which chinese dialect(s) do you like most?

[amego]

hello ppl...well i'm from singapore and mandarin is my mother tongue, my father is hokkien and i picked up hokkien from my ah ma (hokkien for grandma), my mother is cantonese and i'm still learning now...well i think that cantonese sounds the nicest followed by mandarin then hokkien...cantonese has this "harmonics", sorry if i used it wrongly, but thats how i feel...maybe i prefer its richer tones and sounds...

which chinese dialect(s) do you all like most? sounds the best? share it with everyone!

EDIT: I forgot to mention Teochiew, sounds very profound

[self-taught-mba]

Well for usefulness and practicality I chose to learn Mandarin. Cantonese has limited use outside of Hong Kong where many people speak English anyway.

However I really prefer the way Cantonese sounds. In fact my Chinese friends always said I should learn Cantonese instead because I seem to be able to imitate it naturally. For me, I seem to be able to imitate Cantonese with no problem; with Mandarin I have to think about it and learn the tones. In fact, I have heard many people say that they think Cantonese is closer to English than is Mandarin because it has an up-and-down rhythm and sound to it much like English. And even though Cantonese has more tones it seems their tones are less rigid.


I started briefly teaching myself Cantonese but quickly gave up because I've been busy. I do however intend to learn it as a hobby/for enjoyment although the scarcity of learning materials makes it harder. I think Cantonese is the French of the Asian languages-- very pleasing to the ear (except for bunches of ladies screaming at each other in the market/hollering across the room--which in this case Cantonese takes on a very ugly form which has been stereotyped in movies ) But I love Cantonese and I like to practice the few sentences that I know every time I meet a Chinese person who speaks Mandarin with a Southern accent. (Besides the look on their face is priceless when you say in Cantonese "oh you are from southern China do you speak Cantonese?" )

P.S. There is considerable debate about whether or not to call it a "dialect" because Mandarin and Cantonese are not mutually intelligible

[Xiao Kui]

I´m a Mandarin speaker. It´s more practical, but I spent abt. 9 months in GZ and HK and I love the way Cantonese sounds. It sounds so fun and expressive. I wish I had time to learn it and I wish I was rich enough to live in HK which ties with NYC for the best city in the world. (ok, so I haven´t been to all the big cities in the world, but these two IMHO rock.)

[amego]

Quote:

P.S. There is considerable debate about whether or not to call it a "dialect" because Mandarin and Cantonese are not mutually intelligible

Yea, i heard of it too, but there isn't a satisfactory word in English (in my knowledge) that means 方言, as its somewhere between "dialect" and "language" (IMHO), thus my usage...

[Ferno]

They're languages, pure and simple. They are mutually incomprehensible to each other in spoken form. In written form? Everyone writes in Mandarin. The "dialect" label is political - if everyone thinks they're speaking "Chinese", it's harder to promote a seperate cultural identity and try to secede.

[Quest]

Quote:

They're languages, pure and simple. They are mutually incomprehensible to each other in spoken form. In written form? Everyone writes in Mandarin. The "dialect" label is political - if everyone thinks they're speaking "Chinese", it's harder to promote a seperate cultural identity and try to secede.

I don't think the 方言 label is political, it just means 地方语言 local tongue. In Chinese, I don't see anything wrong calling 上海话，广州话，客家话，福州话, 北京话，汉语方言。

[self-taught-mba]

Sorry, I didn't mean to open that can of worms. Haven't even had time to address the last "hot" topic I started let alone this. I was actually trying to head that one off by acknowledging the presence of a debate before it got started. Bad idea I guess--backfire!!

Ok there are differences in opinions about the language/dialect thing and they are addressed in other threads. Lest we highjack amego's post , so which language/dialect in the Sino-Tibetan family of languages do you like best?

[irishbob]

i have a lot of chinese friends all of whom speak different 'dialects', but i think Shanghainese sounds the best, its seems quite like japanese yet it sounds more relaxed and musical. As one of friends put it, 'Shanghainese is really easy to speak, you barely have to move your mouth at all, unlike mandarin and catonese where you have to concentrate heavily on the tones".

[Quest]

Quote:

As one of friends put it, 'Shanghainese is really easy to speak, you barely have to move your mouth at all, unlike mandarin and catonese where you have to concentrate heavily on the tones".

Native speakers dont have to concentrate heavily on the tones, and Shanghainese for Mandarin and Cantonese speakers is not 'really easy' to speak.

[Lu]

I don't know a word of Shanghainese, but I like the sound of it. Of all the fangyan I've heard I like Shanghainese best.