

For me, Cantonese sounds more appealing to me. Mandarin sounds way way too rough.

[@themandarinmelon]

谢谢 Grace!! Thank u for inviting me and your time to script/film/edit!! I love our video so much(and needless to say I love all of your videos haha!🥳😍

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

Thank you Melody! 💕💕 I really appreciate your participation🥰

[@mafen7600]

This kind of video is really helpful. Same sentence, 3 persons, 3 accents. Please more, I appreciate it.

[@mariarak8328]

I think the Southern accent is the most standard, the Taiwanese, Southern accent were pretty similar in this video, the Northern one used er hua so it was the most distinct. I think if you study Chinese in Beijing and can understand er hua then you can easily understand southern Chinese but if you learn in Southern China then you won't necessarily understand er hua.

[@nemesisurvivorleon]

Taiwan essentially IS southern CHINA, I imagine tons of southerners originally formed 'Taiwan' in the first place.

[@johnmongver]

I need subtitles to understand Taiwanese accents sometimes. I studied in northern China.

[@Checkmate1138]

Not true! As someone who thought the southern accent is easier to understand, now having lived in Beijing for 4 years I believe it's harder for me to understand Southern accents (especially Taiwan) compared to Dongbei accents. By the way, technically Beijing "putonghua" is the correct standard for modern "Standard Mandarin", in the same way "neutral American English" is the standard (in quotes) for how American English should sound. Beijing dialect is the basis for how Mandarin became standardized across the whole country for mutual intelligibility.

[@KinLee919]

For most southern Chinese, mandarin is not their mother tongue, so we try to pronounce every word like what we have learned from school. For Beijinger and other northerners, their dialects are too similar to standard mandarin, so many times they wouldn't legalized they were speaking dialects.

[@soundman6645]

@@Checkmate1138, Just like the Americans think they speak standard english, the Northern Chinese think they speak standard Chinese, in reality neither are true. The Americans do not speak or spell "English" it is an aboration, likewise the majoroty of Chinese speakers sound nothing like the Bejing dialect of mandarin.

[@browsingtheinternetwhilena7665]

If someone speaks standard, I can have a conversation about nearly any topic with nearly 100% comprehension. And yet, I can't understand more than 5% of 90% of speakers. This is the #1 most difficult part of learning Mandarin. After HSK6 and years of speaking with standard mandarin speakers, when you head to China you still won't understand anything. The accents DRASTICALLY change their vocabulary and pronunciation, it's more intense than any other language I've ever learned. Even though this video is meant to show different accents, I feel like you guys innately knew this was a video and still adjusted your speech. Having lived in Tianjin, Beijing, Chengdu, the average person seems to simply not speak the mandarin that is taught

[@phelyxz]

😮

[@xuexizhongwen]

There is simply no way that you aren't hugely over-exaggerating. I doubt there's a single person in the world who can talk about "nearly any topic" in ANY language. Do you have any idea how many possible topics there are? If you can do that even in your native language with "nearly 100% comprehension", you would be considered extremely intelligent. Anyway, I'm curious: did you never listen to natural speech at any time during your learning? Because that's the only way i can imagine that you would have such an extreme gap in your comprehension.

[@flysmask]

Nah mate, it's culture, you can learn the language but you can't learn the culture. I never traveled out of Beijing, but I have few to no problem understanding people from other regions as long as they are speaking mandarin. Sometimes even if the vocabulary is different I can pick up their meaning. I guess familiarity of culture makes me pick up sub-context easily. It's like this, you don't need to be Australian, but when you hear an Australian say sheila or fair dinkum, you immediately get it. But try it with a second language person, no matter how many exams they pass, I don't think they can pick it up as easily.

[@doujinflip]

The different regional pronunciations are a big reason why China and its neighbors historically relied so much on written characters, because at least then the meanings remained consistent 🈶

[@smoothbanana]

You're far from being the only one. My dad is fluent in Malaysian Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien. He still can't understand many people from China's north. These 3 lovely ladies are also speaking very clearly. But of course, they are KZbin language teachers. I do find the deeper tone of men to be much harder to catch too.

[@lennyuniverse]

Love the concept of the vid. As many have pointed out, the three accents can sound quite different from one another if they're more exaggerated. Here, they all have close to standard accents, which makes sense because they are young and also Mandarin teachers. From personal experience growing up around Fujianese and Taiwanese folk, there's definitely a lot of words and sounds we pronounce differently. Ex., f -> h, sh -> s, zh -> z are common shifts.

[@Slothian-ry3hf]

This is the collab I've been waiting for! I watch all three of these channels ❤

[@prestonchaunsumlit6055]

Outlier here. Northern was easiest for me in vibe and pacing, maybe due to the way i learned as a kid. To my novice ears, Southern had a lot more inflection and sass; and Taiwanese was slurred, kinda drunk but cute. The Northern accent here felt clean and concise to me almost neutral. However, there are some INSANE Northern accents that have where i thought…it was some tungustic or mongol dynasty talk.

[@smoothbanana]

What you hear as a kid makes a huge difference. I grew up on the Simpsons. It made understanding several non-native English accents easier. The first time I met an American I could understand everything they said. On the other hand, I lasted 2 days in Texas before I put on a faux American accent because it seemed like every 2nd person couldn't understand what I was saying, even something simple as ordering fries at McDonalds.

[@chiarab1640]

I was a bit disappointed by the northern accent too, it sounded so clear lol

[@prestonchaunsumlit6055]

@@chiarab1640 right!? Considering northern accents have such a reputation. Perhaps its the lack of media coming from there the last century? Was just in Penang, Chinese Malaysian version of Mandarin: kinda insane and super cute, perhaps Hokkien and Cantonese influence? It didnt sound like "Taiwanese Mandarin" as expected.

[@Jumpoable]

@@smoothbanana Did you say um Fray-unch fraaah-zzz in Texas?

[@Jumpoable]

All them RRRrrrrrrrr in Northern IS Mongol talk.

[@genace]

I like this concept. Putting sound examples one after another is a good way to compare different accents. Also, Merry Christmas!

[@yazars]

This was fun! I wish that many Chinese classes would teach more than the Northern accent. The variety is nice. Watching your other videos helped to highlight some of the differences shown here. I think regardless of region or accent, teachers speak in the upper percentile of clarity, so the enunciation was clear and understandable for everyone.

[@smoothbanana]

Though Melody's last sentence still got me. Even in slomo my mind doesn't register the meaning.

[@_human_1946]

> I wish that many Chinese classes would teach more than the Northern accent They already are. Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing accent, which is a northern accent.

[@thastayapongsak4422]

@@_human_1946 "Teach more than the Northern accent" means "teach other accents that is not Northern."

[@johnrobinson3117]

I really appreciate how you sold that final sentence with subtle acting and prop work.

[@DWayne-ne5yh]

The Taiwan accent sounds so nice and smooth. Not as harsh with the curled tongue or R sounds. I prefer it

[@stex477]

Most Southern Chinese don't curl their tongue or pronounce R sounds unless on very formal occasions. It's okay to leave the R sound if you are a beginner.

[@albertdittel8898]

most awful sounding accent in the world! Yew!

[@theculturedkidlanguages]

Such a helpful video! Understanding different accents can be a real challenge, so it's great to see a lesson tackling this. Thanks for sharing!

[@sunsetandmoonlight5479]

Thank you for this video ! Accents are so interesting and so important to learn ! I hope you consider turning this kind of video into a series 🤩🙏!

[@smoothbanana]

Seconded! Great way to condition the brain to different ways of saying the same thing.

[@_human_1946]

It would be interesting to see some more extreme accents. The people in this video are more-or-less speaking standard Mandarin, but some places have some pretty hard accents. They're more common among old people, who didn't grow up around standard Mandarin.

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

Which accent is easier/harder for you to understand? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments! - ❤ Our amazing guests for today: - ShuoshuoChinese: youtube.com/@ShuoshuoChinese?si=FXxV1nvxbS-Dy3sA Mandarin Melon: youtube.com/@themandarinmelon?si=CyggloqHWE9d7aVJ

[@taniadisuria3653]

I prefer the Southern Chinese. I think northern is harder to to er-hua.

[@AshinAsia]

Great video as always, nice to see you and Shuoshuo 老師 working together. I'll check out Melon next, I've not seen her before.

[@phelyxz]

this video was very interesting for me! southern chinese is definetely easiest for me. i think that is because i lived in yunnan and also because i watched shuoshuos videos the most so far. when studying chinese at he university in kunming it confused me so much that they tried to teach us that beijing way of speaking... that definitely did not help me learn the language.

[@isailecter3155]

Thank you for the video. I'm not gonna lie, I like the southern Chinese and taiwan accent 😂, the northen Er Hua sounds pretty cool though

[@alant367]

Taiwanese is the hardest

[@shawnhelton7653]

My mandarin is non-existant but.... this was quite interesting. I feel like the northern one sounded more different to me while southern and Taiwan sounded a bit more similar.

[@Nitekom]

Well, Taiwan IS in the SOUTHeast after all...

[@XianWangTheo]

taiwanese are actually mostly has south ancestries from fujian also the southern uses to speaks nan jing mandarin, which is what taiwanese also uses speaks when KMT moves to taiwan

[@joeonnmalaysia]

As a Malaysian, our Mandarin is very different compared to all these examples, nouns used and word order are quite different, but our accent is definitely more Southern without the 儿

[@wildswan221]

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing!

[@slamdunk406]

Great content as always! All three are great KZbinrs!

[@chaselizabeth]

THE COLLAB IVE BEEN WAITING FORRRR

[@littlecrabeducationalpress2332]

Ahh! So cool to see you all together!

[@es4666]

This is fantastic. It is so helpful as ear training. Thank you.

[@z1.7725]

This is amazing, thank you!!

[@xiangru7490]

taiwanese accent is soooooooooo cute

[@Verbalaesthet]

What I noticed very much, also when I lived in China, is that the R sound is different in North and South. It's like an R in the South and like a J in the North. I thought most of the rest was pretty similar though. Not too hard to understand any of it.

[@smoothbanana]

That doesn't always seem to be the case. My dad from Malaysia - parents originally from Fujian - pronounces things like re4 (hot) as je4

[@theSpian1]

@@smoothbanana might be because it's pronounced djuah in Hokkien

[@smoothbanana]

@@theSpian1 Nice

[@data3206]

Hey Bro, I'm also often confused with the R. The yoyo pinyin table says it's spelled J, for example re2n = je2n. but even my mandarin teacher speak it different. My classmates often not able to speak either of it, they say like "when". 😄 Anyway, I will stick to the J since my taiwanese coworkers also spell it like that.

[@davidb2059]

Great concept, thank you!

[@r.brandt2246]

This is a bit comforting, because it makes me slightly less worried about weird pronunciations I might have from my accent, but it's also a little annoying knowing that I'm probably not going to be able to understand someone if they have an accent I haven't heard before.

[@KinLee919]

As native Chinese, even we can't understand half the words if we go vacation to another parts of China, everybody have accents, so don't stress out.

[@florianmaier104]

...until you get the real hard ones... those are like the differences in educated people where 那 is na or nei and a few 儿 put in. If you speak to street vendors and such you will get a much wider variety.

[@rasa5343]

This video is great! It's nice to hear fast speech in a variety of accents. If you did a video like this again, I would like if you could play the accented clips before the slow one with the pinyin.. that way we could try to see if we can understand the fast speech before seeing the slowed down version.

[@Soyokaze404-yc1dt]

I lived in China for over 6 years in Jiangsu Province. So to me, ShuoShuo sounds "normal", but you and Mandarin Melon are the ones with an accent hahaha. But of course, I met a lot of Dongbei and Shandong people there, as well as a few people from Taiwan, and from all over China. So I've heard so many different accents from China. The ones to watch out for though are people from Fujian! They might confuse people new to Mandarin.

[@Jumpoable]

OMG. Basically anybody from Fujian (& that includes all the people with Fujian ancestry who have moved to Taiwan/ Malaysia/ Singapore)... they THINK they're speaking standard Mandarin but actually they're just speaking Hokkien! LAAAWL.

[@lyah3550]

What a great collaboration!

[@famouscurls5323]

LOVE THIS CONTENT THANK U

[@jellysalsa]

This video is great! I’ve been living in Taiwan for 14 years and am still learning mandarin. The problem has been that all the online teachers and apps I use are mostly from the mainland with mostly a southern accent along with some northern accents - different than Taiwan, so of course I have a very difficult time understanding Taiwanese speaking Mandarin. I would love to hear more sentences with the Taiwan accent done the way you did in this video.

[@iamnotfooled]

Very interesting and informative. Hope to see more of such videos

[@hukmai]

I don't speak mandarin but what I noticed Beijing has a hard er or tongue tip to soft palette sounds, southern accent soft, airy,and flat tongue to soft palette, and Taiwanese has a distinct soft palette take off with high inflection upward like a single word question

[@Nandinandito]

Thank you so much for this! The only thing, that I would ask is if you could separate each subtitle. For example, both of the last 我明天晚上有空 have the same subtitles, this makes it harder to make flashcards out of with Migaku.

[@studiohq]

This was pretty amazing

[@tronix4732]

Love the collab 🤩

[@rattlesnake1ful]

Melody always makes my day better with her smile 😊 you 3 woman are amazing, and I owe you all so much for helping me learn mandarin!!

[@themandarinmelon]

🥰谢谢！

[@dennysschmid3078]

Surely there are some differences in pronunciation but considering how huge of a territory Mandarin spans this sounds surprisingly similar to me. There are probably more dialects and some regionally used words and expressions, but still, the surprising thing for me are not those differences but rather the similarities.

[@jensjakobknudsen]

These are quite helpful

[@kenja_no_ishi]

Very interesting, thank you. Your Taiwanese accent here is really clean, not like most I've come upon so far that pronounce zh/ch/sh like z/c/s. My language tandem partner from 广东 also does that. I really have a hard time with that, because one then has to pay attention to the context even more than already necessary... (I'm currently watching "不良執念清除師" and many have that kinda accent there T_T).

[@yxeanget-any]

many in the comment section said southern mandarin is more standard. but mandarin (北方官话) literally means northern dialect or 'northern official language', and is the most widely spoken form of chinese. theres no such thing as southern mandarin being more standard because southern provinces have their own respective dialects like cantonese, hakka or hokkien etc. and they are just trying their best to speak the true northern standard mandarin with a bit of accent from their dialects. northern chinese arent equivalent to americans, but british. and more importantly northern mandarin speakers are the majority. they stretch all the way from sichuan in southwest china to manchuria in the northeast. modern mandarin standardization is also done in regions from hebei province to somewhere in manchuria.

[@linderoes7832]

But Mandarin Standardization mainly completed by Southern Chinese especially Wu Chinese native speakers.

[@oliverq9793]

I think the first pronunciation is prettier and easier to understand (northern accent)

[@RumanShihab1334]

Very helpful ❤

[@NorseGraphic]

Ohh, this reminds me of my own language (Norwegian). There are dialects making it almost impossible for non-natives to understand, if they learn _bokmål._ So, learning there are dialects within Mandarin is understandable.

[@ellen5276]

I just wrote about Norwegian in reply to another comment! Totally! And Norwegian is a pitch accent language so we are use to the importance of tones. I have found knowing Norwegian SO helpful in learning Chinese.

[@ollieanntan4478]

This is such a cool video!

[@SeanHogan_frijole]

This is brilliant.

[@WideCuriosity]

That was interesting. By & large I didn't note that much difference between the three, the main bits seemed similar to me; although much faster than the initial teaching version. However it has convinced me that those years of daily lessons with Duolingo, that I gave up some years back, seem not to have stuck !

[@speakonwithhanna]

I lovvvveee this. I hope I can see more videos like this!! 🤩🤩🤘🤘🤘

[@merccat67]

I found it interesting how 不 is often rolled into the subsequent word as a single syllable (i.e. 不要 and 不好). This was a fascinating video and a reminder of how much further I have to go 😂

[@yes12337]

I didn't know Mandarin has such distinct accents. The southern one is really pretty, because it's very melodic. Chinese is a nice language

[@Jumpoable]

Are you aware that English has accents. Even within the UK, there are almost 40 accents. A massive country like China as big as Europe with a population of 1,442,965,000 speak with just ONE accent...??? LAAAAAAAWL.

[@LukaiKyle]

Grace 好，謝謝分享！ 很有趣的影片，尤其是說可以聽到你們三位的不同連音方式，例如【明天】、【多少】、【現在】、等。

[@Jessica-kx2zg]

I’m from Hangzhou and all of them are easy to understand, though almost everyone asked me if I was from Taiwan after they heard me say some words, I told them I just always spending time with friends from there.

[@SaepulBAHRI474]

I'm indonesian, very grateful to learn mandarin thru ur channel. Pls keep it up...

[@ChannelFiend]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS VIDEO!!!! I seriously thought I was the problem. Why am I able to understand some Chinese speakers but not others? Why does it sound like the speaker is combining words/ sounds when I am over here pronouncing every word and syllable? This was so helpful!!! Thank You!!!!!!!!!😊

[@sebastianandresjarafritz7446]

hi all, i'm fro. Chile and this is unvaluable, this is gold! thank you all and i love you mandarinmelon

[@DeluLuana]

I have some family from southwrstern China who moved to Taiwan, and I was wondering about the accents! Thank you for making this!!!

[@Iseeization]

Interesting! All the accents were understandable to me (an ABT), but I could tell there were certain things about the Northern accent that were weird to me (like the er). When I heard the Hunan accent though, it just seemed so much clearer. I couldn't really tell the difference between Southern Chinese and Taiwanese, but overall I would say the Taiwanese accent sounds more "natural" to me.

[@whitepham1824]

Your videos always make people remember longer, not like other quick videos

[@ramirobriseno3353]

If you are learning this video is very valuable

[@anw9485]

Interesting video! This is actually something I wasn't really aware of until my 20's. I was born and raised in the US but my parents are Cantonese-speaking from S. China. I speak Cantonese and learned Mandarin when I was young from our Taiwanese nanny. So when I spoke Mandarin as an adult, people always said I spoke with a Taiwanese accent. To be honest, from the video I can't tell much a difference between the S. China and Taiwanese accents.

[@chauquach4199]

谢谢，这个很有帮助的❤

[@josephmak0865]

Thank you for slowing down the northern accent to illustrate the northern "兒”. I cannot tell any difference between southern and Taiwan. But I think Grace的聲音最好聽

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

No problem! 😉 Yes Taiwanese accents are pretty similar to Southern Chinese accents but we still have a few pronunciation differences. I've talked about some of them in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rJXPZ4Rjh6ilaKs

[@josephmak0865]

謝謝！ 每個老師的video也看過了. Next time you can invite other 2 teachers for a short Zoom call for some real, longer conversation. Then illustrate differences. Oh that maybe video editing nightmare

[@AshinAsia]

I was in guangxi last month and the Mandarin accent isn't much different to my ears. (I'm in Taiwan)

[@ImmersiveChinesewithLuyang]

Great video❤ From my experience, when it comes to siblings, people always ask: “你们家就你一个？”. I am from northern part of China and I guess because of one child policy，people normally assume that you are the only child.

[@taniadisuria3653]

Hi Luyang!

[@ImmersiveChinesewithLuyang]

@@taniadisuria3653 Wow😳you are such a dedicated mandarin learner

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

原來如此！謝謝你的補充！☺

[@miriamruth0701]

this makes me think that all the chinese tv/movies ive seen had mostly northern celebrities in them because that's the accent im most familiar with

[@gobystalker]

My wife is from Leizhou originally. When we visited her family in Zhenjiang this year my limited Mandarin was virtually useless. Not only are there different accents but their conversations were usually in Cantonese or a Leizhouhua dialect!

[@Jumpoable]

Learn Leizhouhua & impress your in-laws!

[@gobystalker]

@@Jumpoable ha ha! They would be impressed. But I am afraid my learning would be very shallow and run aground if there was a follow-up question.

[@ShenShen88]

I already knew of Melody's and Shuo's channel. Glad to have ran into yours. I think it's a great initiatives but I personally think the accents were too light. Not really aligned with my experience speaking mandarin with North, South and Taiwanese friends. That being said, it's good to bring some attention to that as it can be a challenge for new students of the language.

[@ActivelyMike]

Your videos are so helpful! Thank you!

[@GraceMandarinChinese]

Thank you for your support Mike! ✨

[@MrGanbat84]

woow. love this video. very useful. i am live in beatuful Shanghai

[@andypierce6593]

Big fan of shuo’s channel (as well as yours, of course) A couple comments from my Taiwanese wife who was listening over my shoulder. 1) mainlanders never say some of these things :) 2) All the Taiwanese she knows who say “have you eaten yet” go with the Tai Yu “Ja Ba Bwei” 3) (from me) - did I hear a 多ㄦ come out of Grace’s mouth? 😂

[@awxangel6781]

To 3) it sounded like a drop of the initial consonant "sh". Sounded like duo 'ao qian. Same thing happened at the start, ~3.10 with ming tian becoming ming'ian (interestingly, this is where the Northern speaker went for ming'r)

[@mairini7485]

about point #2, it depends from where u are, grew up with! I lived with my grandma so I heard my grandma say this a lot, since she only says Tai Yu. My mom and I converse in Mandarin more, 1% of when we say Tai Yu is when I’m learning Tai Yu with her, or food names. I feel like Taipei is filled with more young people, so they speak Tai Yu less than where I grew up, which is Taichung.

[@edhsiu]

Personally I like the Taiwanese accent (but hey thats what I grew up listening to my parents speak, so I'm biased...). The southern accent isn't too far off the Taiwanese accent.

[@lyhthegreat]

the south is a big place, a shanghai person would speak mandarin differently from someone from fujian and gunagdong/guangxi..

[@MrNeilTV]

I’ve been learning mandarin going on 3 years, for me the hardest part will always bring keep up with the speed of conversation lol. A lot of times when I’m out with my Chinese friends I tend to be quiet as it takes me a lot longer to translate in my head and correlate a response haha, can’t wait till the language becomes second nature.

[@curtsheldon2655]

Great video!

[@MrE_YT]

Outlier here, I found the northern accent the most easy to understand, but I understood them all about equally. Mandarin is my first language by a few days/weeks, but I’m more of a heritage speaker as I live in the USA.

[@danshakuimo]

As a heritage speaker I find the Southern Chinese/Taiwanese accent most easy to understand but the Northern chinese speaker here is easy to understand as well. However, I've heard some really funky Chinese accents that are completely different from those featured here (all while in the US lol).

[@pharmaceuticalsnow]

Yes me too

[@FSM_Reviews]

@@danshakuimo Are you sure those funky accents aren't just people who can't enunciate properly? I moved from China to the US when I was 3; even though I lost most of the vocabulary, I still retain a perfect Northern accent since we speak Mandarin at home.

[@danshakuimo]

​@@FSM_Reviews I think they are accents from people from other remote parts of China such as Yunnan and places in the west. There was a guy at my high school that when speaking Chinese made it sound like Korean. Like the pacing of the words isn't even remotely close to this vid lol. The people I'm referring to are people who just came from China, not people who lived here a long time or were born here. But we get people from all over China so I get to hear a wide variety of accents.

[@FSM_Reviews]

@@danshakuimo Interesting! I guess then China must have unique accents for all four corners of the compass, similar to how accents vary in the US as you travel east to west, north to south.

[@rogerphillips7270]

The variation between these three accents isn’t too hard. The Sichuan one is really tough compared to these three. (The variation of English accents over short distances is probably greater than the variation between these three Mandarin ones.)

[@PNWPawsPathsPad]

I learnt mandarin in Singapore and I can understand southern and Taiwanese accents but struggle with the northern accent

[@Jehraldeen]

They all sound the same to me 😅 Just like 3 different people speaking, I can’t pick out any accents.

[@AquaEclipse324]

1:11 - Disclaimer - Pronunciations are in order: Standard, Northern, Southern, Taiwanese 1:29 - Hi, hello! It's great to see you! 1:47 - Hey, long time no see! How have you been recently? 2:06 - I've been a little busy lately. 2:23 - Sorry, I'm in a hurry. 2:40 - When are you free? 2:56 - I'm free tomorrow night. 3:12 - Are you from around here? 3:22 - Do you have any siblings? 3:35 - It's okay, don't worry about it. 3:53 - Excuse me, can I get through, please? 4:05 - Can you wait for me a moment? 4:22 - Can I give it a try? 4:34 - Sorry to trouble you! 4:48 - Let's catch up next time! 5:00 - Thank you for inviting us to come! 5:13 - You're too kind! 5:25 - Is this thing yours? 5:38 - Have you eaten yet? Would you like to grab something to eat together? 5:56 - May I ask, how much is that? 6:10 - I don't have cash on me right now. Can I pay by card? 6:32 - Outro

[@AS-wi6hr]

I'm not serious in learning Chinese, I just watch some KZbin videos some now and then, also look up words in dictionary and Youglish (it's a website that searches KZbin's subtitles for a given text and then you can hear the pronunciation of the word in the sentence obviously) I've just strated watching this video but I'm very interested to see what will happen 😀 how different will they sound!? and I'm obsessed with getting the fundamental sounds right (I've also watched Grace's videos on "sounds" in Chinese) ... ... so far, which is extremely early stages (not yet covered all the sounds) sometimes "x" sounds more like "s" and sometimes it's closer to "sh" 😕 ... so we'll see! 🤓... by the way, maybe it's not a bad approach after all, let me pronounce a word or two that I know correctly now that I'm on it. After all the sounds are the most fundamental building blocks of saying something.

[@letsgowalk]

To me, Taiwanese is the most flowing, best sounding Mandarin. The southern Mandarin sounds pretty similar to Taiwanese, but with subtle more abrupt, less flowing endings and more precise pronunciations. Perhaps this is due to the Cantonese influence?

[@bitnadolee5297]

no, the teacher is from Hunan, has nothing to do with Cantonese. Cantonese accent doesnt sound like this either😊

[@letsgowalk]

@@bitnadolee5297 Hunan is right next to Canton though. I watch Mango TV, and they play Cantonese stuff all the time.

[@nathanalexander5772]

fascinating to hear you say it in a sequence. I was struck by how the ending of each sentence tends to be higher in the northern accent, lower in the southern accent, and lowest in the Taiwan accent. Also, in my foreign learner opinion, women usually speak more clearly than men. You should do this video again with a male from Beijing. That's almost a completely different accent from any of you three!

[@rickrandazzo]

When I first met my wife (Chinese lady), she had a British accent, after 10 years she now has a Texas accent :D

[@denisek7]

Thank you, very interesting and useful 🙏 謝謝你們~

[@Joyful_Mandarin_Story]

Hi, If you want to learn Chinese with the Bible, please check out my channel😊 thank you!

[@johnsoloninka322]

Lovely!!!!

[@dtcharo]

The first two sentences the Northern speaker was easier to understand but once the 兒化 kicked in the Southern and Taiwanese speakers were easier to understand. Maybe it's just me but anything that included 們 or 一下 I think Grace was the easiest to understand. It seemed like it was common for people in the mainland who didn't use 兒化 to use a glottal stop and rush through 一下 like in 等一下。The yi wasn't quite dropped but it would sound something like this if I wrote it out in pinyin. deng yi xia would change to den (rising pitch and slight glottal stop) xia. I'm not sure how common this is or if I'm mishearing it but people from Guangxi, Hubei, and Hunan all did this when speaking to people from those provinces. I went back and listened to some of the examples a few times and it seemed like Grace fully voiced the 'men" and "yi xia" when speaking and as a non-native speaker/learner I find this to be rather helpful.

[@JackJackson-tx1by]

Thanks!

[@sususegar]

3:42 Question: would Beijingers also say 别担心 for informal settings? I think I find them sometimes shortening 不要 to 别, not sure about 不用.

[@NHY6CK]

I just realized I have been learning + speaking the northern accent all this time lmao

[@deontesampson1991]

❤️❤️Grace!!😃This collaboration was a great way to wrap up the new year shouts out to Melody & ShuoShuo you 3 Beauties did a wonderful job❤hope to see you all together in another video sooner or later vlog maybe!? Just a little suggestion😄 GraceisourPresident #InGraceWeTrust #presidentGuofor2024

[@injanhoi1]

This is probably similar to someone learning English. They learn American English. They head to Australia and might find it hard to understand. They head to South Africa and have difficulty with the listening and finally they head to Yorkshire England and are at a complete loss. It's a matter of getting used to the different types of accents from the one you studied. I like how she speaks slowly in the video for the complete beginner. It so important developing good pronunciation when you are first learning.

[@PsychologyStud]

My wife’s family are from Taiwan. When they say words like 上，they do not pronounce the “h”, so “shang” sounds like “sang”. I thought that was the typical Taiwanese accent, but now I hear that is not the case for all Taiwanese people. Is the way my wife’s family pronounce words that begin with “sh” more common or is your accent more common in Taiwan? Thanks for the video! It is very neat.

[@yiningfan4642]

Native speaker here with equal exposure to all 3 accents - if you listen closely, Grace's pronunciation of "sh" is far less distinct than the standard Mandarin (largely based on the Northern Mandarin of Hebei Province next to Beijing, more official than the Northern girl in the vid) so I'll say hers is a more "standard" variation of Taiwanese Mandarin

[@swpfranky]

Very interesting

[@doujinflip]

I wonder if we can get a comparison with a Sichuan accent, which I've heard is the most intelligible for non-native speakers

[@lyhthegreat]

that's because sichuanese is derived from mandarin and is kinda similar but it's really different in terms of pitch accent at the same time.

[@florianmaier104]

In my opinion Hunan is even harder than Szechuan.

[@hata_kana]

Also a notice for people that want to use their mandarin skills in China. In the real life the northern accent is way more easier to understand. In this video the southern accent is super mild. ( It's normal in big cities and more people are speaking mandarin with less accent now ) Most southern Chinese don't have madarin as their first 'language'. They usually speak other variants of Chinese. If you want to study mandarin it's better to go to the north. Because they actually speak mandarin in day-to-day life

[@pandabugdiaries2384]

Will attest as someone learning Chinese with a lot of abcs (American born Chinese) and having teachers fr both northern and southern China, generally Chinese teachers are easy to understand even if they're speaking casually and not in a classroom setting (bc their job often leads them to unconsciously speak more clearly). But with the classmates I have that have inherited their mandarin accent fr their parents u can always tell if their parents are fr southern China (the sh and zh especially).

[@hata_kana]

@@pandabugdiaries2384 yes, and some southern people cannot differ n from l. But normally people in the north are considered to speak mandarin better because mandarin is based on a northern variant of Chinese

[@lyhthegreat]

Taiwanese mandarin is the best sounding mandarin imo