Being a Malaysian Chinese. I'm glad my country has cantonese, hakka, hokkien, teowchew, hainan and foochew community all in close proximity. I can understand 4 out of the 6 dialects. Basically i'm a Hakka living in a hokkien community, married a teowchew girl, watch cantonese drama since small. Our national language is Malay. And here everyone from the Chinese community able to speak Mandarin fluently too

As a Korean, I don't know anything anyone is saying but as for pronunciation, Hakka sounds the closest to Sino-Korean words.

if alot of 'shurrr' its mandarin if alot of 'ah', its wu

Can't call them dialects to be honest. They are very different from one another. It's not like Australian English vs British Queen's English vs American English... you get the point. I think it's easier for Italian to understand Spanish than for a Cantonese speaker to understand Mandarin.

cantonese sounds like a very stress inducing language.

Mandarin = Northern China Cantonese = Southeastern China Wu = Eastern China Hokkien = Southeastern China Hakka = Southeastern China

Cantonese is so different sounding to Mandarin. Wu sounds like someone trying to fake a Mandarin accent. Hokkien sounds like a mashup of Canto and Mando. Hakka sounds like someone trying to fake a Canto accent. Just my observation from a non Chinese speaking person. LOL.

I love Cantonese and I’m Vietnamese, southern Vietnamese to be exact. It sounds just like the dialects I speak. Upbeat and ghetto like, maybe I watched too much Hong Kong movies growing up lol

As a Chinese I can only understand the Mandarin. My hometown dialect is different from each of these.

Hakka and Wu dialects sound soft and comfortable

All the Sino languages in this video sound me like music. I love all Sino languages. They're like treasures.

I think I prefer Wu, but maybe I’m biased because the video shows a pretty woman talking playfully for its sample of Wu.

Chinese people generally think Wu Chinese is the best to listen to, especially Suzhou dialect. We call it 吳侬軟語. Because it's the softest. And Suzhou is the most cultured and wealthiest city in China from 1400 to 1900.

Being an American, having grown up in the upper-midwest (Minnesota) and after living in San Francisco for a number of years, my impression, of course, says more about me and the culture I grew up in than then any intrinsic characteristics of the dialects. Mandarin: cool, sophisticated, learned, balanced, but also distant and somewhat unfriendly. Probably because this is the dialect spoken by most Chinese university students and those recently in country for business and also because it's the official language of government and mass media. Cantonese: emotional, passionate, rustic, aggressive, adventuresome, fast-paced, chaotic, quarrelsome, inquisitive, opinionated, loud. For me (like many Americans) this is the language of Chinese cinema, the Hong Kong action movies. Also the language of most imported Chinese popular music (until recently). Immigrants from Hong Kong in the 60s-80s meant that this was the language of many recent immigrants, especially those starting families when I was growing up. Wu: soft, quiet, flowing, murmuring, friendly, relaxed, even. Min/Hokkien: Working man's language, haggling in shops, grandparents yelling at their grand kids, of smoking a cigarette, chatting outside an auto body shop while on break, homey, comfortable, unsophisticated, rural, language on the street, language of the elderly, simple, gossipy. Probably because this is one of the core language of SF Chinatown, especially of families that have lived in San Francisco many generations.

As an English and Sino-language speaker, I find that some simple short English sentences end up being much longer in Chinese. On the other hand, English sentences that have complex ideas can be summed up in just a few Chinese characters. It goes to show how interesting language learning can be.

In Malaysia there a lot of people who can speak like 3 or 4 dialects

I live in Manila (Philippines) and the lady at 4:19 looks and sounds EXACTLY like all the nice old Chinese ladies you see at the mall

0:36 “Ar ar ar ar ar quiet now. Quite bullshit, Neiman”

I love Cantonese and I prefer it over Mandarin :)

That was a lot of Chinese! It's hard trying to compare different speech from different situations, but judging from those clips I'd say Cantonese and Hakka sounded most pleasing to my ears. If I had to pick just one I'd go for Hakka.

I'm a Mexican who grew up in San Francisco and learned basic Cantonese. Before I learned Cantonese I used to think that it sounded terrible and loud, then I found out what a cool and fun language it was with so much slang and expressions. Never a dull moment speaking Cantonese.

As someone who can't understand a word they are saying Wu sounds the most pleasant. Mandarin and Hokkien sound harsh to my ears.

I'm a Chinese,I can speak both Mandarin and Cantonese.

Wu is the best for me xD

hakka differs between regions (because hakka are actually the migrated people from central china to other parts of china). my grandpa who speaks the hopo variant of hakka speaks it really differently from the hakka presented here

I love my hometown language :Wu!

Now I get it. I could HEAR the difference but I didn't know which was which. Good examples and good video.

Great video

As a Shanghainese, I can speak Mandarin and Shanghainese(Wu). And I can understand 100% Mandarin and 90% Suzhou dialect (Wu) and 60% Cantonese.

Wu flows the best. It almost sounds like a subtle pitch accent language with polysyllabic words. Cantonese is the kind of Chinese language westerners know due to Kung fu movies, migration of Cantonese Chinese to the west, and Hong Kong and Macau. Min Hokkien is commonly used by the large oversea Chinese populations in Southeast Asia like in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand, and is the 2nd most most influential Chinese dialect after ancient Middle Chinese. Many words from Hokkien entered neighbouring Asian languages like Malay, Tagalog, Thai etc due to trade and intermarriage with Hokkien speaking Chinese merchants. Hakka is like a mix between Cantonese and Hokkien, with some small pre Mandarin influence due to their origins coming from the north and settling in the south and adopting their new language. Mandarin is the most divergent language, because it originated as the prestige language of the ethnically non -Han Chinese Mongols and Manchus when they occupied China, due to their lack of certain phonemes, it shows a lot of influence from their languages.

Personally, Cantonese because I grew up speaking Cantonese, learned mandarin in Chinese school and understood some basic sentences. My mom speaks Cantonese, mandarin, Vietnamese and teochew. Mandarin, sounds standardized, might need to reeducate myself in mandarin in the future.

I'm from the Philippines. I have heard the proverb, used in the Hokkien part of the video, from elders. It's an important proverb to remember.

If you want to say anything about Chinese dialect, Malaysia has a tons of them especially Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka and Teochiew.

After listening I kind of see how other South East Asian languages can be similar to converse dialects. Cantonese has some Thai and Vietnamese sounding words with more ng or g sounds. The cadence and how sentences flow is similar (not the same though) Wu sounds similar to Korean. Hokkien and Hakka sounds similar to Vietnamese also. I speak Cantonese and Mandarin and these are just my quick observations regarding patterns of speech.

My aunt is Chinese-Malaysian. Aside from English and Malay, she also speaks Mandarin, Hokkien, and Cantonese

To learn mandarin well ....you can travel to any places in China..and communicate with local people, other dialects are hard to do this

Suzhounese langauge sounds the most beautiful, sounds more poetic and scholarly than the other Chinese languages.

幹，都說客家話是晉代和宋代從北方難逃的漢人躲起來說的話，我還不信，覺得怎麼可能。結果今天聽了真的能聽出來北方官話的感覺，就是保留了多一點入聲。我感覺和同樣在北方但不屬於官話的晉語有點像！這回我信了。

exactly what i needed

There are so many types of Hakka. Some are very different from each other. Hokkien spoken here sounds very different from those spoken in Singapore.

I can speak 3 of them fluently: Mandarin, Shanghainese (dialect of Wu), and Cantonese. - Wu flows the best because the tone is smoother, and the pure vowels and nasalized vowels are easier to pronounce. I guess the hearer should feel the same. - A lot of the phonological features of Old Chinese is lost in Mandarin. If you knows Japanese or Korean plus another Southern Chinese language, you know what I mean. - Cantonese is great for singing, but in speech it sounds too "tonal" for me. In terms of information density per syllable: Cantonese > Mandarin > Shanghainese

I never heard anyone speak Wu before. First time hearing what the dialect sounds like.

Well as a native chinese.... I'm living in suzhou so i do speak Wu or suzhou dialect, but i do not understand cantonese or hakka or hokkien..... BUT it's actually very interesting that we as suzhou people, do understand the dialects of cities around suzhou such as Shanghai dialect, Hangzhou dialect or Wujiang dialect which are actually quite different from the suzhou dialect.....we just understand anyway..... AND just to add that even the Suzhou dialect can be separated further into the urban suzhou dialect and the countryside suzhou dialect..... which surprisingly we sometimes do not understand some meaning of the words......

Where's the first clip from? I like how it's talking about language/accents

Mandarin has the prettiest sounds. But the writing, they are all beautiful 😊💗

Cantonese really does sound like the "most Chinese" out of all the languages of China. It really makes some truly unique sounds. I'm willing to bet it is for sure the most ancient of all the Chinese languages. Either that or it came directly from it.

So interesting

3:11 Me looking fory homework in my back pack acting like I can't find it and forgot it at home knowing damn well I didn't do it.

The Hokkien speakers here sounds really like my grandparents from Jinjiang. Very different from my other grandparents from Xiamen.

I heard about the Cantonese dialect, but I didn’t know how it sounded before. I recently watched a movie where they spoke Cantonese. It was just a little like the usual Mandarin, which I heard often, but it sounded completely different to me. Since then, I became interested in this dialect, because it seemed pleasant to me.I know little about the Chinese language and its dialects, but even after watching this video and listening to the different dialects, I can say that Cantonese is the nicest,I really like it.I would like to speak it one day,but I think it's hard to learn it...

There r also other Chinese dialects, e.g. Hainanese, Hockchew, Hockchia, Kenghwa, etc. Even Cantonese, I think there are two other sub groups, all because of the speaking tones.

That pitch accent is super noticeable in the Wu example

Cantonese and Wu sound awesome, would love to learn them. Even though you have to go through Mandarin apparently to learn any other one in the west! One of my students speaks Cantonese but he's not that keen to show me. Mandarin just so dry to my ear

Seems that "tonal" languages let you convey lots of information very quickly. Is this true? Also, loving the "gucci" gramma shirt in the Hokkien segment.

*Cantonese and Hack-ga so colorful and fun!* ⭐️

Interesting.

I'm learning Mandarin right now but I really like the sound of Cantonese

i love Cantonese

excuse me there bobby? sir? what was the name of that Wu show and which episode and to which season it was? also, I wish you had American Subtitles included at the bottom. also I wish I had a pony, or atleast a ponytail!

is there pin yin like for Taiwan language ( fukien ) ?

Hakka and Cantonese sounds like Thai and Vietnamese.

Haka and wu sounded the most soothing for me espeschially hakka ,mandarin last. What about whenzhounese?

There are many type of Hakka what type was being spoken in the video you whowed

Hokkien language is what’s mostly spoken in Philippines in the Chinese community and Tagalog also has loanwords from the Hokkien Language

There are some different tones between Quanzhou & Taiwanese

I love hokkien minnan

I love this tonal languages, though they are very difficult to grasp

The last 2 videos remind me of Rainbow 6 Siege, Tower map lol

I am from Hong Kong so I speak both Mandarin and Cantonese and I still don't understand why people say that Cantonese is aggressive lmao

所謂北京話也不過是當年滿清採用的官話。。真正本來廣泛，地道，傳統的，之前朝代使用的多是客家，蘇州，福建，廣東話之類的語系。。

Which dialect of chinese do they speak in drama? I feel like I hear Wu in historical ones...? 🤔

Hakka sounds nice

Wu sounds so beautiful! =)

exactly its not hokkien, in hokkien(fujian) have many dialects, almost can group to 5 families, in video we called it southern Min(闽Min is ancient name of Hokkien=Fujian) family, its include Xiamen Zhangzhou Quanzhou Teochew Chaoshan, etc. →→→→←←←← the other dialect families in hokkien is northern Min, eastern Min(like Fuzhou's dialect), Central Min and Po hsien those who called southern Min families as Hokkien just because many years ago, most of southern fujian immigrants telling people that they came from Fujian in dialect→hokkien. NOW, their descendants and mny uninformed people thought their dialect = hokkien

The Hakka part by the TV newscaster is very Cantonese influenced - maybe it's use of formal Chinese.

what is the hardest dialect?

the Hokkien only represents the Quanzhou end of the spectrum, the Zhangzhou end sounds different (e.g. vowel change "i" to "u" in common syllables e.g. li -> lu 汝)

Cantonese is much more strong in pronounciation, sound similar to korean

So God damn good sounding languages!

the southern min example is the quanzhou dialect, as a taiwanese, it is extremely difficult to understand. I can only pick up about 60% of it even though it is the same language family/group.

竇文濤 speaks Mandarin very very well with a Beijing flavor, even though he's not from Beijing. The program is called 鏘鏘三人行.

Wu is my favourite. Also the music playing briefly during Wu at 3:08 is called Naruto OST 2 - Fooling Mode.

hokkien, sounds like my dialect of my native language, like, the way the words are shortened and sound stronger

Wu and Hakka sound beautiful

Wu sounds like Mandarin mixed with Japanese, especially when the woman speaks it. I think Cantonese sounds the best though

The Hokkien one sounds like it's from Taiwan. I'm from Indonesia and our Hokkien is quite different (we also have a variety of Hokkien accents in Indonesia).

Can this hakka be understood in anhui, hubei, jianghsi?

There are actually many dialects in China. My hometown is jiangxi province, but we don't speak the dialect of jiangxi, because my hometown is the junction of jiangxi province and zhejiang province, so our dialect is the combination of Gan and Wu and Jianghuai dialect.

I only understand Cantonese because I speak Cantonese Hakka. Now if your confused there are different types of Hakka like Malaysian Hakka and Cantonese Hakka. Random Fact: I'm also TeoChew. Lol

They sound the same to me, except for cantonese

There are a lot more variants. Southwestern and Northeastern dialects sounds like a twist of Mandarin but still very different. Cantonese and Hakka has a lot of regional accents that can sound very different given by which part of Southern China you live in. Chaoshan sounds like Hokkien but they couldn't understand each other. Wu is more like a group of local dialects spoken in Eastern China rather than a specific local language. Other than that, China has some regional languages that have their own writing language instead on Hanzi, such as Uyghur and Mongolian. I speak Mandarin, Cantonese and Hakka, and I can still sometimes be confused by different accents from Cantonese and Hakka. While mainland China and Taiwan/Guangdong and Hong Kong both speaks Mandarin/Cantonese, the vocabulory we use for certain things might differ, quite like the ones you find between British English and American English.

Do the different dialects also have different sounds as opposed to the roughly 400 sounds in Mandarin? I know Cantonese has more tones. I would like to know of a dialect that has more phonetic variety.

is wu dialect of suzhou and shanghai dialect the same?

So interesting, Cantonese sounds quite similar to Vietnamese! If I weren't listening closely or just caught glimpses of the conversation, I might think it was Vietnamese. 🧐

How i like chinese dialects (specially cantonese and mandarin, my favorites).

As a Cantonese speaker I can understand 100% Cantonese 97% mandarin (I learnt it in school but they are speaking in a really northern accent) 70% hakka (sounds like Cantonese with wrong tones and random twisted mandarin words) 30% Hokkien (just like Hakka but everything has weird twisted sounds and different tones) 20% Wu (Like mandarin but every single word is swapped out with something else)

Hakka is my favorite 😏💛

Heh. I'm from NY (and I watched a lot of Jackie Chan movies growing up), so Cantonese is most familiar to my ear. Back in grad school, I roomed with someone from Beijing (Mandarin), and our next door neighbor was from Shanghai (Suzhou). They used to tease about each other's accents all the time. My roomie would say our neighbor sounded like an old-fashioned gangster (and let me tell you, a Mandarin Chinese speaker trying to put on a Cagney accent is HILARIOUS), and our neighbor would call her "professor" or "princess."

i understand taiwanese speaking mandarin much easier than chinese speaking mandarin. the accent is very strong. my family dialect is moyanese. Hakka sounds close to taiwanese as well. I love the sound of it

Something I’m curious about is how much of the written language is similar? Do they have different characters for certain words?