Can Poddies speak Chinese local dialects? (方言)
xiaohu
August 04, 2008, 01:01 AM posted in General DiscussionHi Poddies,
I personally am fascinated by language, and since I don't have either the time or the life span to learn all the languages I want to, I've had to pick my favorite that is the most useful, namely Mandarin Chinese.
I have always wanted to learn 上海话，and 广东话 and most especially 傣族话 (the language of the Dai people).
I think the Dai people have some really fascinating cultural customs, and are the creators of some of the worlds most hauntingly beautiful instruments like the Hulusi (葫芦丝).
My Mandarin tutor told me a story about one of his students who went to a small mountain community in China to learn the dialect of a small subset of Chinese people simply so he could be the only person in the world who was billingual in English and this rare dialect.
I am curious if there are any Poddies who can speak a fair amount of one or more Chinese local dialects？ （known as 方言）
Does anyone here an interest in learning some of these 少数民族的语言？
changye
August 06, 2009, 04:37 AMSichuan dialect belongs to the southwestern subgroup (西南方言) in the northern dialect group in Chinese. In short, Sichuan dialect is also a member of the northern dialect group, and this is the very reason that Sichuan dialect is similar to standard Mandarin.
Dialect Map of China 中国方言地图
http://yuwei.usts.edu.cn/fangyanwenhua/2733616629741433771271256.jpg
andrew_c
August 04, 2008, 02:17 AMIt's not quite a 少数民族的语言 like the ones you mentioned, but I want to learn 天津话. So far my mother-in-law taught me one joke, but I definitely want to learn more.
nickcripps
August 04, 2008, 02:58 AM我会说一点广东话，我会用广东话来点菜，购物，做简单的会话。我其实能听懂比较大多的，只是没有机会说所以我说得不如我听力好。
我将来也想学一点闽南话，因为大部分的菲律宾华人说这个方言。
I can speak a little Cantonese, and I can use it to order food, do shopping and make simple conversation. I can actually understand quite a lot, it's just that I don't have much chance to speak it so my speaking isn't as good as my listening.
I also want to learn a little Minnan-hua, because most Chinese in the Philippines speak this dialect.
foleadu
August 04, 2008, 05:02 AMMy wife is from Suzhou, so I can say a few words in Suzhounese which always bring smiles and laughter from her family and locals. If I watch local TV with subtitles I can occasionally follow the dialogue because of vague similarities with Putonghua, but I doubt I'll ever put the effort into learning more than some basics. Mandarin is enough of a challenge, and the usefulness of Suzhounese doesn't extend too far.
If I had to pick one dialect to learn, it would be Shanghainese because I like the sound and it comes up in a fair number of movies. Have any users mastered Shanghainese? Is it more or less difficult than Mandarin?
xiaohu
August 04, 2008, 05:11 AMFoleadu:
I'd really love to learn Shanghainese, I even bought a level 1 textbook with CD's. I love the soft, romantic sound of it, I feel like it's almost the French of the Orient.
The problem is, like I stated before, there isn't enough time to learn all that I want to know so I have to concentrate on Putonghua for now to master it.
I'm hoping that once I've mastered Putonghua, related Chinese dialects will be that much easier and hopefully can be mastered in just a couple of years.
I'd also love to know if anyone out there has mastered Shanghainese, and how the difficulty level compares to Mandarin.
calkins
August 04, 2008, 07:44 PMInteresting conversation.
I'm curious how difficult it is to learn 普通话 when living in Hong Kong or other 广东话 speaking areas. Does it make it that much more difficult to master Mandarin?
xiaohu
August 05, 2008, 02:20 AMCalkins,
I assume because of limited exposure to 广东话 in Northern China it might make it kind of difficult if you're not greatly exposed to the dialect, although on the other hand, it is Chinese and the strong connection is there.
I've been told once you learn one Chinese dialect it's a short hop to learn the next one.
I wonder if anyone here has the experience of learning a dialect in an area where another dialect is dominant?
sushan
August 07, 2008, 03:40 AMI have taken the occasional 四川话 class but understand far more than I speak. The surprising thing was that taking the classes actually improved my Mandarin (intermediate level, but have never taken in a class until three months ago) since it made me realize how the local dialect influences my Mandarin.
For example, I never say '钱' with a proper second tone, I usually use a flattened fourth tone. When I took the class I realized that is how Sichuanese always say it.
trevlu
August 07, 2008, 10:05 AMMy family's background is from 广东潮州 and subsequently I am able to speak 潮州话, aka Teochew.
It's a much less commonly heard dialect in the West (my nationality is Australian) but no doubt 95% of the people who can speak Teochew in the west are actually from the Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Hong Kong.
Some may have fled in the 1930s as a result of Japan attacking China and others due to events that occurred in the late 1940s that don't need mentioning on this board. The SE Asian countries were the obvious choice due to proximity
My parents' generation then fled Vietnam in the 1970s before the war and many went to Australia and the US. Tough times. I think I have it so easy sometimes.
I can speak 潮州话 quite well and fluently but my vocab isn't extensive at all (so then I don't really know if you call that 'fluent'. If I continue to study 汉语 then no doubt I will eventually become more fluent at it than Teochew.
auntie68, I'd love to be in a place that's surrounded by Teochew speaking people! You're lucky :P There are lots of Hokkien and Teochew in Malaysia too I believe.
changye
August 04, 2008, 02:11 AMHi xiaohu,
It may be said that I can speak 东北话.....just because I often use 儿化 in conversation. And I can speak an ethnic minority language in China.......becasue I'm an elementary learner of Korean (朝鲜语). Hehe, I know this is not an exciting story you expect. Probably foreign guys who stay in south China would tell us a lot more intriguing stories.
peterberlin1980
August 07, 2008, 10:35 AMCalkins,
After learning Mandarin for a couple of years in 广州 I've switched to learning 广东话 because most social situations I've found myself have needed it. You can learn and improve your Mandarin in Guangzhou if you are selective about the friends you make and which places you hang out. Obviously life dosen't work like that though and time and again I went to hang out with people looking forward to hearing and speaking Mandarin and ended up asking everybody to translate to Mandarin what had just been said in Cantonese. While some Chinese incomers (from outside Guangdong) are sniffy about Cantonese and don't want to use it (or just don't find themselves needing to learn it) many pick it up very quickly. When going out in a group if the majority of people are Cantonese speakers the conversation always to flow more easily into Cantonese. I would definetly say living here has impeded the speed at which I've picked up Mandarin but for a learner who took care to build their language environment perhaps it need not?
phillipfeilipu
August 03, 2009, 08:40 AMWow guys
This is a great topic. I too am very interested in the other chinese dialects.
我會說一點點廣東話。我也可以說一點點台語(閩南語 spoken in Taiwan).
Well, seeing there are four major families of Chinese dialects, there are so many I would like to study such as Shanghaihua, Chaozhouhua, Taiyu, Guangdonghua, Taishanhua, Hakka, etc. There are simply too many to choose from.
It's really interesting because all of these languages are related to each other. If you are atleast an intermediate Mandarin speaker, you can hear some of the similarities if you listen very closely (especially if you can see the characters on a tv screen as a person speaks). They are all descended from middle chinese with the exception of the Min langauges which are slighly different.
Its honestly nothing to see a foreigner who can speak great Mandarin these days. However, if you can see a foreigner speaking a local dialect.......now that is something special!
miantiao
August 05, 2009, 02:52 AM哎哟！四川话不就一个哈！方言多得很。虽说我四川话听力水平越来越好，我不过就会说一点点。
phillipfeilipu
August 05, 2009, 06:58 PMWow, I find this stuff way too interesting.
我剛才看一個四川方言電影在youtube網站。 讓你下面看一下吧。
Actually, the sichuan dialect is a one of the southwestern mandarin dialects. Mandarin (not the same meaning as the "mandarin" we study) makes up one of the four chinese language families and consists of many different dialects. In my opinion, the sichuan dialects sounds very very similar to PRC standard mandarin (since its in the same family this comes as no suprise). Standard mandarin is just one of the mandarin dialects that was chosen by the PRC (that variety spoken around Beijing). If you compare this to a min family dialect like Chaozhou or Hokkien then you will definitely hear the difference.
See for yourself:
Sichuanese (a mandarin dialect):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o53BDs-W_Hc&feature=related
Chaozhou dialect (a min dialect):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fILFayWaPWs
tvan
August 05, 2009, 07:28 PM@phillipfeilipeu, I know that other Chinese speakers, at least Cantonese and Mandarin, can't understand Chaozhou/潮州话。 My wife and in-laws use it to have "private" discussions around other Chinese. In fact, I'm not sure other Min speakers can do more than pick out an individual word here or there.
There is a pretty good argument to be made that Chinese is a family of different languages bound together (mostly) by a common writing system. Just make sure to bring a sizeable army to the debating table.
phillipfeilipu
August 05, 2009, 10:40 PMInteresting discussion.
I need to correct an earlier statement that there were 4 chinese language families. Actually, there are more like 7 and then some scholars argue over other dialects being classified as their own family/some dialects are still unclassified. Typical scholar disagreement right?
Based on what I have read, the min family of dialects is actually the most unlike all other chinese dialects because they did not directly descend from middle chinese. Basically, you can think of ancient chinese as the tree trunk and then Min as one branch while middle Chinese is another branch. From the middle Chinese branch grew smaller branches the Yue, Gan, Mandarin, Hakka,Wu, and Xiang language families.
Min dialects retain many ancient pronunciations as well. I have listened to quite a few of the min languages such as chaozhou, hokkien, taiwanese, etc and can't really understand anything at all. That is just me though. Can anyone here understand those languages or pick up bits and pieces that sound remotely like standard mandarin? They sound quite different from Mandarin in my opinion.
tvan
August 06, 2009, 03:30 AMphilipfeilipu, I think the Min dialects are different enough from Mandarin as to be unintelligible. In this thread, two of the most helpful and knowledgeable poddies, Changye and Casselin, discuss a couple of possible origins.
In summary, an alternate name for 闽南语 is 河洛语 (also sometimes used to describe Taiwanese), which is believed to refer to an area near the Yellow River from which a group migrated from Northern China to Fujian anywhere between 1,500 to serveral thousand years ago, hence, the ancient pronunciations.
Cantonese makes a similar claim. Don't ask me how you prove any of it.
RJ
August 07, 2008, 10:30 AMCalkins,
In HK they study Mandarin and English in school from early on. I traveled to China with colleagues from HK and they seemed to do very well when they needed to speak Mandarin. Their English of course is very good as well. I envy them for having the opportunity to learn 3 languages in school from a very young age. It seems everyone in HK can speak all 3. At least.
auntie68
August 04, 2008, 01:43 AMHere in Singapore, where it's almost impossible to NOT hear the sounds of Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, and Hakka in the course of a single day, the only 方言 which sounds opaque and exotic to me is Hainanese.
I'd love to study formal Teochew, if materials were available. But my Mandarin and Cantonese needs too much work for me to branch out yet!