8 ms·

I always find the claim that dialects in China vary so much that people cannot understand each other very western-centric. As a native speaker, there are shock

I always find the claim that dialects in China vary so much that people cannot understand each other very western-centric. As a native speaker, there are shockingly few dialects that are completely incomprehensible. Someone from Shanghai will be able to speak to someone in Chengdu with their own dialect, just slower.

ginko 6y ago
The claim may be misguided or wrong perhaps, but how is it Western-centric?
SeanLuke 6y ago
Take Cantonese (or heck, Teochew or Hakka). You really think this language is reasonably mutually intelligible with Mandarin? Or Shanghainese? I'm a (non-native, formerly fluent but now pretty poor) Cantonese speaker and I'd describe the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin as roughly the difference between Portuguese and Romanian. Sure, they're both romance languages, and maybe with a lot of work and hand-waving and drawing characters on your hands with your fingers you can get your point across to someone who speaks the other language, but in no way would I call them mutually intelligible, even by talking "slower". Cantonese and Mandarin have very different pronunciation, vocabulary, and even grammar for common cases. In fact there are extremely common words in Cantonese for which there is no modern chinese character: instead roman words or even single letters (like "D") are substituted in comic strips etc. So you can't even write them down in Chinese for a Mandarin speaker to puzzle through with a dictionary. I'd say that your perception of these things as "western centric" -- they are not at all -- strikes me as very "northern Chinese centric" view of China. :-)
- dwohnitmok 6y ago
  It's not necessarily a northern Chinese centric view of China as it is a Mandarin (as in the language family) view of China. The vast majority of Chinese dialects in a large band from Heilongjiang to Sichuan (and a bit out to Qinghai and Xinjiang) are more or less mutually intelligible. That mutual intelligibility drops off very quickly outside of that band. In particular a lot of Southeast dialects (Yue, Wu, Min, etc.) fall outside of that zone. But it covers the majority of Chinese speakers. (However, I disagree with the original claim that a Sichuanese speaker could understand Shanghainese). See e.g. this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps7_NnkL-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps7_NnkL-oM where for almost the entire video a couple is explaining words in their respective dialects (Sichuanese and Hunanese) to one another in their own dialect (i.e. not using Standard Mandarin at all in their explanations). The first half of the entire exchange is fluent and understandable by both people and also a Standard Mandarin audience. Only in the second half when they intentionally start quizzing each other on words they know will be tough for the other person and without additional context do they run into trouble (and occasionally resort to Mandarin). Also, comparing it to Romance languages masks some complexities of the relationship. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16844074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16844074
- lordnacho 6y ago
  Heh, this is the perfect place for me to jump in with some movie trivia. Have you ever watched either Ip Man or "The Bridge" (Danish/Swedish cop show)? In Ip Man, there's a gang of Mandarin speakers who show up in Ip Man's Cantonese world. They somehow are able to speak to each other, and I find it unlikely. Perhaps it's because my Cantonese is mediocre. But it just doesn't sound like you could have a casual conversation across the languages. A similar thing happens in The Bridge. There's two cops solving a crime on the bridge connecting Denmark with Sweden, and they just talk to each other in their own languages. My guess is most people who didn't study the other language would not know all the slang, as importantly the simple expressions. Though I guess it could be learned easily; I can read a Swedish newspaper, just not process it fast enough to have a fast conversation with a colleague. Similarly with German and Swiss German. Something about the way the sounds are different makes processing the other one a bit slow if you're not used to it.
  - gwd 6y ago
    > In Ip Man, there's a gang of Mandarin speakers who show up in Ip Man's Cantonese world. They somehow are able to speak to each other, and I find it unlikely. Perhaps it's because my Cantonese is mediocre. But it just doesn't sound like you could have a casual conversation across the languages. So the mixed Mandarin / Cantonese conversations actually do happen. My wife's family are all native Cantonese speakers, but her uncle married into the family from another part of China. He understands Cantonese perfectly but is more comfortable speaking Mandarin; and everyone else understands Mandarin to various degrees but prefer to speak in Cantonese. So he just speaks Mandarin while everyone else sticks to Cantonese; and it's quite a fluid back-and-forth. That said, for that to happen so naturally the way it does in the Ip Man movies is really unrealistic. First of all, Mandarin wasn't as well-known in Guangdong in the 1930's as it is now; and there's no way someone from another part of China could just show up and magically understand Cantonese: It would take at least a few months of immersion to be able to "listen" fluidly enough to have that sort of a mixed conversation. Even more unrealistic is Ip Man 4, where he shows up in San Fransisco, and starts talking in Cantonese to people who have immigrated from Beijing -- including one of the character's 12-year-old daughter who grew up in San Fransisco. Yeah, that's not going to happen. [Minor grammar edits.]
yorwba 6y ago
Here are ten Shanghainese sentences, four short ones and six long ones: 1. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/488406.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/488406.mp3 2. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/485590.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/485590.mp3 3. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/485698.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/485698.mp3 4. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/488621.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/488621.mp3 5. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/489046.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/489046.mp3 6. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/489736.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/489736.mp3 7. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/492871.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/492871.mp3 8. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/496402.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/496402.mp3 9. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/485676.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/485676.mp3 10. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/488252.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/488252.mp3 They're not especially slow, but you can replay them as often as you want or even slow them down, so I think it should be easier than for someone in Chengdu trying to understand a Shanghainese speaker in person. For comparison, here are the Mandarin equivalents of those sentences, pronounced by the same speaker: 1. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332870.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332870.mp3 2. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332436.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332436.mp3 3. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332568.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332568.mp3 4. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333012.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333012.mp3 5. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333070.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333070.mp3 6. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333151.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333151.mp3 7. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333392.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333392.mp3 8. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333584.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333584.mp3 9. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332549.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332549.mp3 10. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332788.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332788.mp3 And here they're written down, together with translations into various other languages: 1. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/488406 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/488406 2. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/485590 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/485590 3. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/485698 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/485698 4. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/488621 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/488621 5. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/489046 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/489046 6. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/489736 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/489736 7. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/492871 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/492871 8. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/496402 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/496402 9. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/485676 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/485676 10. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/488252 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/488252 If you want some more examples, this search returns a few hundred: https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/search?query=&from=wuu&to=und&user=&orphans=no&unapproved=no&has_audio=yes&tags=&list=&native=&trans_filter=limit&trans_to=cmn&trans_link=direct&trans_user=&trans_orphan=&trans_unapproved=&trans_has_audio=yes&sort_reverse=&sort=relevance https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/search?query=&from=wuu&to=...
dumb1224 6y ago
> Someone from Shanghai will be able to speak to someone in Chengdu with their own dialect, just slower. This is definitely not true (if they were to use their own dialect). I'm from the same region surrounding Shanghai and although there are some intelligibility between dialects, it is hard if not completely impossible to have a conversation even between people from adjacent towns. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Chinese I'm a bit surprised about your claim. Anyone from China with a sense of the dialects of the south would know this.
foysavas 6y ago
Mandarin speakers ability to understand slowed down Shanghainese is likely a recent development. This is because much of traditional Shanghainese diction, grammar, and even pronunciation has been reduced or morphed to better suit the newer generations of speakers whose principal language is Mandarin.
princeb 6y ago
written cantonese is almost the same as written mandarin. the problem is that spoken cantonese is not much like written cantonese. it's a combination of pronunciation, accent, idioms, and sentence structures. best advice is for speakers of mandarin or cantonese to learn the other language like a new one. (there's also the written form of spoken cantonese, written spoken cantonese, if you will, that is the written representation of spoken cantonese using a set of special characters of sinitic origin). if you are from guangdong you will learn all systems of language - written mandarin, spoken mandarin, written cantonese, and spoken cantonese. some hongkongers don't ever learn spoken mandarin correctly, getting them to speak mandarin in front of a camera is always a source of good laughs. those who argue that cantonese are mutually intelligible with mandarin will typically use cantonese newspapers and official documents as evidence. those who argue that they aren't will point to spoken and colloquial cantonese as evidence. the objective point of view is to accept that cantonese as we know it exists as two separate languages used for two different purposes.

ginko 6y ago

The claim may be misguided or wrong perhaps, but how is it Western-centric?

SeanLuke 6y ago

Take Cantonese (or heck, Teochew or Hakka). You really think this language is reasonably mutually intelligible with Mandarin? Or Shanghainese? I'm a (non-native, formerly fluent but now pretty poor) Cantonese speaker and I'd describe the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin as roughly the difference between Portuguese and Romanian. Sure, they're both romance languages, and maybe with a lot of work and hand-waving and drawing characters on your hands with your fingers you can get your point across to someone who speaks the other language, but in no way would I call them mutually intelligible, even by talking "slower". Cantonese and Mandarin have very different pronunciation, vocabulary, and even grammar for common cases. In fact there are extremely common words in Cantonese for which there is no modern chinese character: instead roman words or even single letters (like "D") are substituted in comic strips etc. So you can't even write them down in Chinese for a Mandarin speaker to puzzle through with a dictionary. I'd say that your perception of these things as "western centric" -- they are not at all -- strikes me as very "northern Chinese centric" view of China. :-)

dwohnitmok 6y ago
It's not necessarily a northern Chinese centric view of China as it is a Mandarin (as in the language family) view of China. The vast majority of Chinese dialects in a large band from Heilongjiang to Sichuan (and a bit out to Qinghai and Xinjiang) are more or less mutually intelligible. That mutual intelligibility drops off very quickly outside of that band. In particular a lot of Southeast dialects (Yue, Wu, Min, etc.) fall outside of that zone. But it covers the majority of Chinese speakers. (However, I disagree with the original claim that a Sichuanese speaker could understand Shanghainese). See e.g. this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps7_NnkL-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps7_NnkL-oM where for almost the entire video a couple is explaining words in their respective dialects (Sichuanese and Hunanese) to one another in their own dialect (i.e. not using Standard Mandarin at all in their explanations). The first half of the entire exchange is fluent and understandable by both people and also a Standard Mandarin audience. Only in the second half when they intentionally start quizzing each other on words they know will be tough for the other person and without additional context do they run into trouble (and occasionally resort to Mandarin). Also, comparing it to Romance languages masks some complexities of the relationship. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16844074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16844074
lordnacho 6y ago
Heh, this is the perfect place for me to jump in with some movie trivia. Have you ever watched either Ip Man or "The Bridge" (Danish/Swedish cop show)? In Ip Man, there's a gang of Mandarin speakers who show up in Ip Man's Cantonese world. They somehow are able to speak to each other, and I find it unlikely. Perhaps it's because my Cantonese is mediocre. But it just doesn't sound like you could have a casual conversation across the languages. A similar thing happens in The Bridge. There's two cops solving a crime on the bridge connecting Denmark with Sweden, and they just talk to each other in their own languages. My guess is most people who didn't study the other language would not know all the slang, as importantly the simple expressions. Though I guess it could be learned easily; I can read a Swedish newspaper, just not process it fast enough to have a fast conversation with a colleague. Similarly with German and Swiss German. Something about the way the sounds are different makes processing the other one a bit slow if you're not used to it.
- gwd 6y ago
  > In Ip Man, there's a gang of Mandarin speakers who show up in Ip Man's Cantonese world. They somehow are able to speak to each other, and I find it unlikely. Perhaps it's because my Cantonese is mediocre. But it just doesn't sound like you could have a casual conversation across the languages. So the mixed Mandarin / Cantonese conversations actually do happen. My wife's family are all native Cantonese speakers, but her uncle married into the family from another part of China. He understands Cantonese perfectly but is more comfortable speaking Mandarin; and everyone else understands Mandarin to various degrees but prefer to speak in Cantonese. So he just speaks Mandarin while everyone else sticks to Cantonese; and it's quite a fluid back-and-forth. That said, for that to happen so naturally the way it does in the Ip Man movies is really unrealistic. First of all, Mandarin wasn't as well-known in Guangdong in the 1930's as it is now; and there's no way someone from another part of China could just show up and magically understand Cantonese: It would take at least a few months of immersion to be able to "listen" fluidly enough to have that sort of a mixed conversation. Even more unrealistic is Ip Man 4, where he shows up in San Fransisco, and starts talking in Cantonese to people who have immigrated from Beijing -- including one of the character's 12-year-old daughter who grew up in San Fransisco. Yeah, that's not going to happen. [Minor grammar edits.]

yorwba 6y ago

Here are ten Shanghainese sentences, four short ones and six long ones: 1. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/488406.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/488406.mp3 2. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/485590.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/485590.mp3 3. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/485698.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/485698.mp3 4. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/488621.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/488621.mp3 5. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/489046.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/489046.mp3 6. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/489736.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/489736.mp3 7. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/492871.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/492871.mp3 8. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/496402.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/496402.mp3 9. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/485676.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/485676.mp3 10. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/488252.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/wuu/488252.mp3 They're not especially slow, but you can replay them as often as you want or even slow them down, so I think it should be easier than for someone in Chengdu trying to understand a Shanghainese speaker in person. For comparison, here are the Mandarin equivalents of those sentences, pronounced by the same speaker: 1. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332870.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332870.mp3 2. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332436.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332436.mp3 3. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332568.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332568.mp3 4. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333012.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333012.mp3 5. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333070.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333070.mp3 6. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333151.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333151.mp3 7. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333392.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333392.mp3 8. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333584.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/333584.mp3 9. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332549.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332549.mp3 10. https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332788.mp3 https://audio.tatoeba.org/sentences/cmn/332788.mp3 And here they're written down, together with translations into various other languages: 1. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/488406 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/488406 2. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/485590 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/485590 3. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/485698 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/485698 4. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/488621 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/488621 5. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/489046 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/489046 6. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/489736 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/489736 7. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/492871 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/492871 8. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/496402 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/496402 9. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/485676 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/485676 10. https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/488252 https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/show/488252 If you want some more examples, this search returns a few hundred: https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/search?query=&from=wuu&to=und&user=&orphans=no&unapproved=no&has_audio=yes&tags=&list=&native=&trans_filter=limit&trans_to=cmn&trans_link=direct&trans_user=&trans_orphan=&trans_unapproved=&trans_has_audio=yes&sort_reverse=&sort=relevance https://tatoeba.org/cmn/sentences/search?query=&from=wuu&to=...

dumb1224 6y ago

> Someone from Shanghai will be able to speak to someone in Chengdu with their own dialect, just slower. This is definitely not true (if they were to use their own dialect). I'm from the same region surrounding Shanghai and although there are some intelligibility between dialects, it is hard if not completely impossible to have a conversation even between people from adjacent towns. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Chinese I'm a bit surprised about your claim. Anyone from China with a sense of the dialects of the south would know this.

foysavas 6y ago

Mandarin speakers ability to understand slowed down Shanghainese is likely a recent development. This is because much of traditional Shanghainese diction, grammar, and even pronunciation has been reduced or morphed to better suit the newer generations of speakers whose principal language is Mandarin.

princeb 6y ago

written cantonese is almost the same as written mandarin. the problem is that spoken cantonese is not much like written cantonese. it's a combination of pronunciation, accent, idioms, and sentence structures. best advice is for speakers of mandarin or cantonese to learn the other language like a new one. (there's also the written form of spoken cantonese, written spoken cantonese, if you will, that is the written representation of spoken cantonese using a set of special characters of sinitic origin). if you are from guangdong you will learn all systems of language - written mandarin, spoken mandarin, written cantonese, and spoken cantonese. some hongkongers don't ever learn spoken mandarin correctly, getting them to speak mandarin in front of a camera is always a source of good laughs. those who argue that cantonese are mutually intelligible with mandarin will typically use cantonese newspapers and official documents as evidence. those who argue that they aren't will point to spoken and colloquial cantonese as evidence. the objective point of view is to accept that cantonese as we know it exists as two separate languages used for two different purposes.