don't worry, in singapore we use all the dialects in one sentence it's a talent

Just a clarification, ‘Peking’, ‘Nanking’, and ‘Canton’ are NOT Wade-Giles! They are Postal Romanisation. In Wade-Giles, ‘Beijing’ is ‘Pei-ching’, ‘Nanjing’ is ‘Nan-ching', and ‘Guangzhou’ is ‘Kuang-chou’. Wade-Giles is not as clumsy as implied in this video!

I believe Mandarin was picked as an official language in 1911 by Sun yat sen while Mao enforced the idea

My father's last name was originally Li but when he immigrated from Toisan to Hong Kong, I've been told customs/immigration changed it to Lee.

1:30 Wrong! Mao wasn't the one proposed Mandarin as the official language. It was standardized by nationalist party long before Mao took power.

Also, Le/Lee in Vietnamese corresponds to the same Chinese surname as the one mentioned in the video (Lee's Sandwiches), but Ly corresponds to the Chinese character for "plum," which is spelled Lee in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, same as Bruce Lee.

Actually, Canton means Guangdong.

I know this has nothing to do with the subject, but now I understand why we say "Pékin" in France instead of Beijing. I never understood where this Pékin thing was coming from, but sometimes history explains it for us :)

also there is a difference in romanization based on different english speaking dialects and the country you migrate to. chen and chan are the same last name, chan is the british romanization. while chen is the American one. My uncle fled to HK in the 70’s and his name was listed as Chan because of british colonial rule, while the rest of my family’s name is chen because they remained under Chinese rule before migrating to the US

Meanwhile in Indonesia - Lin = Limantara, Halim, Salim - Chen = Tanoto, Hartanto, Chandra - Huang = Wibowo, Wijaya, Wiyono - Li = Ramli, Riady

Lee and Li are the same Chinese family name, like Bruce Lee and Jet Li. In Cantonese, it is pronounced as Lay.

Good to know Robert Edward Lee was a Chinese immigrant!

0:24 Taiwanese dialect (Hokkien I guess) for "let's eat" sounds like "let's work overhours" in Mandarin

Is it the same for Korean names like Choe & Cho? And can you guys do a video for Vietnamese names like Nguyen?

Lee and Li can also be different because of the country of origin. Now this doesn't always apply but sometimes, Lee indicates a Korean last name while Li indicates a Chinese last name, although this isn't always the case.

i thought this was interesting, you learn something new everyday :)

You should also have noted that Lee is still currently used, but by Koreans

2:32 "Zhou" and "Ng" were mispronounced. "Zhou" is best pronounced as "jow", rhymes with "row" (not going into detail about tongue placement). "Ng" is more of a grunt, like the end of "ing" but without any trace of the "i" (put back of tongue to roof of mouth, and grunt like you're constipated; so I guess '"dung" without the "duh"' works too :P).

Magnificent video. Nicely done. I'm learning a lot from you. Thanks for sharing.

0:02 isn't Wong the same as Wang, not Huang? Like Wong Kar-Wai 王家卫 in Mandarin he would be Wang Jiawei.

اللَّهُمَّ حَبِّبْ إلَينَا الإيمَانَ وَزَيِّنْهُ فِي قُلُوبِنَا ، وَكَرِّهِ إلَينَا الكُفْرَ وَالفُسُوقَ وَالعِصْيَانِ ، وَاجْعَلْنَا مِنَ الرَّاشِدِينَ

I really appreciate these few videos that I have found thank you very much little sister.

Fun facts: Mandarin was voted into the official language and dialect in 1923, during the Republic of China period. The guy who created Pinyin system, Zhou Youguang, spent the first half of his life as an economist before assigned with the task of standardizing Chinese phonetic language system. He lived 111 years and 1 day. Google honored his passing last year on its homepage.

Now we know! Robert E Lee was Chinese, and his family emigrated to USA before 1958.

The production quality on this channel is very good!!

There is more to this. The Chinese that migrated to South east Asia has their last names phonetically spelled based on their dialect. If you meet a Chinese person in Malaysia and Singapore for example, we can tell where their ancestors are from based on their English last name

Mandarin comes from the court system. Beijing and Nanjing have the most influence over the region for the past 700 years, so understandably, Mandarin is like a mix of the two. Stop playing this narrative as if Mandarin was introduced in the past 60 years or so.

Chinese "Lee" are people from the four counties (Taishan, Kaiping, Enping and Xinhui) speaking Siyihua (four-county dialect), in early days, from Gold Rush all the way through 1949 and after. My grandma was a "Lee" when she came over to the US from Taishan (Hoishan). "Lay" is based on "official" Cantonese, broadly spoken by people from Guangzhou (Canton) and surrounding areas. Note people from Guangzhou and Taishan don't easily understand each other although they are not far away. Nowadays people with the same surname from Mainland China use Putonghua's spelling: Li. Fortunately my "Wong" spell the same in Siyihua and Cantonese! However in Mandarin it's "Huang".

That is fascinating. Thanks!

I used to be SO confused about whether my family was from Canton or Guangzhou!! Only recently did I realize they are THE EXACT SAME. Smh

Very educational. Love how you included different dialects as well as the politics as to why.

湯 Tang in Mandarin Tong in Cantonese Hong in Taishanese

This totally explains everything because growing up my mom would have a different last name from my aunt and uncle.

this style and background music is sooo good

Very informative...

Thank you for educating us, really, thanks! 😊

From a linguistic point of view, Chinese "dialects" are not dialects anymore but different languages. Countries usually use this concept to diminish the importance of languages other than the national one ​​and make them disappear little by little in order to maintain unity. As sometimes it is said: "A language is a dialect with an army and navy"

Blown away!! That's cool

Wow that's intresting. Thank you AJ+.

0:26 correct me if I'm wrong but it seems as if the Hainanese for "let's eat" is a different phrase altogether from the other two, as opposed to just a different dialectal pronunciation of the characters for 来吃饭

Truly interesting. Thank you! :-D

mandarin was the official language way before Mao

Beijing's airport is PEK and Guangzhou's is CAN. My Ex-Wife spells her name Li. Helpful video, thanks.

Yeap Hmong people had Lo, Lor, Lao Lee, Ly Cha, Chang Some of these are same family but now they think they are different. I don't know the story but I think when we are in refugee camp in Thailand the immigration workers wrote our name different in different time and different camp. But I know that the Ly want to be different from the Lee because of politics

there's so many wrong in this video 1:57 the chinese character for Canton (廣東) did change with Guangzhou (广州) 0:54 if u call Taishanese as "Toisan", then why call Hokkien and Teochew as "Southern Min", and Hokchew as "Northern Min" and Hokchew in reality is even Eastern Min 0:33 they're not variations of a single language nor are they "dialects". they're many different languages under one linguistic family. dialects are for example, Beijing Mandarin, Taiwan Mandarin, Nanjing Mandarin, Sichuanese, etc. Also, the pronunciation of the Mandarin Pinyin-spelled surnames in this video are all mispronounced especially the ones with letter G, B, J, Y, ZH

This was really interesting. Also, cool effect around the host Dolly Li.

I always thought Canton was the old name for Guangdong (the province) and not the city (guangzhao)

Interesting. I see this with Cambodian-Chinese last names too.

How would you differentiate the spelling for 黎 and 李?

Then there's me, who was given Lee instead of Li bc my mom didn't want my last name to potentially be ignorantly mispronounced loll

My grandfather left China to Viet Nam in the 30s and my Great Uncle went to Hong Kong. When I met my aunt in Hong Kong, her last name is spelled Lee and mine is Ly.

"... and now you know." I honestly couldn't care less, but that's on me because I clicked on this video.

Interestingly, Mao himself had a really strong Hunan accent

Why is the language so complicated or is it just me? I was curious becquse my grandmother father came to Jamaica supposedly from china and his last name was Lee

CANTONESE should have been the National Language

If I'm not mistaken Beijing is still known as Peking in the Netherlands

When my mom and her family immigrated to the US, their surname was spelled Li, but she didn't like it so she changed it to Lee and so did her brother.

She cute 😍

Fun fact, Mao himself spoke Mandarin almost as a second language. If you look at the few available footages of him speaking, you can tell he's quite accented

You should do a video on Japanese family names because actually really interesting when you compare it to the neighboring countries.

This is beautiful

If you can't undestand each other, they're not dialects. They are LANGUAGES.

Our family name in the Hoisan dialect is pronounced Vong but use Wong as the spelling for the character yellow.

ly was always seen as a vietnamese surname bc of their ly dynasty but my grandpa came from chaozhou china and ly is a derivation of li in southern min accent... teochew! takes so much explaining :/

Great work

According to their etymology 李/Li/Lee means _plum tree_ yet in the European version Lee means _meadow_ or a woodland for Leah

Would be more accurate to call it Minnan rather than Taiwanese.

I am half Chinese and my half Chinese is further split between Hakka and Cantonese. My Chinese grandparents probably spoke to each other in Pidgin English.

Interesting!

here in Hong Kong, the phonetic translation from Cantonese/Chinese into Roman alphabets are highly influenced by British English because of colonization.

mm I want some Peking Duck. I love oriental food

The different between Li and LEE has a darker background than you thought, Since LEE is also an anglo saxon surname so, Chinese Li would choose to become LEE to dodge discrimination in the West.

I believe that Hakka(客家) is one of the Jewish tribes in Taiwan like President Lǐ Dēng huī and in Singapore President Lee Kuan Yewand. Japan the same had Hata(秦) and Lee(李) and was also known as the Jewish tribes too .

wow interesting thanks

oh its not just 2. in the philippines, we have Dy, Dee, Lee, Li

Tran in Vietnamese, Jin in Korean, Chen in Mandarin, Chan in Cantonese, even Tan among the Chinese Malaysians are all the same...

Interesting video Aj+

I also learned that Chan (Cantonese), Chen (Mandarin) and Tran (Viet) are actually the same name.

Question: so where does the European "Lee" come from? Are they descendants from trade or immigration w/ China thousands of years ago? Or is it a modern English variation on a Latin word?

Hope someone from Indonesia can make video about this things too in Indonesia.. Third Generation of Chinese-Indonesian here, my family name is Gan, but i still dont know my family history name :D

In Malaysia WE have 50% of Chinese languages here

The use of the word dialect is just a nationalistic vanity. If you can't talk and understand it's a language. (No writing the same character doesn't count). Yes, there are some regional graduations that you can understand the adjacent region and they can understand the next region where you cannot understand that region but some languages separated more than a thousand years ago like Cantonese (Yue) versus Mandarin (so-called Putonghua or Universal language) and sound as different as Spanish and French or German and English or more. I don't understand why China is not comfortable to say that. It's OK if they speak a different language and still be Chinese. There are 55 recognized minorities many who speak no language from the Han language family at all. They're still Chinese and that's OK. Are there not French and English speakers in Canada Canadian? Gaelic, Welsh and English speakers in the UK, citizens of the UK? Flemish-Dutch and French speakers in Belgium Belgians? German, French and Italian speakers in Switzerland Swiss?

But wait the moment? Did you say Cantonese is just only spoken in Hong Kong? I think this is ridiculous..... Actually Cantonese is spoken in Hong Kong, Macau, Guangdong and surround areas. But, for official language that is using the Cantonese are Hong Kong and Macau. So, although this information is very good explanation but I just add this. So, that's all.

This video is wrong on many levels. First, there wasn't a standard Chinese prior to 1920s. In the past, it was just one of many flavours of Chinese chosen /Mandated by imperial court of the era. Republic of China has chosen mandarin, originally a Chinese dialect from a area in Beijin, to be standardized official spoken language due to it's simplicity compare to other Chinese dialects. Today's common Mandarin is tinted with more influence from northern dialect group because core leadership of Communist government are mostly from North. Second, Canton is a much larger geographic area than Guangzhou. Guangzhou is the capital city of Canton province.

that's insane :0 I love it ❤❤❤ my boyfriend even speaks a little bit of Chinese.

Correction to the video: Mandarin actually became the official language of China during the Republic of China era - Before the civil war that split the country into 2. That's why mandarin is also the official language in Taiwan.

Is the part where ng / wu correct ? As in they belong to the wu[吳] clan ? My last name is ng but my chinese name is pronounced as[黃]huang. I'm from Malaysia btw

Did you pronounce Zhou as "zow"? I could have sworn it was pronounced "Jo"...

Meanwhile, my great-great-grandparents moved to the then-Dutch East Indies and somehow got their last name transliterated to "Go", which is is funny because that spelling more commonly associated with the Korean language (then Indonesia happened and every member of the family who hadn't left for the Netherlands had to change their name, but that's a different story altogether).

I don't really know about my "chinese" background,my family use bahasa indonesia as an everyday language and never use mandarin or other chinese dialect. So this is why my surename is Lee and not Lie, My late grandparents already stay in indonesia before the hanyu pinyin. So what dialect uses Lee as surename? Hokian, cantonese or others?

You pronounced "Zhou" wrong right at the end.

Thank you Li

Fun fact: why do so many Chinese people share the same few surnames? Because when surnames came into vogue in China, all the people of a certain area just adopted the area name as their surname... or something like that! That goes for the vast majority of surnames of Chinese.

She is definitely my type😍

shes pretty...

Could not believe you are a second-generation Chinese immigrant and still using this wrong Chinese map.

wow, so Lee = Li? Who would've thought? Thanks for letting me know.

Before watching this video I thought the difference is Li is Chinese and Lee is Korean.

good stuff

U can tell what ethnicity someone is based on their surname. Im tan 陈 because im a hokkien