fookien or mandarin?
jeran28
June 30, 2008, 12:52 AM posted in General Discussionare the lessons in fookien or mandarin..? what's the difference between the t two?what is widely used here in the Philippines?please enlighten me.
cdcjr33
April 19, 2009, 10:23 AMHello Jeran28,
Fookien is a dialect used in the Southern part of China whereas Mandarin is the National Language of China.
hitokiri6993
April 19, 2009, 11:43 AMFookien/Hokkien/Minnan (福建話 fu2 jian4 hua4/閩南語 min3 nan2 yu3) is a Southern Sinitic Language spoken by Chinese who live in Fujian province, with a majority spoken in Taiwan and here in the Phils.
It has 9 tones as compared to Mandarin, which only has 4 tones.
In the Philippines, all Chinoys speak Lan-nang-oe 咱人話, a dialect of Hokkien which originated in Xiamen, China and has evolved over time with some Spanish and Filipino loanwords.
In Manila Chinatowns such as DIVISORIA and BINONDO...you can hear Lan-nang being spoken.
Lan-nang and Amoy Minnan (廈門閩南語) are mutually intelligible. I'm not sure with Taiwanese (which is also a dialect of Minnan) though.
However, with "President" (Dictator) Marcos establishing Martial law sometime around the 70's, Mandarin became the medium of instruction in Chinese schools here. That being the reason why most Chinoys could both speak Minnan and Mandarin, along with English and Filipino/Tagalog.
However in the Sta. Mesa area (Manila? right), there are LOTS of Chinoys of Cantonese descent (including yours truly). Originating in the Toisan county inside Guangdong Province, most Cantonese here speak Hoisan/Toisan 臺山話 Cantonese and/or Standard Cantonese 廣東話. In the Philippines though, HK Cantonese 香港話 (Cantonese with a mix of English, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Taiwanese, and 潮語-slang) makes it hard for other Cantonese (specifically the ones from HK & Macau) to converse with each other, thus making Standard Cantonese and HK Cantonese almost not mutually intelligible (unless you know the slangs and the loanwords).
I mean Sta. Mesa Cantonese is like PURE CANTONESE...as in perfect CANTO...you should listen to them speak! You can easily identify the 9 tones, not like HK Cantonese which only has 6 tones.
Anyway, here in C-pod, all the lessons are in Mandarin Chinese- Standard Mandarin (普通話 pu3 tong1 hua4). Enjoy the experience here, but first pick which Chinese language you're going to learn first! :)
mayor_bombolini
June 30, 2008, 01:01 AMThread
jeran28,
please check out the link above.
Lessons on ChinesePod are in Mandarin.