4 ms·

My spouse is Chinese and I tried to learn Chinese for obvious reasons. However, they speak multiple dialects in practice such that it's hard to focus, and there

by tabtab 6y ago

My spouse is Chinese and I tried to learn Chinese for obvious reasons. However, they speak multiple dialects in practice such that it's hard to focus, and there are limited training materials for some of the dialects. Generally there is Cantonese, Mandarin, and their local dialect, which is what they use most often.

andi999 6y ago
Same problem here (different dialect though). Let me know if you found a solution.
- yorwba 6y ago
  The English and Chinese Wikipedia articles about the dialect will usually have at least some useful information e.g. about the phonology and maybe links to other resources. You can also try Wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:About_Chinese#About_specific_lects https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:About_Chinese#Abou... https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/ccr/ https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/ccr/ has IPA pronunciations for single characters across many different dialects. https://forvo.com/languages-codes/ https://forvo.com/languages-codes/ may have some recorded vocabulary. https://github.com/laubonghaudoi/Chinese_Rime https://github.com/laubonghaudoi/Chinese_Rime has input methods for many dialects that can also be abused as a dictionary (associating romanization with Chinese characters you can look up). https://xefjord.wixsite.com/xefscompletelangs/courses#comp-kb0gr11d1 https://xefjord.wixsite.com/xefscompletelangs/courses#comp-k... may have flashcards if you're lucky. You'll probably also want to make your own flashcards. https://github.com/ppwwyyxx/wechat-dump https://github.com/ppwwyyxx/wechat-dump is helpful for getting voice messages out of WeChat. If you want to practice by passive listening, you can try http://phonemica.net/ http://phonemica.net/ , searching on https://youku.com/ https://youku.com/ or check whether there's a local TV station that has programs in dialect. Reading material will be almost impossible to find, but maybe there's a bible translation from the 19th century or something. Also check whether there's a local language preservation group. Finally, https://zhongguoyuyan.cn/ https://zhongguoyuyan.cn/ is supposed make a lot of material available to the public soonish (right now I get a certificate error in Firefox, but you can see the landing page in a less strict browser).
yomly 6y ago
Your spouse must be fairly old school to be using a dialect that isn't mando/canto... Most millennials I know from mainland china and even Malaysia/Singapore will speak putonghua with their parents/family now. Ofc people from Sichuan and Shanghai love to preserve their dialect. Plus you got the cantos and hokkien/teochew/hakka and even changsharen. In any case, my recommendation would be to stay with Mandarin and go deep on it. Learning a dialect afterwards is quite straightforward and you can be 80-90% proficient esp with understanding by just developing a sound mapping of each character from dialect->mandarin. The common idioms you'll pick up with enough exposure. You'll never regret learning Mandarin first - you'll be able to read/listen to the news and your relatives will understand you. Whereas if you try to learn dialect first you'll find it harder due to the less set of materials AND less people to talk to. A lot of chinese people joke that they learned their 2nd/3rd... dialect by doing KTV and there's definitely some truth in that
moogleii 6y ago
I came across this quote from the Mandarin wiki: > The Chinese have different languages in different provinces, to such an extent that they cannot understand each other.... [They] also have another language which is like a universal and common language; this is the official language of the mandarins and of the court; it is among them like Latin among ourselves.... Two of our fathers [Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci] have been learning this mandarin language... — Alessandro Valignano, Historia del principio y progresso de la Compañía de Jesús en las Indias Orientales, I:28 (1542–1564)
- baobrain 6y ago
  I always find the claim that dialects in China vary so much that people cannot understand each other very western-centric. As a native speaker, there are shockingly few dialects that are completely incomprehensible. Someone from Shanghai will be able to speak to someone in Chengdu with their own dialect, just slower.
  - ginko 6y ago
    The claim may be misguided or wrong perhaps, but how is it Western-centric?
  - SeanLuke 6y ago
    Take Cantonese (or heck, Teochew or Hakka). You really think this language is reasonably mutually intelligible with Mandarin? Or Shanghainese? I'm a (non-native, formerly fluent but now pretty poor) Cantonese speaker and I'd describe the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin as roughly the difference between Portuguese and Romanian. Sure, they're both romance languages, and maybe with a lot of work and hand-waving and drawing characters on your hands with your fingers you can get your point across to someone who speaks the other language, but in no way would I call them mutually intelligible, even by talking "slower". Cantonese and Mandarin have very different pronunciation, vocabulary, and even grammar for common cases. In fact there are extremely common words in Cantonese for which there is no modern chinese character: instead roman words or even single letters (like "D") are substituted in comic strips etc. So you can't even write them down in Chinese for a Mandarin speaker to puzzle through with a dictionary. I'd say that your perception of these things as "western centric" -- they are not at all -- strikes me as very "northern Chinese centric" view of China. :-)

by tabtab 6y ago

andi999 6y ago

Same problem here (different dialect though). Let me know if you found a solution.

yorwba 6y ago
The English and Chinese Wikipedia articles about the dialect will usually have at least some useful information e.g. about the phonology and maybe links to other resources. You can also try Wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:About_Chinese#About_specific_lects https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:About_Chinese#Abou... https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/ccr/ https://xiaoxue.iis.sinica.edu.tw/ccr/ has IPA pronunciations for single characters across many different dialects. https://forvo.com/languages-codes/ https://forvo.com/languages-codes/ may have some recorded vocabulary. https://github.com/laubonghaudoi/Chinese_Rime https://github.com/laubonghaudoi/Chinese_Rime has input methods for many dialects that can also be abused as a dictionary (associating romanization with Chinese characters you can look up). https://xefjord.wixsite.com/xefscompletelangs/courses#comp-kb0gr11d1 https://xefjord.wixsite.com/xefscompletelangs/courses#comp-k... may have flashcards if you're lucky. You'll probably also want to make your own flashcards. https://github.com/ppwwyyxx/wechat-dump https://github.com/ppwwyyxx/wechat-dump is helpful for getting voice messages out of WeChat. If you want to practice by passive listening, you can try http://phonemica.net/ http://phonemica.net/ , searching on https://youku.com/ https://youku.com/ or check whether there's a local TV station that has programs in dialect. Reading material will be almost impossible to find, but maybe there's a bible translation from the 19th century or something. Also check whether there's a local language preservation group. Finally, https://zhongguoyuyan.cn/ https://zhongguoyuyan.cn/ is supposed make a lot of material available to the public soonish (right now I get a certificate error in Firefox, but you can see the landing page in a less strict browser).

yomly 6y ago

Your spouse must be fairly old school to be using a dialect that isn't mando/canto... Most millennials I know from mainland china and even Malaysia/Singapore will speak putonghua with their parents/family now. Ofc people from Sichuan and Shanghai love to preserve their dialect. Plus you got the cantos and hokkien/teochew/hakka and even changsharen. In any case, my recommendation would be to stay with Mandarin and go deep on it. Learning a dialect afterwards is quite straightforward and you can be 80-90% proficient esp with understanding by just developing a sound mapping of each character from dialect->mandarin. The common idioms you'll pick up with enough exposure. You'll never regret learning Mandarin first - you'll be able to read/listen to the news and your relatives will understand you. Whereas if you try to learn dialect first you'll find it harder due to the less set of materials AND less people to talk to. A lot of chinese people joke that they learned their 2nd/3rd... dialect by doing KTV and there's definitely some truth in that

moogleii 6y ago

I came across this quote from the Mandarin wiki: > The Chinese have different languages in different provinces, to such an extent that they cannot understand each other.... [They] also have another language which is like a universal and common language; this is the official language of the mandarins and of the court; it is among them like Latin among ourselves.... Two of our fathers [Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci] have been learning this mandarin language... — Alessandro Valignano, Historia del principio y progresso de la Compañía de Jesús en las Indias Orientales, I:28 (1542–1564)

baobrain 6y ago
I always find the claim that dialects in China vary so much that people cannot understand each other very western-centric. As a native speaker, there are shockingly few dialects that are completely incomprehensible. Someone from Shanghai will be able to speak to someone in Chengdu with their own dialect, just slower.
- ginko 6y ago
  The claim may be misguided or wrong perhaps, but how is it Western-centric?
- SeanLuke 6y ago
  Take Cantonese (or heck, Teochew or Hakka). You really think this language is reasonably mutually intelligible with Mandarin? Or Shanghainese? I'm a (non-native, formerly fluent but now pretty poor) Cantonese speaker and I'd describe the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin as roughly the difference between Portuguese and Romanian. Sure, they're both romance languages, and maybe with a lot of work and hand-waving and drawing characters on your hands with your fingers you can get your point across to someone who speaks the other language, but in no way would I call them mutually intelligible, even by talking "slower". Cantonese and Mandarin have very different pronunciation, vocabulary, and even grammar for common cases. In fact there are extremely common words in Cantonese for which there is no modern chinese character: instead roman words or even single letters (like "D") are substituted in comic strips etc. So you can't even write them down in Chinese for a Mandarin speaker to puzzle through with a dictionary. I'd say that your perception of these things as "western centric" -- they are not at all -- strikes me as very "northern Chinese centric" view of China. :-)