Dialect Speakers

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Last night, here in Kunming, I was sitting in the resting hall of a local bath-house/sauna getting a foot massage and drinking tea. The guy next to me was chatting with his masseuse and I was listening in. I understood 75 or 85 percent of what they said to each other. At one point the guy turned to me and made some comments about the TV show, which was about experts verifying the authenticity of privately owned antiques and assigning an approximate value. That was also clear and I responded appropriately.

Then a friend of his arrived and the two of them had a brief conversation. Suddenly my comprehension dropped to about 15 or at most 20 percent of what was said. It was still distinguishable as Chinese, but I just could not make out most of the words. The speech rhythm also changed to something less flowing and more staccato and abrupt. Later I asked and he explained, once again using fairly standard Putonghua, that they were both originally from the same home town back in the Yunnan hills.

I'm really not eager to learn the "local hua" because I'm concerned about getting it confused with the Standard Chinese that I need much more for daily life. Despite this resolve, it seems I've picked up a few common regionalisms such as not just saying 谢谢， but turning it into something like 谢谢啦个 or 谢谢啦高, which I have been told is only phonetic, without meaning.