Chinese / Cantonese

[L i f e b i d e]

Shanghainese sounds like a mixture of mandarin and other dialects.
The amasing thing with chinese language is that every one writes the same way but reads in different dailects.
Luckily someone had the forsight of adopting mandarin as the common speaking word/language.
But I kind of missed the good old dialects which may in time to come be extinct.

[MissLT]

But I kind of missed the good old dialects which may in time to come be extinct.

What are they?

[L i f e b i d e]

dialects???

Well like cantonese, teochews, hockkien, hainanese, shanghainese, etc etc....

confused huh?????

[MissLT]

dialects???

Well like cantonese, teochews, hockkien, hainanese, shanghainese, etc etc....

confused huh?????

I don't know about others, but Cantonese? No way.....

[Tonyoung]

And it's cool that people who speak Cantonese won't understand people who speak Mandarin unless they've learned Mandarin. However, people who speak Taiwanese could kinda understand people who speak Mandarin. Samething for Shanghai. Right?

You are partly correct,but not exactly.
For the illiterate person they might don't know the mandarine.AS I said before,Mandarine is our offical language,so even a person only finished his/her primary school(our school being demanded that the instruction of language is mandarine) he/her will know how to speak Mandarine,however ,it may be not accurate.Ok,so do Taiwanese and Shanghai.
China has 56 nationalities ,each one has his own language,it is hard for us to know the whole.I even dare not to think about it.

[darrenqiu]

In my opinion, both Cantonese and Mandarine are dialects or varieties of Chinese. We use the same words but speak in different ways in all ages. The reason it appears that these two main dialects become well-known to most of us is the advantage of their location. Beijing is the political center while Gongdong is a developed and rich province. If my city Xinyu in Jiangxi become some other shining center, I believe, my hometown dialect would also be spoken by others!

[Tonyoung]

You are totally wrong.
Mandarine come out of Beijing.
The words Beijing and Cantonese use are totally different.Althrough they are both use Chinese character ,but in Cantonese some words they use is hardly used for us in daily life.

[darrenqiu]

The words Beijing and Cantonese use are totally different.

I think the words they used are most the same

[MissLT]

The words Beijing and Cantonese use are totally different.

I think the words they used are most the same

I think what he meant is the writing of the words are the same, but their pronunciations are different; therefore, their meanings and uses are different. Right?

[Tonyoung]

No,they not only use different pronuncation but the words.I mean in GuangDong/Hong kong,their daily life words are totally distinct from mandarine.It is really a exception .