Hey - who speaks a dialect/another version of Chinese

[Guest Humani]

Do you know is it very difficult to learn both Mandarin and Fujianese (Fuqinghua(?) quite near to xiamen, a bit north) at the same time, or should i really make a decision about which to learn first and stick to it?

Now it's quite hard, because the book i have for learning from in mandarin, conversations around me normally in fujianese, and VCDs and music (beyond etc) in cantonese. All i've decided is not to learn cantonese, but out of mandarin and fujianese I don't know which to learn, so i only know a few words of each. i spend more time trying to decide than trying to learn either of them (which is not very useful)..

is it normally difficult for fujianese people to translate fujianese into another language, even mandarin when they know both mandarin and fujianese fluently? is it just that some phrases in fujianese don't have translations even in mandarin?

[Quest]

if you have to pick one out of the two, i would suggest that you learn mandarin, because pretty much everyone in china now knows mandarin, but not fujianhua.

[self-taught-mba]

Cantonese-

Just starting. For fun only, because I like the sound of it.

[imitation]

Hunanese babyyy, actually specifically 益阳话 (Yiyang) it's like an hour north of 长沙(Changsha) but it sounds different imo. Just a little here and there my gf is from their and when we go home to visit her family it's nice to know a little (and also because they're all farmers I can't understand / or they don't speak 普通话).

Just remember in Hunan don't be surprised when people ask if you want to eat your Beer, they don't have a seperate word for drink.

[imitation]

Oh I forgot I can do all the common rude bits from living in GZ for the last year and my Huanese GF is also fluent Canto as well so I've learn bits and pieces of it. I actually think Canto is easier to pronounce for an English speaker. Also something interesting about the 9 cantonese tones. My GF tells me that is completely untrue she says she speaks canto with 4/5 tones like putonghua and thinks the 9 tones are made up to scare people who come to GZ off from learning their language everytime she teaches me new guangdonhghua words she just uses 1 of the 4 major tones and so far no ones said they can't understand me and everyone understands her so go figure....

[Quest]

You can speak Cantonese with 1 tone, without consonant endings, and still be understood though...

On the other hand, in some cases you could speak Cantonese with just tones (lips closed) and still be understood...

[self-taught-mba]

she teaches me new guangdonhghua words she just uses 1 of the 4 major tones and so far no ones said they can't understand me and everyone understands her so go figure....

I don't know b/c i am a newbie but it seems to me that the tones in Canto are more flexible-not as rigid as in P.T.H.

my Canto ex-roomie agrees

[Quest]

I don't know b/c i am a newbie but it seems to me that the tones in Canto are more flexible-not as rigid as in P.T.H.

Not true at all, Cantonese tones are pretty rigid, and a slight mispronunciation of a tone is easily detected by the native ear.

You can speak Cantonese with 1 tone, without consonant endings, and still be understood though...

struggling to believe this, the multi-tones are very important in these words:

1. hungry & diarrhoea

2. tonight & so slow

3. japan & half

4. Kowloon & dog hole

and many more......

In normal speech of course...