Chinese Languages Comparison.m4v

[Staarkalinou]

quite a good idea; but all these extracts come from different sources, it is not convenient to compare:

the mandarin extract comes from weather report,

the suzhounese from a presentation of a site,

the cantonese apparently from presentation dvd of ???

the minnanhua from a tv series,

etc.

in my opinion, it should all be weather report or news, because it is the most neutral and the easiest source to get.

[TheWarbirdPhoenix]

I had no idea there were that many dialects,the Wu one is very calming.

[34601k]

Wtf no Shanghainese? At any rate Gan and Hakka sound the weirdest to me.

[hicksiskool]

@34601k Are you deaf? Listen to the Wu dialect!

[34601k]

@hicksiskool I don't speak Shanghainese but my parents do and it doesn't sound anything like them.

[hicksiskool]

@34601k Sorry, I don't intend to be mean, but Shanghainese is indeed the Wu dialect or the variation of the Wu dialect :-)

[xilitol]

cantonese sounds so much like chin chong chin chong, I guess that why westerner always thought chinese is chin chong because all the hong kong man immigrate to every corner of the world

[flyonthewall37]

@xilitol "cantonese sounds so much like chin chong". It's because Cantonese has many more tones than Mandarin. If it was Mandarin that was popular, westerners would complain about the "sh..shr...zh...z.." sounds of Mandarin and all those gutteral "RRRR"s.

[Criminal110s]

my mother language is wu

[33hunting]

Mandarin and Cantonese are two major Chinese languages and they're have rivalry against

each other.

I think the Mandarin-speaking Northerners raised their children to dislike the Cantonese language.

[saigonpunkid]

Wu Chinese is my fav.

[ADIMM0]

@saigonpunkid 100 percent agree with you

[MAHANTING]

i can speak different kinds of Wu chinese

[qjzmf0946]

l m korean

wow......sound very good

[LotusDragon09]

They all sound quite similar, but yet are still unintelligible from each other? I guess they might say the same for Germanic languages, for example. They all sound very distinct to me, but not for everyone. I can hear difference in these languages, but they do sound very similar to me. There are so many languages unintelligible from each other in China, so that leads me to believe the majority of people can speak mandarin as well or the Chinese must not do much traveling.

[shiyoengauden]

@LotusDragon09 They are very much unintelligible to each other, just as Italian is largely unintelligible from French. The relationship between the Chinese languages can be compared to the Romance languages. Majority of the population can speak Mandarin for it's the official language; if they cannot speak it well, they can at least understand it with little problem. However, Chinese people are very much localized; they rarely travel from one city to another, much less than Americans do

[poortaiwanese]

suzhou dialect sound the best in all of these languages

[Primus2X]

never knew Hakka and Cantonese sounded so similar

[Primus2X]

@Primus2X Oh my bad they also spoke Cantonese and Min in the Hakka part

[Raymasaki]

@BrutallyHonest3 thanks for mentioning that, I was thinking this sounds like cantonese.

isn't Taiwanese / Min similar to Mandarin?

i mean most people in Taiwan speak Mandarin Right?

(thats what ive read)

[shiyoengauden]

@Raymasaki Taiwanese Mandarin is considered a dialect of Mandarin, while Taiwanese on the other hand, is a completely different language. It is a dialect of Min Nan.

[nokonoko90]

@BrutallyHonest3 Wait woudn't that make Korean (Han), Vietnamese (Han) and Japanese (Kan) dialects of the same Chinese language if written in the same script using the Classical-Chinese grammar?

[treskro3]

@nokonoko90 No, because when they're written in Classical Chinese, they are writing in Chinese and not their own language. While these languages have borrowed extensively from Chinese vocabulary, it does not mean that they are historically related.

[TheKojana]

sound similar

[neoguy9090]

@BrutallyHonest3 I was wondering why I couldn't understand

[kungsviermaster]

I personally think Wu Chinese is one of the most beautiful languages on the planet, especially when hearing someone from Suzhou speaking, then you would get the real meaning of "There's Heaven Above, and There's Suzhou and Hangzhou Below."

[Raymasaki]

@kungsviermaster I Like Mandarin, But isn't wu actually shanghainese?

or is it Different? i see wu is spoken in shanghai so im curious to know if

its the same or sounds similar.

[yesshiro]

@Raymasaki when shanghai was not so developed before the beginning of 20th century, Suzhou is the central city of Wu. but then shanghai had become the most developed city, especially from 1920's to 1950's, so Shanghainese has been on behalf of Wu instead of Suzhou.

[Raymasaki]

@yesshiro xie xie for the info but id still like to know if they are similar?

id like to hear them (smae phrases) back to back.

are Most common words the same?

& greetings different?

[yesshiro]

@Raymasaki yeah they r similar, but there r still tiny differences in intonation and a few vocabulary. shanghai guys and suzhou guys can communicate with there own dialects without obstacles.

nowadays, Wu spoken in shanghai has been mixed with a little mandarin factors, intonation and vocabulary. so it can be considered Wu spoken in Suzhou is more classical and traditional than it spoken in Shanghai.

[shiyoengauden]

@Raymasaki They are similar in the sense that most of the words have the same origin, like the Romance languages, but they are mostly unintelligible if one was not told what the original character was. The level of dialect is also complicated. Like the Beijing dialect and the Nanjing dialect are both dialects of Mandarin, so they have minor intonation and vocab differences. But the Suzhou Dialect and the Beijing Dialect have completely different pronunciation, vocab, and intonation

[shiyoengauden]

@Raymasaki for one is a dialect of Wu, while the other is a dialect of Mandarin. Linguistically, they are considered two different languages. The dialects within the same language (for example Mandarin) can communicate without much problem, but dialects of different languages such as Mandarin and Cantonese, are unintelligible with each other

[PrimoUomo]

@shiyoengauden different dialects within Wu, Cantonese or Mandarin are still unintelligible. and some linguists divide even further within these dialects. so if you use intelligibility to define language vs dialect, then you'd probably even count Ebonics and Cockney as distinct languages. it's a pretty unreliable method.

[Chimpangel]

Cool video. Now I'll be able to learn new dialects and see the differences.

[mrdrfez]

The Cantonese segment would sound better if Guangzhou Cantonese was used instead of Hong Kong Cantonese. Also, there was Cantonese mixed in with the Min and Hakka sections.

[suiseisekiryu]

good video, I want to listen the wu language =)

[raymondkkng]

Where is Xiang Language?

BTW, there are Cantonese in the Min and Hakka film.

[qq75970138]

@raymondkkng Xiang is Hunan province

[raymondkkng]

@qq75970138 I mean there is no Xiang Language in the video. Where is it? It should be presented in the film.

[Junkiang]

@raymondkkng 中国每个县的话都有或大或小的区别，您是否要此视频把中国每个县­的话都说一遍？

[sdcheung]

hakka