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.

[self-taught-mba]

Shanghainese is way too fast for me! The 'Shanghainese girl I dated refused to speak Mandarin (despite being fluent/standard) because it was too slow for her. (She also had a big impatient streak but that's another thing ) And I think Mandarin has a slightly faster pace than English (But again in NC we might just be slower than the rest of yall.)

[amego]

Quote:

Shanghainese is way too fast for me!

in my opinion, 方言 can be spoken very fast, esp Cantonese, when i watch those serials its way beyond me, its faster than machine gun!...and my Hokkien Ah Ma(Grandma) also speaks very fast...perhaps sounds in 方言 is easier to pronounce, unlike Mandarin ri, cen, ceng, chen, cheng! ( tell you the truth i cant really distinguish the latter four), and words are often more flexible and versatile and can use in many situations...

one friend told me that “aiya Mandarin speakers always 一个字一个字慢慢咬(take their time to pronounce word by word)"

[irishbob]

Quote:

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

i simply meant that tones aren't as important in Shanghainese (which has only two) compared to Mandarin (which has four tones to distinguish between words which sound the same).
Also, of course its hard for Mandarin and Cantonese speakers to speak Shanghainese, its not their mother tongue! I meant that as languages go, native speakers dont need to use their mouths too much.

[hakkaboy]

Quote:

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...

There is a word that corresponds to 方言 exactly. It is "topolect", but admittedly not all native speakers of English would know what a topolect was.

[amego]

Quote:

There is a word that corresponds to 方言 exactly. It is "topolect", but admittedly not all native speakers of English would know what a topolect was.

thanx hakkaboy! i have never heard of it before but i'll use it next time, so it wouldn't cause any more misunderstandings le...=p

[ala]

Shanghainese is much faster than Mandarin; syllable distinction is very muddled in Shanghainese, it's much more word-based compared to other Chinese dialects. Single syllables by themselves usually mean very little in Shanghainese (2-3 meanings max), it's as if Shanghainese speakers are all character-illiterate. A lot of Shanghainese syllables come out like consonant clusters in German; all you hear are consonants and schwas, very little mouth and vocal cord movement. If you have laryngitis or hate Chinese tones or if you can pronounce the German name "Goethe" correctly and you love to talk fast without slurring, then Shanghainese is your language.

Full article: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~duanmu/duration94.pdf

Excerpts below:

Appeared in Phonology 11:1-24, 1994

Syllabic Weight and Syllabic Duration: A Correlation between Phonology and Phonetics
San Duanmu
University of Michigan

This paper explores a correlation between phonology and phonetics. It first reviews a phonological analysis that proposes that all full Mandarin rimes are heavy and that all Shanghai rimes are underlyingly light. Then it reports a small phonetic experiment that attempts to determine whether there is a phonetic correlate for the phonological claim. Four Mandarin speakers and five Shanghai speakers were recorded, each reading five sentences four times at normal speed. Average syllable durations were determined. It is found that the average syllable duration in Mandarin was 215 ms and that in Shanghai was 162 ms. Statistics show that the durational difference is significant. The result thus agrees with the phonological analysis. Implications and limitations of the present study will be discussed.

We begin with a well-known difference between African tone languages and Asian tone languages. In African tone languages, "contour tones" (e.g., rise, fall, fall-rise, rise-fall) are analyzable as a sequence of level tones, in that a rise is LH (low and high), a fall is HL, a fall-rise is HLH, and so on (Leben 1973, Williams 1976, Goldsmith 1976, and many subsequent works in multi-tiered phonology).

In Asian tone languages, however, a contour tone does not usually split into a sequence of level tones, even if there are toneless syllables that could share it.
.....

It has been noted, however, that some Chinese languages, in particular those in the Wu dialect family, behave just like African languages and unlike other Chinese languages. The best known case is Shanghai (also called "New Shanghai" or "Mainstream Shanghai" by Xu et al 198.

As in Mandarin, the Shanghai syllable mu 'to grind' has a rise when said alone. But unlike Mandarin, when mu is followed by the toneless Aspect marker le in (5b), the rise splits into a L on the first syllable and a H on the second (see Jin 1986, Yip 1980, Selkirk and Shen 1990, Duanmu 1993, among others). The analysis of (5) is given in (6), which is exactly what we saw in (2) for the African language Margi. The behavior of Shanghai tones raises a question for the popular view, namely, what makes Shanghai, and some of its neighboring dialects, behave like African languages and unlike other Chinese languages? In addition, mo in Mandarin and mu in Shanghai are cognate words, whose present tones are derived from the same historical tone. What sound change led to a contour tone unit in one and a cluster of L and H in the other?

The following summary shows the systematic correlation between rime type and tone sandhi patterns.
Cantonese M
Xiamen M
Meixian M
Mandarin M
Fuzhou M
-------------------------------------
New Shanghai (Wu) S
Old Shanghai (Wu) S
Suzhou (Wu) S
Danyang (Wu) S
Shaoxing (Wu) S
Nantong (Wu) S

All languages above the line have contrastive codas and diphthongs. All languages below the line lack contrastive codas and diphthongs. In addition, all languages above the line behave like Mandarin in regard to tone sandhi (M-languages), namely, when full syllables occur together, they largely keep their own tones and contour tones do not split into level tones. In contrast, all languages below the line behave like Shanghai in regard to tone sandhi (S-languages), namely, only the underlying tones of the domain7 initial syllable are　kept and contour tones can split into level tones (cf. Zee and Maddieson 1979, Xu　et al 1988, Selkirk and Shen 1990 for New Shanghai; Sherard 1972, Shen 1981a-　b, 1982, Xu et al 1988 for Old Shanghai; Ye 1979, Xie 1982, Qian and Shi 1983　for Suzhou; L 1947, 1980 for Danyang; Wang 1959, Wang 1991 for Shaoxing; Ao 1993 for Nantong).8

A further distinction between M-languages and S-languages is that in M-languages, there is a clear contrast between "full" syllables (which are the majority) and "weak" syllables (which are the minority); full syllables are longer and have greater stress, while weak syllables are shorter and lack stress (as well as lacking tone). In Mandarin, for example, all full syllables have comparable rime durations, which are about twice the average duration of a weak rime (Woo 1969, Lin and Yan 198. In S-languages, however, the distinction between full and weak syllables is not obvious.9

Full article: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~duanmu/duration94.pdf

[amego]

Quote:

Average syllable durations were determined. It is found that the average syllable duration in Mandarin was 215 ms and that in Shanghai was 162 ms. Statistics show that the durational difference is significant.

thanx ala!
very cool results (are there more of such experiment with other topolects (方言) like cantonese and hokkien? hope there are)!!! wooo..mandarin is really too slow, i myself dislike slow speakers (no offence ) as its somewhat frustrating,and adding to the "slow nature" of mandarin. I have been trying to speak mandarin fast to match topolects' speed,apparently to not much avail (it really tends to slur), i just have to say that topolects rockz!!

[Language Guy]

amego, are you also a native speaker of English? Did you learn it in Singapore as well?



LG

[Ferno]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ala

Shanghainese is much faster than Mandarin; syllable distinction is very muddled in Shanghainese, it's much more word-based compared to other Chinese dialects. Single syllables by themselves usually mean very little in Shanghainese (2-3 meanings max), it's as if Shanghainese speakers are all character-illiterate.

If someone read some text written in standard (mandarin) chinese out loud with Shanghai-hua pronounciations for each character, would they be understood?

[amego]

Quote:

amego, are you also a native speaker of English? Did you learn it in Singapore as well?

hihi LG, i'll give u a background 1st

well i was born in Singapore, my race is Chinese (my dialect group is hokkien, my dad is hokkien any my mother is cantonese), anyway the National Language of Singapore is Malay, Official Language is English, Chinese is the major ethic group here, with Singlish as the predominent spoken language (cool isn't it).

Here every student has to learn English(mandatory) as the instructional language, meaning every subject except language classes is taught in English, thus everyone is practically bilingual (English and mother tongue).

but i muz say that my mandarin is better then my english, i also know Hokkien and basic Cantonese, i'm learning Japanese now. =p

for more info on Singlish (a rather cute lang)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlish