Which Chinese dialect do you like most? & Which sounds b

TIONGKOKLANG   Sun Oct 19, 2008 6:09 am GMT
(single choice)

1, Mandarin (國語/華語/普通話) 「Official language」<836 million>

2, Wunese (吳語) (Strictly speaking, the appellation of Shanghainese (上海話) isn't accurate enough) <77 million>

3, Cantonese (粵語/廣州話) <71 million>

4, Minnanese (閩南語/台語) 「白話字: Bân-lâm-gú 」<60 million>

5, Hakkanese (客家語-梅縣話) <34 million>


& Which would you like to learn? Thank you!
TIONGKOKLANG   Sun Oct 19, 2008 6:10 am GMT
TITLE

Which Chinese dialect do you like most? & Which sounds best?
Ching Chong   Sun Oct 19, 2008 6:18 am GMT
I am only familiar with Mandarin and Cantonese and I prefer Mandarin to Cantonese.
Cantonese has too many stresses so it sounds a bit annoying.
Shuimo   Sun Oct 19, 2008 6:39 am GMT
I like Beijing dialect, which is slightly different from putonghua. It has a lively and amiable tone, which is really music to me.
Muncton   Sun Oct 19, 2008 5:07 pm GMT
Cantonese is not a dialect. It's a language on its own.
Cantonese and Mandarin are much less similar than Spanish and Portuguese or Dutch and English.
Guest   Mon Oct 20, 2008 12:15 am GMT
Cantonese is a dialect of Chinese.
ANNITA FROM SWEDEN   Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:25 am GMT
Some swedish dialects and standard swedish are mutually unintelligible but they are dialects of swedish,so Cantonese is a dialect
ANNITA FROM CHINA   Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:37 am GMT
Cantonese
Tommy   Mon Oct 20, 2008 3:19 am GMT
Minnanese (閩南語/台語)
ANNITA FROM KENIA   Mon Oct 20, 2008 10:12 am GMT
All them sound awful.
Muncton   Tue Oct 21, 2008 3:24 pm GMT
''so Cantonese is a dialect ''


it ain't
shut up, you commie
Shuimo   Tue Oct 21, 2008 3:40 pm GMT
<<Muncton Tue Oct 21, 2008 3:24 pm GMT
''so Cantonese is a dialect ''


it ain't
shut up, you commie >>
That Cantonese is a dialect of Chinese is universally acknowledged in China.
Shuimo   Tue Oct 21, 2008 3:49 pm GMT
Cantonese is spoken in Guangdong Province and Hong Kong SAR of the People's Republic of China, where Mandarin Chinese/Putonghua is the standard language spoken by 70% of the total population!

Cantonese is one of the many dialects of Chinese in China including Taiwan province.
Janice   Fri Oct 24, 2008 7:56 am GMT
If you want to work directly with China, then of course knowing Chinese will help, but I don't think there will be any particular need to do so. Any company working with China will have a few translators, and that's all that's really needed. That situation is no different than it is now, right?
If you want to learn Chinese, by all means learn Chinese, but it'd be a better idea to learn it just because you love the culture or the language. Besides, you would never have the patience to learn it otherwise -- at least, not both the spoken and written languages. Learning Chinese is a HUGE undertaking that's an order of magnitude more difficult than learning, say, a Romance language.
honghong   Sat Oct 25, 2008 10:43 am GMT
I love Cantonese, though I don't know how to speak it. Actually, I speak Mandarin, if you want to learn Mandarin, I think this site is wonderful
http://www.hellomandarin.com/ilovechinese