哪種中文? What Chinese Should you Learn-Mandarin? Cantonese? Beijing? Taiwan?Trad/Simp?Pinyin? Zhuyin?
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- Опубліковано 17 жов 2024
- So you want to learn Chinese? GREAT! - What does that actually mean? Being able to speak Chinese is life-changing, and which Chinese, how you speak it and even how you learn it is going to have a profound impact on YOUR Chinese?
Should you learn Mandarin (普通话 / 官话) or other dialects / languages like Cantonese (粤语) or Hokkien (福建话) first? Should you learn them at all? Do you really need to learn how to write if you just want to speak? Should you learn Simplified (简体字) or traditional characters （繁體字）? What about transliteration systems? What about Mandarin accents? Beijing (北京儿化音)? Taiwan?
In this clip I cover your options based on experience right across Asia so that your decision to learn Chinese will serve you best. It's a fascinating world to be diving into - but one that's best done eyes wide open.
#Chinese #Mandarin #Cantonese #Pinyin #Zhuyin
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I am a mainlander, but I recommend that foreigners learn traditional characters (TC) in preference to the simplified characters (SC). SC are easy to write but actually destroy the character-building system of Chinese characters. Of course, if you are satisfied with just very simple everyday writing and reading, SC are sufficient and it is quicker to get started compared to TC, but if you are interested in learning Chinese in more depth, then you still need to learn TC. In mainland China, students major in Chinese, literature, history and politics or when students are in the mastery or doctory study are required to learn TC. Those mainlanders who say that TC are useless or even disparage them, most of them I guess are in fields like science and technology. They have an obsession with standardisation and simplification, and they hate Hong Kong and Taiwan for political reasons, so they relent to traditional characters. In short, there are many benefits to learning traditional Chinese characters.
I learn both Traditional and Simplified characters, grasping that the latter are too contemporary, moreover TC have been still used in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, what means that if a person knows only SC, he or she may be confused in the called regions, and vice versa if not understanding SC in Singapore and the main part of the CPR.
Your opinion isn’t exactly well balanced.
@@nehcooahnait7827 I think it is not politically balanced a bit, but correct about two types of characters (it's useful for any person to know both Simplified and Traditional characters, except if he/she is linked only to contemporary affairs in the Chinese People's Republic ("communist"/mainland China) or Singapore, but that's essential for one to know Traditional characters if he/she has deal in Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macao, and moreover if he/she researches Chinese history).
@@argus-r1j 呆湾nese👀
我是大陸的80後 從小看新華字典和TVB電視劇學習繁體 現在看心情隨便寫简体繁體
"A language is a dialect with an army and navy". Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, Malay and Indonesian, they're fully mutually intelligible, used the same writing system,they're just versions of the same language. But they're called "different languages". Cantonese and Mandarin are not mutually intelligible, the difference is bigger than Spanish and Portuguese or Italian. And Cantonese has its own writing system "not same as Mandarin". Definitely Cantonese is a language, not a "dialect". But for political reason, in China they call it a "dialect". Same as other Chinese languages, Hokkien, Hakka, shanghainese... ect they are also a language, not "dialect". Chinese is a group language, not a single language. In linguistic, Chinese is a family of distinct languages, called "Sinitic languages".
yep
@@chouxfanny5480 selamat!
lol Actually i'm english :) Hello to you in Malaysia
THANK YOU!!! I’ve been trying to tell people this for years and only few people get it. The difference between any two ‘Chinese dialects’ is larger than the difference between Spanish and Portuguese, and yet those are just ‘dialect’ because political reasons. Sure, one can argue that technically Cantonese is a dialect of Sinitic languages, but it isn’t a dialect of Mandarin.
I do agree with you more than Stuart
It’s because Hong Kong is politically one of China, and Mandarin is the only official language out there. So it’s nothing wrong with it to call Cantonese a dialect. Please don’t dramatise it and imply that a dialect is somehow inferior to official language, there’s nothing wrong there. Cantonese is beautiful, no matter what it is, an officially language in Hong Kong or a dialect in Mainland China.
The beauty of Cantonese is that Cantonese people are much more blunt than others. So they won't give you the exaggerated complements you'd get for Mandarin when you try to speak. You either make yourself understood or you don't, and if you don't, they will let you know. It's refreshing in a way.
As I am a HongKonger, I am proud of my mother language. Cantonese is a traditional accent of traditional chinese and you could find it by the fluency of ancient poems. Besides, Hong Kong's traditional characters is a completed system which is sorted out by British Government and Empire Qing's Hanlin Bachelor.
I would add one thing about dialects, even as someone who is also fascinated by them a thing to consider is availability of learning materials, number of speakers and the realistic outlook for the survival of these languages. I started with Mandarin and currently learning Cantonese which I'd argue has the strongest chance of survival, still has a rich community of speakers in Hong Kong, many study materials and cultural content from TV, films to music etc. For me the only other Chinese language I can really see myself investing time to learn is Taiwanese Hokkien. Apart from those the situation just looks awfully bleak for other dialects, I learned a bit of Shanghainese during my time there, beautiful and fascinating as it is I don't think it will survive another generation, as young children in Shanghai are not learning it and instead speaking only Mandarin, real shame but not much can be done unless there are real efforts from the top to promote it.
You are so good! You descriptions are so right and up to the point. I am third generation HK, finished high school ran by Lutheran Church on British accent and Mam sent me to study mandarin over the weekends since I was 6.
Thank you for your info, foreigners this guide’s advice is the best I have ever heard👍
I’ve made many videos teaching Chinese language vividly and in a funny way. I hope you can recommend my videos to those who want to learn Chinese.
Love the advice here. I second the advice to learn Hanyu Pinyin first, but Zhuyin soon after. Pinyin is ubiquitous, but Zhuyin feels like a better representation of the sound system. I'm learning Mandarin, but getting a little exposure to Cantonese shopping the way, and I look forward to being far enough along in my studies to add the literary language to the mix.
Absolutely. And when using Hanyu Pinyin, turn off the fuzzy option as it will force you the use the correct ones and improve your pronunciation in the long run.
I’m trying to learn “Thai Teochew”. It’s an endangered language in Thailand preserving some old features which are absent in modern Teochew spoken in China today due to high Mandarin influences. I’m also interested in “Southwestern Mandarin” aka “Upper Yangtze Mandarin” (上江官話), specifically Kunming dialect, because my grandpa descent from Yunnan. Yunnanese are found in northern Thailand while majority of Thai Chinese in other regions are descendants of overseas Chinese from Guangdong, Fujian and Hainan. Middle Chinese tone 入 is reflexed as 陽平 in Southwestern Mandarin (Yunnanese, Sichuanese, etc), hence ㄧ、六、七、八、十 have 陽平 tone while Beijing Mandarin is random and unpredictable, sometimes 陰、陽、上、去.
Yeah - walking down Yaowarat is like being in a Time capsule - the Teochew community in China has changed so much. If you can already read Chinese, there are some great resources out there for these varieties.
Good luck!
Sinitic languages are rapidly influenced by Mandarin and losing their unique traits these days.
@@StuartJayRajขอบคุณที่แนะนำประเทศไทยนะครับ❤❤ thx for recommending Thailand
Great video as always!
I've heard of an online program for Cantonese Speakers to learn Mandarin, that uses a "copy & paste" method that compares the two and makes it easy to grasp.
Do you know of a book or course that will help learn Mandarin speakers learn Cantonese in a similar way?
Very informative. I've looked at other videos on what version of Chinese to learn and they always go too far trying to take a super safe, overly PC, polite explanation, leaving you with no real conclusion hahaha.....It was refreshing to see you be straightforward about the conclusion, that Mainland Mandarin, with a clear Northern pronunciation is most practical. That is what I also came to figure out, about 1 year into my studies.
This is the BEST video. I recommend everybody watch this if anyone want to learn Chinese.
Personally, I'm happy if I could just say whatever I want to say in Chinese 😂 Meaning, if I could order whatever I want in a restaurant, haggle goods price, chat about my day, normal discussions in meetings etc.. Those are good enough for me. Also, if I could understand mainland Chinese drama series without relying on subtitles. That too will make me satisfied. And then, will take it from there. That said, thanks so much for your tips and advice, Stuart! Really helpful!
"你咁樣係唔會令到我驚架" This line makes me laugh and cry at the same time
And most Chinese speakers probably wouldn't understand it properly!
@@StuartJayRaj This line should be written in TC instead of SC. Writing Cantonese words in SC just seems odd for me 😂
@@bhcf2m Exactly! It seems very odd to me writing SC for Hongkongese (Cantonese). I find that many foreigners write SC and tell you that they learnt Mandarin in Taiwan or write SC and tell you that they know Hongkongese (Cantonese). I can feel the power of propaganda from CCP in past 20 years to the foreign people. Horrible.
Thanks. So much useful information. Happily, it matches what I've chosen to do. I'm retired and studying Chinese for fun, so I'm studying Mandarin and learning writing (simplified characters) at the same time. After I reach a decent level I may branch out.
Thanks for this interesting video about Chinese “languages”.
It is important to know a bit of Chinese history to understand the Chinese languages. When emperor Qing united China into one country, from feudal countries, he made it a rule that there is only one written language. Everyone must learn & adopt this one written language (of Chinese characters). He said in different provinces (in Canton, Fujian etc) the character may be pronounced differently according to the dialect, but the written characters remain the same. In this way a person from different parts of China can communicate with each other by writing, if they cannot speak each other’s dialect. This was a great foresight of emperor Qing.
The National language of China is Mandarin, which is taught in schools.
Secondary to Mandarin (the National language) are dialects such as Cantonese, Hockien, Teochew, Hiananese, Shanghainese etc. The written Chinese characters are pronounced differently in each dialect.
My dialect Is Teochew. A Cantonese person will say Chewchau for my dialect. In Mandarin my dialect is called Chauchow.
For foreigners, it is best to learn Mandarin & the Chinese characters. In this way, the foreigner can communicate with most Chinese, verbally. The foreigner can write the Chinese characters to communicate with another Chinese person in writing, if the foreigner cannot speak the dialect or the Chinese person cannot speak Mandarin.
I hope my comments help foreigners in their endeavours to learn Chinese.
This was so informative and helpful, watched it twice in a row lol. Thanks for your content mate it’s excellent!
Thank you for your work! I like the Shanguainese . I'm learning mandarin for now like a beginner. I can't stop but the grammar is too much simple for my italian brain. I started japanese and i think it is more beautiful for me culturaly. I started American native languages too. I've got no time for Cantonese now. I like navajo and apache, lakota, onage, comanche, chickasaw, objibey, soo i'mvm very busy... It doesn't mean I don't like chinese dialects but we've got one life. Maybe if I get married. I think already have notions of mandarin it's so great. Ja mata!8
I agree with most of your points but as a Taiwanese person, I have to point out that we actually make a subtle difference of zhi chi shi and c z s. Certainly the difference is not as big as the northern accents but it's there.
Personally when I pronounce zhi chi shi, I will put my tongue tip around the alveolar ridge, and when I pronounce z c s, I will put my tongue tip right after my front teeth.
I personally think the northerners emphasize the tongue-rolling part a lot, and their brains categorize all the non-emphasized sounds to c z s, so when they heard our zhi chi shi, they cant tell the difference. Kinda like Korean ears to p and f.
On the other hand Taiwanese zhi chi shi and z c s are differentiated though emphasizing the z c s. This is my personal observation as a northern Taiwanese around mid 20s. I'm not sure if anyone has done any systematic research on this, but it's pretty obvious to me when someone do mix the c z s and zhi chi shi in Taiwanese Mandarin.
You can compare the Taiwanese accent and Taiwanese/Chinese American's accent, and you'll get what I mean.
Chinese American? You mean just a foreigner accent? Also I would have to disagree with you on that case. There’s a slight difference however all it’s registered as zi si and ci. Especially in words like 姿勢, 說 少 Now what I’ve noticed is that actually Taiwanese men do pronounce it more clearly. Taiwanese women tend to over exaggerate zi ci si
and slur words. Now if you’re speaking from an academic standpoint then yes I’m 注音 it definitely differentiates the sounds however when it comes to real life application, that’s not really the case. You end up having to rely on the contex/tone to determine the meaning.
@@jordandavis6709 no I'm not talking about 注音, Im talking about real life situation. And the Taiwanese woman part... Well I agree with you when they try to speak more 可愛, but still in real life situation people don't talk like that.
As for Chinese American accent, it's still different from just a foreigner accent. Foreigner accents vary but Chinese American accent has a pattern. Maybe try to find the second generation, those who says they actually speaks Mandarin, and not migrated from HK.
@@陳查理-c2c I can't pronounce 儿化 well. 😄🦧
Agreed
100% agree with you and I also put a comment correcting him. I deal with Taiwanese and they don't mess up those sounds as badly as he claims hahaha....and, the language teachers of TW, almost always pronounce things very standard. yes, it's a softer version of standard, but it is still standard and sounds good.
The only concrete difference is the tones are occasionally used differently and that confuses us since all the learning material is Mainland based, but it's about 96% same tones.
Maybe older generation and less educated speak as he says, but seems most people under 45 speak pretty standard. More than the southern Chinese that also speak a local language. They are the ones that speak that lazy pronunciation
In Malaysia, we can mix and match. We sometimes, errr I should say, most of the times using a few languages in one sentence, English, mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka and even Tamil. i.e Aneh, teh tarik tapau satu, thank you.
I am going to play with such one sentence. But I call it, 中英曰韩合一、Chinese English Japanese Korean United.😁☺️😄
😂😂😂
We as Malaysian are proud of code switching.
@@จิงโจ้ไทย As someone learning Japanese, the simplified Chinese characters for Korea seems similar yet different from the Japanese version.
@@o0...957 I often use Japanese version, Kanji alternatively.👌😂
Wouldn't be surprised if this guy has a PhD in Linguistics. Amazing breakdown.
He doesn’t.
What do you think linguistics is lol
@@nehcooahnait7827 I need you to be more direct with your communication. Not sure what you are trying to get at here with your comment
That is so true. I always have to adapt my Chinese to whom I’m speaking to (Chinese or Taiwanese) because it tends to spark political issues.They make learning the language not enjoyable.
Traditional characters and Taiwanese style mandarin was so hard. This. Video is helping me reevaluate it
Having traditional under your belt makes things much easier - much easier to shift from traditional to simplified rather than the other way around. Understanding the traditional strokes will also give you a deeper 'feel' for characters as you shift your handwriting to more cursive forms. You can see again, where the flow for the simplified have come from.
awesome video
Great and complete cover of the subject, thanks!
你好厉害，会说很多种语言，太棒了
Thank you
Dear Stuart, I enjoy watching your programs and learning from them. Just one comment, I don't think Dialect is the right word (or fair word) to describe the "local languages" because language has its won identity and its culture. It is special and different from other languages. Once we define it as dialect, then we tend to look down on it.
I agree...but I get attacked either way I go. if I say language, nationalists attack me. I use dialect and people who know what they're talking about attack me. lose lose
@@StuartJayRajHi, understand. Personally, I prefer what it should be and screw the nationalists. สู้ๆ
@@StuartJayRaj Sorry to hear 'cause you're way more cultural than those nationalists lol... Keep your good work!
@@StuartJayRaj We all don't care about the nationalists from CCP because they are fascists. They only want to simplify and unify characters and other languages they hate for tyranny, to control people. We know, that's why we defend rather than pleasing them.
I don’t understand why you said “look down” on a dialect. Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew etc, are all Chinese dialects. The national language is Mandarin & dialects are secondary languages. There is no look down on the dialect
For learning different past of the Chinese language, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, writing and linguistic, is it possible I start with the hardest versions of Chinese respectively?
like picking a part from
Grammar, vocabulary and tone from Cantonese
Pronunciation from northern Chinese
and Writing and linguistic (注音?) from Taiwanese
Please help
As a Chinese I think your advice is as good as gold.
其實，在台灣從國小開始的國語（中文）課程，都是以標準（類似北京話）中文在教學的。
只不過不知道為什麼，還是教出了遍布全台灣的每個人，都講著台灣腔 🤣
因為捲舌音只把舌頭點在門牙後,我不清楚現在的小孩學的方式,但我有印象小時候教的是點上顎就好,北京腔是把舌頭卷到口腔中(?
可是政治原因 說一口標準的普通話聽起來就是像中國人 被人排斥 所以雖然知道標準音 但還是明哲保身
As a Taiwanese, I don't agree with one of your point "Taiwanese Mandarin merged zh, ch, sh and z, c, s". We DO have the differences between them, we just don't roll our tongue that much like Beijing people do.
Yes technically there’s a difference but it’s barely there. You would have to really listen to the sounds. More than likely you guys to merge your zh ch sh as z c s.
Agree. Taiwanese still pronounce zh ch sh different from z c s.
Agreed. That's what my Taiwanese teacher taught me. And Zhuyin also differentiates these sounds clearly. It's just the spoken accent that merges those sounds.
As a Taiwanese, we don't roll our tongue that much when pronouncing zh, ch, sh. Rather than rolling back the tongue, we curve the tongue slightly. But it's definitely different from z, c, s which was pronounced with a totally flat tongue, and we can distinguish between them easily. So I'm strongly oppose to the 'merge' term. We don't merge zh, ch, sh with z, c, s.
@@claricelee1079 Well I strongly disagree with half of that analysis. I think it’s because you’re a native speaker so when it comes to those small details, you don’t really pick up/notice at all. There’s a generation difference in the way you Taiwanese speak. The older generations accent actually resembles what would be considered Beijing accent. Millennials and gen z though are a little bit different. Comes down to personal preference however zhi shi chi sounds end up registering as zi ci si sounds. Especially for words like 吃 十是事 出 e.t.c. You’re correct in there’s a slight difference but the the naked ear it’s the same. Taiwanese women are especially notorious for the exaggerated zi ci si and slurring of words
The traditional Chinese is developed from ancient word so that most Chinese character has their own meaning. Simplified Chinese is for people to learn so as to communicate but it destory the system. How do people determine the meaning of 唔 and 吾？
Also, traditional Chinese should be classflied as 正體字。
Thinking of getting back to learning Mandarin.
I stumble into this video.
Now I want to get into Taiwanese and even Cantonese. Damn.
It seems you know Chinese more than me. Great! Liked!
On the choice of which mandarin dialect, it's better to use Taiwan's Nanking accent, as it is much more kinder to the listener's ears, when the listener isn't from the north, who would find all the constant "er" sound endings in the northern accents offensive to the ears.
As a Hong Konger, I can make out what someone in Taiwan is saying, but god knows what when a mainlander talks.
Stuart, I know this is not the topic of this video, but can I ask you a question based on what you said about northern and southern Mandarin accents? Does the same thought applies to Vietnamese? I have never learnt any language with tones, so when I read that Northern Vietnamese accents have 6 tones while Southern accents have 5, I was all in for a Southern accent, since it would spare me 1 tone (thinking that: for someone that has never learnt tones learning 5 of them is better than 6, and then if eventually I decide to give a try to the Northern accents, then it would be just a matter of learning 1 extra tone, after I've already become familiar with 5, so a much easier task). Is it a bad idea? I still have plenty of time, anyway, since I'm still working on my Japanese first and I'm still around an N3 level for now lol
this is actually the topic of a clip I'm planning to do. Don't count tones. A good place to start is doing my tones masterclass (it's free). You'll learn that tones are throat positions and actions. Using romanized scripts to render tones is problematic as we even see with this example of northern v.southern Vietnamese. The key is to learn the core throat actions...pitch is just a by-product.
Traditional Chinese for sure. Historically and aesthetically Traditional Chinese is the way to go.
You said very funny is for Singapore hokkien , Singapore Chinese usually talking Mandarin, Right? Do you Understand?
Yes. In Singapore there are many dialects like in Malaysia. Mandarin is the Official Chinese dialect used, but there are many, and the Hokkien which many in Singapore speak which is also like the Hokkien in other places in Malaysia is a different strain of Hokkien compared to the .OST common Hokkien in Penang. I speak / understand many of the Chinese and Malay dialects through the region
Taiwan standard mandarin and standard (traditional) characters only!
As I mentioned in the clip - this is why the decision from the very beginning can have long term political ramifications. The downside of starting with Taiwanese pronunciation is that there is ambiguity between the sounds I mentioned in the clip - however if you're living and / or working with people from Taiwan, then it makes sense.
@@StuartJayRaj Standard Taiwanese Mandarin does very clearly differentiate between ㄓㄔㄕ and ㄗㄘㄙ, but they are just pronounced in a slightly different way the people in Beijing do. Of course not every Taiwanese speaks Mandarin with the standard pronunciation, and very often you can hear the Taiwanese phonology used to pronounce Mandarin, but that's not considered standard even in Taiwan. It's just like learning English, you can choose one of many British Accents or American Accents.
@@StuartJayRaj But the education in Taiwan for locals and foreigners all using standard pronounciation. So it doesn't matter to choose to study the Beijing/China accent or Taiwan accent. However, indeed most native Taiwanese speakers in daily life doesn't spell the 捲舌 clearly to differentiate between ㄓㄔㄕ and ㄗㄘㄙ. BUT! There are still difference between them and Taiwainese doesn't spell it exactly the same! Like you said. So I disagree with your POV
The term in Chinese is "方言" which gets translated as "dialect". Though, taken more literally, it would mean "the tongue of the land".
Local languabg
As a Taiwanese, I’d like a to point out that our accent is not what we learn in school. As a child, we learn to roll our tongue when saying ‘zhi’ ‘chi’ ‘shi’ ‘r’ (ㄓㄔㄕㄖ), and would be corrected by teachers if we didn’t roll the tongue. However, after around the age of 11 or 12, nobody really cares about how you speak, and that’s when we revert back to our usual accent. So I’d argue that if you learn Mandarin in Taiwan as a foreigner, you’d probably learn the ‘correct way’ to pronounce. However, since nobody here speaks like that, you probably wouldn’t get a chance to practice.
Learn Taiwan Mandarin. Trust me... Speaking Beijing or Northern Mainland mandarin is like hearing someone speak English in a "real southern Texas" accent.
learn CCTV mandarin ... it's just like british RP accent.
and technically the standard Taiwan Mandarin is almost the same to the CCTV accent, you can find the truth on early years Taiwan tv news videos.
@@张蛋疼 ewww no.
ยอดเยี่ยมเลยครับอาจารย์
Hoisan vah here!
โอ้โห้พี่พูดภาษาจีนก็เกงภาษาไทยก็เกงสุดยอดจรีงๆๆฝรังคนนี้ไม่ธรรมดา
เกงทุกภาษาเล็ศมากๆๆ
โอ้มายก็อตให้ตายซี้โลบี้นเจ๋งสุดๆๆ
learn English or write in Chinese here, no one will understand Thai
语言天才👍🏾
FYI we in Taiwan do differentiate the difference between zh ch sh and z c s….. it’s just not that exaggerated, thanks :)
‘That exaggerated’… Don’t be self centric.
@@nehcooahnait7827 why is that self centric? I really like how Stuart making these informative videos, and just because it’s so good that even we Chinese speakers finished watching the whole, so I wanted to give some feedback to make this even more accurate, I don’t understand why you’d feel so, I don’t think emphasizing on some pronunciation is a bad thing, and I have tons of Chinese friends, we can talk in our own accents but it’s totally understandable so I don’t get what you mean. Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word exaggerate on mainland folks pronunciation, cause you’re more of a fit to deserve this word 😄
More like barely there at all. It’s because you’re a native speaker so you actually don’t notice. Also the passive aggressive comment really wasn’t necessary
@@nehcooahnait7827 Taiwanese can differentiate the difference accurately between retroflex and non-retroflex what is the problem for you?
i am learning Pinyin and Zhuyin
i know japanese and i am learning traditional and simplified together, i also wanna learn cantonese but not now
i really wanna read Chinese poetry
I studied Russian the traditional way over the course of a few years and then immersed in Moscow for an additional 4 years. It was HARD, but it paid off. My Russian got to the point where I was able to land a job as an in-house translator and editor. From there, learning other Slavic languages was only a matter of raw exposure, almost without any deliberate study. Just listening to the news/vloggers every day for a couple of months would be enough to get a foundation in Ukrainian/Polish.
Would you say this could be replicated if I chose, say, Cantonese as my anchor language and from there spread to other southern Chinese "dialects"?
I have been loving diving into Russian this past year ...and yes, jumping across and seeing the very close links with other Slavic languages. In Mindkraft the other day we actually looked at the close links with Sanskrit and Russian too...and in turn Thai. If you understand the Sanskrit sound system, all the Russian spelling rules make perfect sense
@simiyachaq they are not mutually intelligible, Mandarin speakers cannot understand what Cantonese speakers say
@@kanae8414 Neither can Russians understand Poles without prior exposure to/study of Polish
@@simiyachaq I am Polish and I could understand a lot of what was being said to me in Russian, I didn't understand more complex grammar or unrelated words
@@kanae8414 Sure. You can watch the Ecolinguist Slavic language series where Slavs try to have a conversation speaking their respective languages. In any case, I'm talking about understanding more than just guessing the gist when spoken to very slowly.
What about in Guangzhou? I'm going to be working there in the future. I'm assuming that learning both 普通话 and 广东话 is going to be necessary, right? I'm from Thailand but I work for a company that sells pharmaceutical products for farm animals in China (we have a Guangzhou branch). Do all chinese people understand 普通话? Or is it just the white-collar workers? I will be working with a lot of blue-collar farm workers.
The reality is that for everyday business / life, if you're not actually from Guangzhou, Mandarin (普通话) will be standard - however your experience will be enriched no end by learning Cantonese too. It's like if you were from Bangkok going to live in Ubon or Chiangrai. Everyone will speak the central language no problem - however the language in their heart is the local dialect.
@@StuartJayRaj Thanks for the swift response! That Bangkok/Ubon explanation makes a lot of sense. I am a Bangkokian myself. People from other regions can usually communicate in central Thai (unless they're 60+ years old). I assume it works similarly in mainland China.
Yes - and they wouldn't expect you to speak Cantonese ... but IF YOU DO, you will be in a minority for foreigners (both foreign Chinese and overseas foreigners), and will probably have a very different experience (better) there. There are so many benefits from learning Cantonese. As a Thai, once you learn Cantonese, combined with your Thai, the other bonus is Vietnamese will then be very easy to pick up.
@@pirapatxie8897 คุณราช once said, Chinese + Thai = a piece of cake for learning Vietnamese 555... 哈哈哈... You are lucky, คุณพีรพัฒน์👌
@@StuartJayRaj 👍 Expert of Sino-Tai Culture, วัฒนธรรมไต-จีน ! คุณราช.
if u learn simplified characters only, u want allow even write a complete sentence. it is becos not all Chinese has a simplified form.
I’m 32 years old. Is it too late to even begin learning such a daunting language, or should I just accept that I waited too long to begin?
not at all! still have a good 70 years I'd say 😁 .. I have met people develop fluency in Chinese starting after 50. I think the things I mention here are relevant for starting at any age
I started at 36 and three years later I'm at a decent upper-intermediate level. You can do it! ☺️
@@StuartJayRaj Is it better to learn Mandarin first and then southern dialects rather than vice versa. Because it'll be much easier to learn a easy dialect than a monster dialects like min or Yue .
I am from Hong Kong. I have friends from Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnamese. All of them think Cantonese is way easier than mandarin.
Because hk belongs to Vietnam
@@smithsam2823 you belongs to Thailand , because it's the WT paradise.
@@Ryan-dk1drthis is what a hker told me,SOB 😛
@@smithsam2823 so what ? fake history anyway
As a Taiwanese I'm probably biased, but as a translator by trade I'd recommend Taiwanese TC.
The thing is in all the choices on the table, Taiwanese TC is the one with the least interference.
Sure, all modern Chinese languages have very heavy foreign influence, including English influence in Hong Kong Cantonese TC, and Japanese influence in both Mainland China SC and Taiwan TC, but for SC we have some other stuff and it can get nasty.
First of all, in recent years (so count yourself lucky if you learned Chinese more than 10 years ago), the Chinese government have clamped rather harshly on their language. They changed a lot of things like "kilometer" going from 公里 to 千米 and stuff like that. They also simplified and changed a lot of grammar structure which would take very long to elaborate but boils down to "being more Westernized and simplified". One Westernization example is they began to heavily use 很好地 or 更好地 (not a term that really existed in the past) such as 這個方法可以更好地達成目的 (this method can *better* achieve our goal). Yes, it came directly from the English usage I gave as example. For simplification they began to use a lot of poor grammer (imagine the overuse of "process" as in "we are about to begin the boarding process" you hear in airports) and unified a lot of words into one word. For exampl,e "intelligence(情報)", "information(資訊)", "data(資料)", "message(訊息or信息)" are all integrated into one word 信息.
And there's also political input to that. This began even earlier but has obviously worsened in recent years. For example, Iowa, only when used as a name of ship USS Iowa, is translated as 衣阿華, which came from the *Russian* pronunciation of "Iowa" (pronunced EE-oh-wa in Russian. Iowa as a state is translated differently and resembles the English pronunciation a lot better); Croatia is translated 克羅地亞 which is reading the English name in Russian (the proper Croatian spelling would be Hrvatska and will never result in something like that). This is because they have been close to the Russians and thus are often affected by their pronunciation.
Other political input includes calling Russian Empire (pre-1918) as "Tsar Russia" (which carries the risk of confusing it with Tsardom of Russia, 1547-1721) because as communist bloc they don't want to talk about Russian Empire in a more "legitimate" way. There's only one other historical regime that received such treatment in SC, and that's Nazi Germany (not even the Japanese Empire they hate so much. They never call it "Emperor Japan").
Cases of more recent political inputs are mostly about reversing the historical Japanese-imported words and Sino-lizing foreign stuff. Legal terms that came from Japanese in late 19th century to early 20th such as 詐欺(fraud)、竊盜(theft) and others are all reversed into 欺詐、盜竊etc. As for Sino-lizing, the more apparent cases include the SC translation for Chess. Chinese Chess is known as xiangqi in Chinese, and they call chess as "international xiangqi", Japanese Shougi as "Japanese xiangqi".
These political inputs are all in one way or another rooted from CNP's political agenda, and I don't know about you, but I'd prefer steering clear of them when you're trying to pick up a new language.
Now, does Taiwanese TC have those issues? Well yes, we have quite a bit tint of Taiwanese Hokkien influence (most notably on the excessive use of 有 in some sentences), as well as an increased amount of Japanese and English influence (for English, not as bad as Hong Kong but still notable to trained eyes). But what we don't have is the deliberate, manual manipulation to our language. Taiwan TC has changed a lot since the 1949 split, but as a democratic regime we never had the ability to politically intervene how our language should look like. As such (not to mention we didn't went through the simplification of the characters that gave rise to the term "simplified" Chinese) we have better retained what late 19th/early 20th century modern Chinese would look like.
So yeah, I'd recommend Taiwanese TC. And if you want to learn it, do it quick. It's being contaminated by SC usage recently as well.
After reading your unnecessarily long paragraphs, yes you’re right. you’re biased and severely misinformed.
1. "First of all, in recent years (so count yourself lucky if you learned Chinese more than 10 years ago), the Chinese government have clamped rather harshly on their language" is a one sided interpretation on the Chinese government regarding its long abandoned language reform program. If anything, it may be the preference of using 美国男子职业篮球协会/美职篮 instead of NBA.
2. "They changed a lot of things like "kilometer" going from 公里 to 千米 and stuff like that." is a complete false statement as both words are used interchangeable officially. 公里 is even more commonly used in casual reference and verbal discourse as a Chinese reference of the metric system since 里 is an old Chinese unit of measurement. imperial system, due to its historical association with Britain, is often referred 英里，英尺，英寸 using the same principle. Metric system did not originated from China, therefore a transliterated version, which appeared as 千米，consisting 千，kilo, and mi, meter, as much as Watt being 瓦特， Calories being 卡路里.
3. 衣阿華 is a historical translation predated PRC as many terms were even forged during the late Qing Dynasty. English language as an international language came after the WWII. Many Chinese scholars who translated foreign names may recite their own respective knowledge on different European languages. A Spanish or German speakers would not refer Iowa as "AI-O-WA". Latin and German were important academic languages that does not share the same phonology with English. English is a language of phonetic inconsistence and several phonetic shifts. The arbitrary allocation of this transliteration of Iowa is ridiculous, one-sided, and motivated by your own self-stated BIAS.
The same applies to 克羅地亞. If you actually know of several European languages you would have not, again, came out this type "oh it is Russian pronunciation" kind of nonsense. Do you even know how diverse rhotic R sound is in European languages? Most importantly, Хорватия is the Russian world for Croatia, as chorvatiya. These three words, are COGNITES, of the same origin. Basing Chinese transliteration on the RUSSIAN ENGLISH accent? for reals? This is the kind moment when ignorance and stupidity is spotted, in the same fashion when a conspiracy theorist is called out.
Sino-Soviet relation were bad since the 1960s border conflicts. English was commonly taught as a secondary language in China since the early 1970s. In short, enough of your nonsense.
4. "intelligence(情報)", "information(資訊)", "data(資料)", "message(訊息or信息)" are all integrated into one word 信息." This is absolutely false. There are not merged as some of those words is also ambiguous and contextual. Funny enough, their English counterparts as well.
5. “Cases of more recent political inputs are mostly about reversing the historical Japanese-imported words and Sino-lizing foreign stuff. Legal terms that came from Japanese in late 19th century to early 20th such as 詐欺(fraud)、竊盜(theft) and others are all reversed into 欺詐、盜竊etc.” these words IN WHOLE are of Chinese origins and not so much of "legal terms". as the Chinese language becoming more analytical, words are often formed with Synonyms/parasynonyms, as 盗窃，欺诈，学习。"欺，诈欺也。--《说文》" also shows the historical reference of ”诈欺" in this particular order.
Many Sino-Japanese words were created based on existing Chinese words as they DID look into classical Chinese literatures for references. this is the case for "经济“("经世济民”、“经国济物”) or ”物理“. Words are often reverse when Japanese or Chinese started to write from left to right. This even shows up in 熊猫/猫熊 as the transition led to confusion. Some were done by the Japanese as, first, the words formed by two parasynonyms do not often change its meaning, as 英雄（中）/雄英 （日语），from "夫草之精秀者为英，兽之特群者为雄，故人之文武茂异，取名于此", and 侦探/探侦 as both are verbal noun
, consistent with the fact that almost all sino-japanese words are nouns.
6. YOUR Hypocrisy: in your conviction, you first refer Chinese language in Mainland China "being more Westernized and simplified", showing a strong ideological preference over linguistic purism, Yet, very quickly, you refer your false reference of reverse two character words as "Sino-lizing foreign stuff. Two opinions contradict, non mentioning that they are based on false beliefs and extreme knowledge gap.
BTW the correct term is "to sinicize, sinicizing, sinicization, sinicized“.
7. "As for Sino-lizing, the more apparent cases include the SC translation for Chess. Chinese Chess is known as xiangqi in Chinese, and they call chess as "international xiangqi", Japanese Shougi as "Japanese xiangqi". "
that is a lot of baseless shit for today.
7. "Taiwan TC has changed a lot since the 1949 split, but as a democratic regime we never had the ability to politically intervene how our language should look like." Taiwan since 1949-1992 WAS NOT A DEMOCRACY. It was a totalitarian fascist military dictatorship that implemented martial law and self-isolationism before its swift transition to softened authoritarian state as Chiang Ching-kuo came to power after his father Chiang Kai-shek's death in the 1970s. As a self-claimed TAIWANESE it is absolutely unacceptable to not know this historical period, Mr. Boris Glevrk. The number of languages destroyed and the fact that Mandarin was imposed as official language in Taiwan can be quite questionable. Guess what else happened in Chiang‘s Fascist "democracy' in Taiwan? "SINO-lizing"/Sinicization in attempt to re-sinicize Taiwan's population after half of century's Japanese colonization. Those who suffer most are often the indigenous population. Under DPP today, a dialect of Southern Min language is now being falsely referred as 'TAIWANESE/台湾话“ instead of the indigenous Austronesian languages.
What a disgrace.
@@nehcooahnait7827 PERIODT
@@nehcooahnait7827 Are you a ABC?not a ABT, right?
well, you are right, you are deeply biased and very much propagandized over the issue
from the starter, your examples are all false,
千米 is always the formal way taught in school for decades, go buy any textbook in china since 70's or 60's, also 千(kilo)米(meter) literally means kilometer, while 公里 on the other hand is scientific inaccurate form
no-one mix 很好地 or 更好地 together, they are completely different, plus, for your poor grammar sake, there is no 很好地, only 很好的
no one ever "intelligence(情報)", "information(資訊)", "data(資料)", "message(訊息or信息)" are all integrated into one word 信息. stop lying!
for translation, you just make me laugh, the China always translate the word from the language it was spoken, and Taiwan just translate everything from English, stop this busting
also, who are "CNP", you mean CCP or KMT?
FYI, SC was created by the KMT government when they were still in the mainland, the reason why you Taiwan people are still using traditional Chinese was because when Chiang Kai-shek flee to Taiwan and saw China was using the SC, so he changed it back to TC to draw a clear line, and that was completely based on 'political agenda'
I don't know if you are a Taiwan government mouse piece or just a regular ignorant and arrogant folk speak from imagination, stop your lie on china!
Mandarin is Beijing Dialect as I know and that is Manchurian language in Qing Dynasty
I have two classmates, one is from Hong Kong, the other is from northern Guangdong. Both of them can speak Cantonese, but they communicate with Mandarin, because their accent varied a lot, so does the vocabulary. Southern dialects usually have many different accent, like Cantonese, people from Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Shunde, Heshan and eastern Guangxi speaks in various accent and sometimes cause misunderstandings and there are jokes about it.
In the meantime, some dramas and films from Hong Kong and Taiwan are popular mainland so many mainlanders can read traditional characters.
There's another phenomenon about the northern accent and Taiwan accent: in mainland, on the social media, many people intimate Taiwanese accent and catchphrases for fun. While I saw some netizens on social media in Taiwan will scold at those who use catchphrases from the mainland.
...Oh, so after my rant... The point here is to learn the dialect of where you are going to travel or who you are planning to converse with. If you are planning to travel all of mainland China, you can learn the Beijing dialect and be fine. Just be prepared that outside of Beijing, people may sound different. If you are going to Taiwan or to Hong Kong, learn Traditional characters, cause Hong Kong is still converting over and people in Taiwan don't necessarily understand the simplified character right away, unless you tell them. I always got a chuckle over (ge) 个. Because, traditional 个 is 個. And, whenever I would write it, my girlfriend would say, It reminds me of an arrow on the street to pull forward!!! LOL...
As far as I know, Chinese is the simplest language in grammar.
There are different Chinese, but most of the people do not know there are so many different languages in Asia.
很多人都誤會了 台灣原住民語才是台語 閩南語是中國方言
Wahahhaaa. . Chinese mostly can speak more dialects in south Asian.
Like myself, I can speak and understand Cantonese, Hakka, Mandarin. And I understand Hokkien, Teochew.
I ask can speak English and Malay also lol...
😂
This is very common in southeast Asia. Some even know Japanese and Korean, Vietnamese, Siam, Myanmar, Cambodia etc
你咁样系唔会令到我惊㗎 -- I would say, this sentence is Cantonese but with simplified characters.
Correct one should be 你咁係唔會令我驚㗎! using the evil tone as Carrie Lam. (Chief Executive of HKSAR)
Seems that you only focus on learning Putonghua and Simplified characters.
For me, I will recommend people to learn Cantonese (Hongkongese) and traditional characters no matter for political, economic or linguistic reason because Cantonese was used and written in many old literatures and Mandarin is a nearly modern Chinese basically. On the other hand, once you master Cantonese, you will have no problem in learning Mandarin and recognising the simplified characters. On the contrary, however, you will have difficulty in understanding and pronouncing those classical proses and poems.
Hongkongers are capable of speaking fluent Mandarin but not willing to speak because Hongkongers are aversion of people who speak Putonghua to them in Hong Kong because this is very rude and offensive. Same situation as France, if you only speak English to French, they will look down on you. That's why when I was traveling to other countries, I would prepare some local phrases to give a respect to the local people.
BTW, I think you may well speak a good Mandarin but I don't think you are able to speak Cantonese although you have an idea of Cantonese.
And come on, Cantonese is not a dialect, is a language. CCP is trying to destroy Cantonese and traditional characters, forcing people in Canton area to speak Putonghua and do a lot of propaganda globally these 10-20 years. They are only manipulating the saying about what the "Chinese" is but the word "Chinese" should mean and refer to many things instead of Putonghua, Mandarin or tone of Beijing people only.
In São Paulo i've heard people using more than mandaring
Learn mandrian
My personal experiences are, as a mainlander, I can naturally recognize let's say over 90% traditional characters without any training or learning. But I can't write down that way.
Can you recognize Cantonese characters?
For me if going for mainland china, im thinking first learn standard mandarin as there is most resoursees to learn this. I really want to understand the Hankou dialect as my wife family are from there and older generation on the countryside they keep it to their traditional dialect.
I tired learning first time without the charachters, it actuall makes it much harder. Often the charachter have some clue and they have componets that can give a clue of meaning or sound. Also as western this is what make the language so intressting, becasue it makes it so much different. I also learn that many characters has a history of its own, so i think its a big part of there culture history. I think learning those old poems and history where idoms comes from is very intressting, seemingly random sentence has a deep meaning that evryone understand (but google translate does not :)
好大幫助, 謝謝分享斯圖爾特. 我一直都是學台灣式華語的, 最近對中國電視劇有興趣而看幾個, 花了一段時間才能適應北京口音欸🤣
สวัสดีครับ
สวัสดีครับ
สวัสดีครับ สบายดีไหมครับ ສບາຍດີບໍ່
This is very true... I was dating a girl from Taiwan. So, they wrote trad. Her grandmother, knowing that I spoke Japanese, tried to communicate with me in Japanese. I couldn't communicate with her grandmother, because her Japanese was not what I learned over 14 years of speaking Japanese. I thought it was just me. But even our Japanese friend, from Japan told me she had a hard time understanding her too. I left feeling so bad that we couldn't communicate. Her grandmother had to go back to Taiwan for like 6 months, for some legal reason in order to immigrate into the US. So, I told my girlfriend, that I felt so bad that we couldn't communicate, and I would take some courses at the college. That was almost a fiasco in itself. I had completely forgot that my girlfriend, before we even started dating told me, that people from Beijing had an accent. It wasn't until later that I completely understood what she was talking about. Because, at the college, they taught Beijing Hanyu 北京的汉语. Meaning, from the writing differences to the speaking differences, we were constantly in arguments. I now have a personal issue of hearing non-Beijing accent Mandarin, and I point it out all the time. For instance, one of my favorite shows of all time is Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace. The actors are portraying a time piece, where I think they should be using proper Beijing dialect, and you end up hearing the actor's Taiwan, Xianghai, etc. accent coming through. Another time, I had a missionary come to my house from Utah. I noticed that his badge was in Chinese. When I asked him about it, he told me that it was in Mandarin. I thought it was cool that he spoke "Mandarin". Well, after learning 北京的汉语 over the course of 18 years (off and on), his "Mandarin" sounded off to me, as I am sure that mine sounded off to him. As a matter of fact, I would speak to him, and he didn't understand what I was saying. He started to lecture me when I asked: 你说不说汉语？ A common phrase in Mandarin, asking if someone speaks Chinese or not? So his lecture to me was, "people don't know that 'hanyu' actually means Korean." I just left it, because I didn't see the need to get into this huge argument, that the han that I'm using is 汉 (as in the Han ethnic people of China), not 韩. To make matters almost worse, I thought I would write something down for him. He noticed right away, I wasn't using trad characters that he was used to seeing... Recently online, I noticed a few people that were getting into an argument over Mandarin and Cantonese are not both a Chinese language. Then they started arguing that They were separate languages and not a dialect of Chinese. So, I just used my linguistic skills to explain how they were incorrect. I said, take for example, Vivian Chow. She's a singer from Hong Kong. She sings her songs in both Chinese and Mandarin. The writing of the songs are written exactly the same. If I were to write a letter from Beijing to a friend in Hong Kong or Taiwan, minus the influxes and the difference in writing, all three of us could write back and forth and be completely understood. Just like the English dialects. People of Canada, UK, Australia and the US. If we all write letters to each other we could understand each other's letter, minus the short hand and the influxes. Even with the different influxes, it's still intelligible. The same is true between Hong Kong and Mainland China. I also brought up the point over Thai and Lao, to show how and when a language is considered different. I said, if I write a letter from Bangkok to my friends in Vientiane, the writing may look a little similar. But the grammar and the writing rules are not the same. If you have absolutely no background in the other language, you won't be able to understand what the other person is saying. Or, if I were to write English to my Spanish speaking friends, or to my French speaking friends. We do not understand each other, unless we have backgrounds in the other languages, to understand them. Then, there were arguments between accents and dialects. So I just stopped right there, because I was tired to continue!!!
Well I get what you mean but don't forget that Chinese writing system is a meaning-based instead of a sound-based system. Just tell you a fact - many years ago when Taiwan was still under control of Japan and nobody could speak Mandarin, Taiwanese people communicated with Chinese people by writing. Yeah we wrote Taiwanese and they wrote Mandarin. The grammar and phrases were different but they could use their common knowledge of Chinese characters to guess what each other meant. Another example is when I went to Japan in high school, I communicated with my friends by writing the characters but certainly Japanese and Taiwanese are not one language two dialects.
The last example is what is used in the video, the Cantonese "你咁樣係唔會令到我驚架”. Anyone Mandarin speakers who has never been exposed to Cantonese culture would not be able to fully understand this. When they read it, it will be the same as showing this to Japanese or Korean people, they can guess and communicate to some level based on their common knowledge of Chinese characters but not fully understand it's meaning.
And let me give you the Taiwanese writing of that sentence "汝按呢係袂乎我驚到啊啦". I'm sure you won't be able to understand this, despite learning 18 years of Mandarin, without asking your Taiwanese girlfriend.
So I would say that your example of communicating by writing is under a premise, when everyone consciously using the grammar and writing of standard Chinese, then that would only prove that standard Chinese is a lingua franca amongst these regions. Plus it's not comparable using the European languages since the European writing system is based upon sounds, while Chinese writing system upon meanings. The ability of communication was because of the common knowledge of Chinese characters among the regions using this system, but you cant say that Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese, Vietnamese are same language different dialects, can you?
And if you go back to the verbal language level, none of the above-mentioned language speakers can understand each others without learning their languages. But you can communicate with Australien/British/Singaporean/Indian English speakers without writing, can't you?
@@陳查理-c2c that's a good argument! I like it. So then why do we say mandarin and Cantonese are dialects? Excluding Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese.. I'm also aware there is a true Taiwanese, that's not Mandarin.
@@Krisstofers Because "A language is a dialect with an army and navy". Definitely Cantonese is a language not a dialect. It has its own writing system "not the same as Mandarin". But for political reason, in China they call it a "dialect". Same as other Chinese languages, Hokkien, Hakka, shanghainese... ect they are also a language, not "dialect". Chinese is a group language, not a single language. In linguistic, Chinese is a family of distinct languages, called "Sinitic languages".
@@Krisstofers Because of political reasons that Chinese people think all Chinese people should be in one country. Linguistically if two spoken vernaculars aren't mutually intelligible, they are two languages, but chinese scholars do claim that because of same writing systems, all these are same language different dialects. I would say it is important to distinguish written language and spoken language though. Since Mandarin became a lingua franca, we all learned writing in Mandarin, so yeah what we write are mutually intelligible because we were all using the grammar and structure of Mandarin, but it doesn't mean what we speak are the same. This actually had a long history that school only teaches writing in lingua franca. So you can imagine people speaking different languages but all writing in Middle Chinese, and nowadays Modern Chinese aka the written language that uses Chinese characters and Mandarin grammar structure. Kinda like that period when all European countries talked differently but formally communicated in Latin.
It's actually pretty hard to learn like this though, since what you speak and what you write are different languages. It's like one day the government suddenly changed their language to German, and you had to write everything in German, when your native language is English. And the government claims that German and English are dialects under the same language called West German because everyone can communicate using German, and you're all using Roman alphabetical system to write. Meh.
Cantonese influenced more of Vietnamese, but Hokkien influenced more of Korean and Japanese pronunciation of Chinese originated words. In Singapore, we speak mainly more Mandarin these days more than Chinese dialects.
Taiwan - high class
Very interesting Stuart. I'm from Malaysia and as far back as I can remember, Quanzhou Hokkien was my very first language as I was brought up by my nana who speaks that.. English was probably the next in preschool. I remember struggling with standard mandarin as I was placed in a Chinese medium primary school but managed to get by, not with flying colours of course. During those 6 years I had nannies who spoke the Zhengzhou Hokkien (Penang) which sort of enriched my phonetic Library. Not to mention also speaking Cantonese to my schoolmates during recess which sometimes warranted punishment from the teachers as dialects were not allowed in school.
Suffice to say with those foundations I find it easier to learn how to speak Thai, Japanese (although my vocabulary is still at preschool level in those languages)
Yes. Dialects are the older versions of the standard mandarin today so it only makes sense that it would help learners understand languages in the eastern Asian region.
台灣講知道的(ㄓ)注音也是需要捲舌的,不是有些台灣人念錯(ㄗ)就說在台灣都那樣念,那是錯誤的,這位外國人對各地方的中文腔調算有某種程度上的了解,但對於台灣中文腔調還是有誤解的,結論是想要學正統的中文來台灣就對了
You’re wrong but okay
對非中文母語者來說標準的發音還蠻重要der，不然就很容易聽錯造成溝通不便。
@@jordandavis6709 Where is wrong?
@@argus-r1j 繁體中文不是正統?難道會是中共簡體中文嗎?外國人學習繁體中文去哪都可以找到華人企業的工作,除了中國之外
@@argus-r1j 簡體中文裡有中國共產黨製造的文字，中共這種破壞傳統文字演變的行為令人作嘔，如果你本身就支持共產黨破壞中國文化那另當別論。
I'm learning Cantonese first for personal reasons and am working on learning standard written Chinese with Cantonese readings. It's hard learning basically Mandarin grammar and vocabulary with what feels like non-standard readings, but I really want to be able to apply words that aren't strictly 書面語 in listening and speaking without getting mixed up with Mandarin pronunciation at this point. Does anyone else share this challenge of learning to read and write when starting with a dialect?
Yes, Cantonese is only written informally with Written Cantonese. Unfortunately one must be literate in Written Chinese which is just Mandarin based
As a Hongkonger, I always admire the effort by foreigners to learn Cantonese. I can only imagine the challenge faced by foreigners when trying to avoid mixing up spoken Cantonese and written Chinese. Let me share with you the process I went through as someone who was borned in HK in the 80s. I grew up in the age before social media. As a kid, I picked up spoken Cantonese natively from the environment. It is only when I started going to school that I started learning how to write. Back then, I was taught that not every spoken word can be written. As kids we would often ask our teacher how should I put it in writing if I want to say blah blah blah. From there I learned the proper words to write, sentence by sentence. This learning process shaped my foundation of written Chinese. It's only later that some frequently spoken Cantonese words started to appear in comics and magazines. Those are usually some existing words that has close pronunciation to the spoken word it intended to represent. When I first saw these kinds of writings, it took me a few times of reading to realise that those are actually forced syllable by syllable writing of a spoken sentence. And this realisation brought a smile to my face. I still remember at that time, these kind of forced-written words has lots of variations. As times go by, the choice of these words start to stabilise and standardise, especially with the advent of instant messaging and social media. With a strong existing foundation in written Chinese, learning these new writings of spoken words while remaining keenly aware that those are not formal words is not a difficult task. Also at that time, we were only taught Mandarin starting at primary 4. By that time, Cantonese is already hard wired into our brain, so mixing up is not an issue at all.
I believe this learning journey is most probably shared by many Hongkonger around my age. Since a foreigner learning Cantonese is not likely going through this long process, I can totally imagine the hard work and difficulty faced by a foreigner in avoiding mix up of spoken Cantonese and written Chinese. I wish you the best in your learning journey.
@@bhcf2m 👍😁☺️🎯 It is born to be special gift for you. I think there may be a good 字典 which shows the separate words for spoken Cantonese only. In the primary school, I didn't know why I must learn to read Mandarin Chinese. It's for reading only. There's no one who spoke Mandarin ( 國語 ) in every day life. 😁🦧
Written Cantonese is currently in its rapid standardization development due to internet needs. One day it'll develop into a mature, standalone written language, just as Japanese and Korean did, I think.
@@bhcf2m Actually, many Hongkongese (Cantonese) can be written but we lack of standardize it systematically in the past. By the time goes, we can write Cantonese today when a mature writing system has been established.
I didn't learn Mandarin in school or in UA-cam because Mandarin is too easy and I can communicate with Taiwan people.
I didn't learn Simplified and I am also not interested in learning Simplified characters but I can recognise all Simplified characters already and find that they are so ugly. It's totally a disaster when foreign people think that simplified characters are Chinese. I understand why a civilization will/can be destroyed by leftists, communists and people who only want to simplify thing without any sense of preservation to the characters where it originates.
Nobody speaks other Chinese other than Mandarin in business except in Hong Kong though.
Shanghai, shanghainese amongst shanghainese, in Taiwan, Taiwanese is a whole different world.
Wenzhou people doing business in Wenzhou in Paris.
In Malaysia-Kuala Lumpur, we Malaysian Chinese speak Cantonese all the time at works and even in business. We will speak Mandarin with the one that can't understand Cantonese or any other dialect. And speak English or Malay with Non-Chinese speaking. So learn Mandarin is still priority if you want to deal with Chinese people.
@@irenelai.2406 So in Kuala - lumpur, native Cantonese speaks are more than native Mandarin speakers?
@@ponta1162 But sad to say that nowadays most of the youngsters (Local Chinese) now only speak Mandarin or English in KL.. Despite efforts to promote Mandarin globally as Chinese(China) influence, here in KL we also starting facing the risk of losing the speakers of Chinese dialects.. And no more like old days, most of us atlease can speak 2 to 3 types Chinese dialects...
I want to learn pali and brahmi
Actually, there is no such thing called Taiwanese, people in Taiwan speak mandarin and south Min language. Min means Fujian province, so south Min language is a kind of dialect in southern Fujian province, so some people in southern Fujian province and people in Taiwan share the same dialect because these two provinces are very close. One more thing, Hokkien is also a kind of dialect in Fujian province. In fact, Hokkien and Fujian are the same thing, but the ‘Hokkien’ is the pronunciation in Fujian dialect and the ‘Fujian’ is the pronunciation in mandarin, and many people from Fujian province move to southeast Asia before.
Mandarin, Hokkien and Hakka, right? (and indigenous Austronesian languages).
The thing called taiwanese is 台灣閩南語.
Taiwanese may communicate with southern Fukiang people for maybe 50 percent only of what both say if both don't speak manderin.
communist china and republic of china (taiwan) are one china. Taiwanese are chinese actually.
马来西亚闽南语 ，what should you call it then?if Taiwanese is 台湾闽南语
Mandarin is just a language invented by people failing to appreciate Chinese diversity. It isn't even self aware.
There's like 8 different Romance languages, 11 different Germanic languages, 10 different Slavic languages, 27 different Semitic languages, 14 different Turkic languages, 16 different Iranian languages, 19 different Indic languages, 12 different Dravidian languages, but only one Chinese language?
Not even a tiny weeny little bit of diversity in Chinese languages?
Of course not, it's all a delusion.
Maybe Beijing will succeed in stamping it all out before anyone notices.
I've got my money on Beijing people, you heard it from me first!
重庆话四川话云南话
Do you speak Sichuanese?
您会不会说四川方言？
佒讲不讲得来四川话？
I used to live in Singapore somewhat 16 years ago. Their mentality back then was to ridicule people with mainland / Beijing accent. They often associated themselves with Taiwanese accent, although they use simplified characters in Singapore. I can’t speak for their mentality nowadays though. Probably milder now?
Therefore, speaking mainland accent in Singapore would get access to business as you said, but there’s still a tiny barrier.
i think singapore's mandarin, and other parts of south east asia 's mandarin are highly influent by southern dialect, hokkien, which coincides with Taiwanese accent. It's like Philippines will use american english, and not queen english. If you use queen english on those former US colonies, people there will ridicule you as well.
Actually, the SG accent is not associated with Taiwanese accent, but more because most Singaporean Chinese are Southern Chinese, similar to Taiwanese dialects, hence the pronunciation is influenced by the Southern Chinese blurry pronunciation.
There are so many different mainland accents, only the northern variants that evoke alienation precisely because they feel distant and foreign to the locals. Also northern Chinese tend to take it for granted that mandarin should be the lingua franca of all Chinese people, this kind of presumptious attitude (even if unintentional) easily offends descendants of southern Chinese. They whose only means of learning Mandarin was through the crumbling remnants of overseas Chinese schools while the mainland closed itself off from the rest of the world.
很懂XD
I don't agree with you. In Taiwan, we do have different pronunciation in ㄓㄔㄕ & ㄗㄘㄙ. Also the "Traditional" Chinese already tells you guys this is the traditional one.
Yes, you are correct. It's the Southern Chinese that also speak a local dialect that speak the way he demonstrated.
In TW, they speak a "soft Standard". Especially if you teach Mandarin, their prononciation is excellent
对呀，有些人没区分平翘舌不等于国语标准音不区分啊！
总之 粤语 绝对 不是方言. 它本身就是一种语言😊
这个视频讲得很全面很好了
Cantonese is a language, it has 2000years history,,,much longer the so called Mandarin,,,,
Well, maybe even older according Baxter reconstructions of Archaic Chinese (for example, Cantonese "ngo5 dei6" is more similar to Archaic Chinese "ngaj dej" than Mandarin "wǒ shì").
@@研究生在宇宙的各個方 ngo dei is we tho
Cantonese has over 4000 years history. Cantonese is a language, Chinese is not a language
該更正，中文字只有「正體字」，不該是繁體字，繁與簡只是一種相對應的稱呼，事實上，簡體字是中共把中文作為政治化後的稱呼。
Learn Cantonese and Traditional characters as soon as you can since you know who wants and is going to extinct Cantonese
As a Taipei Taiwanese , I don’t agree with you
師範大學in Taipei is probably the best place to learn Chinese
They have the most experienced teachers and teaching materials in the Chinese teaching area
Actually no 清華大學 would be the” best” Much as I love living in Taiwan the problem with living and learning Mandarin in Taiwan is that you only learn how Taiwan speaks Mandarin. A lot of the words and phrases are not applicable to other Mandarin speaking areas. Also by default you will absorb the Taiwanese accent which a lot of people actually can’t understand. So it’s best to learn the most standard and most clear way of speaking Mandarin and then gauge off where you want to go with that.
@@jordandavis6709 Compromise !
Oxford 👉 清华大学
Cambridge 👉 師範大學
好吗？ 哈哈哈..
@@จิงโจ้ไทย Well the person above wasn’t really speaking in terms of academic reasons. They were more than likely speaking in terms of their own cultural and political bias. Taiwanese people and Chinese people love politicizing every aspect of the discourse between them. Including language.
Taiwan should stop speaking that language.
Cambodias
If you are learning Cantonese, you should realize that Cantonese is not an easy jump to Cantonese!
Seriously, that mofo is *hard*.
作为土生土长的中国人，我强烈建议外国朋友们学习拼音和标准普通话，普通话也是中国大陆推行的官方交流语言，无论是在中国大陆的哪个省份，还是在台湾，亦或是在诸如新加坡
等国家，即便他们说的不是标准普通话，他们也一定能听懂。
As a native Chinese, I strongly recommend foreign friends to learn Pinyin and standard Mandarin, which is also the official language of communication in mainland China. Whether in any province in mainland China, in Taiwan, or in countries such as Singapore
, they will understand Standard Mandarin even if they do not speak it.
yes. that's pretty much what I said in this clip.
I learned Taiwanese version (at Chong Hua Association in Bangkok) and found Zhuyin phonetic system more accurate. For example, if you’re a native English speaker you’ll have to unlearn the English Z in order to recognise Pinyin Z. Whereas, zhuyin is basically a new phonetic system altogether and helps avoid this false and confusing comparison.
Although I learned the Taiwanese version, but my teacher (who’s native Taiwanese) still insisted that I accentuate all sounds correctly (albeit almost similar to Beijing accent). Then she went on, you can later adopt the spoken accent as you wish.
I speak Taiwanese it helped me learn Japanese and Korean
???? What do you mean by ‘Taiwanese’? You mean “a dialect of a Southern Min Language”?
Or an austronesian language spoken by the indigenous population of Taiwan?
I assume former. If so, stop calling it that. What a sad world to be indigenous Taiwanese.
It’s really interesting that both Japanese and Taiwanese use Japanese characters.
Did you visit Japan and Korea yet ?
I am playing with 中英曰韩合一、Chinese English Japanese Korean United.😁☺️😄 Lai さん!
Taiwan copies characters from Japan
To be honest, Taiwanese probably speak better mandarin than most Chinese accent-wise. And while it is true that in Taiwan the pronunciation was blended, it was taught in the right way with all the sounds, but we just don't speak like that because it sounds pretentious since hardly anyway talk that way.
That’s debatable
If you want to learn Mandarin that is pleasing to the ear, just learn Taiwanese Mandarin spoken in Taipei (none of that southern Taiwan stuff where they blend everything together).
@@aey2579
Agree!
Taipei accent is probably the most 標準Chinese accent
@@jennychuang808 What’s 標準 about it? 80% of the words are pronounced incorrectly. Nothing wrong with Taiwanese accent however it’s not 標準
@@jordandavis6709
敢問閣下何意？
I lived for ten years in Shanghai and Zhejiang and this is terrible advice. Just learn standard Chinese. Everyone learns it at school. Companies employ people from everywhere. There's no bonus in business to speaking a dialect. As for referencing Hong Kong when talking about doing business, here's a snippet of info. There are 14 other cities of the same size as Hong Kong or bigger, some much, much bigger. The days when you could only do business with the mainland via Britain's little trophy colony from the Opium Wars are long gone. Millions speak English to a decent standard too.
We should learn standard chinese in what character, simplified or traditional?? Which one u suggest
@@WowNice Whichever one you want too read. They're pronounced the same.
Just learn Mandarin, that is the useful Chinese as comparing to other variants
you made A question which should be not A question. Definitely you should learn the offical Chinese which 95% Chinese understand and 100% educated Chinese understand.
it totally should be a question... different people learn Chinese for different reasons. Not everyone learns to communicate with people from the mainland. Some learn to communicate with family members, some learn to communicate with local communities which may speak hokkien, teochew, min, Cantonese, others might be learning to get a deeper understanding into other languages ...so example middle Chinese will help enormously with Thai, Vietnamese and even Japanese and Korean sinitic words. Mandarin is just one tiny piece in the wonderful tapestry of the immense thing that is under the banner of the Chinese language...then as mentioned in the clip, traditional vs. simplified Chinese characters, articulation / realisations of Pinyin in the mouth - all are very valid considerations even when learning just mandarin. I couldn't imagine just speaking Mandarin - it's just the tip of the iceberg.
Sound like American