I was born in Hong Kong. So I am a native Cantonese speaker. You mentioned Chinese poetry. Ancient Chinese poetry rhymes better in Cantonese. That reflects, probably, what the more common dialects sound like at the time.
I am in my sixth year of learning Mandarin. I am learning Putonghua but will learn local dialects when I can spend time a Chinese speaking country. Putonghua + local dialects is the usual way to go, even for Chinese people.
Taiwanese isn't a type of Mandarin, it's a Hokkien dialect that has localized to Taiwan. There is a distinct Taiwanese accent and nomenclature, but it's completely mutually intelligible with mainland accents as opposed to the Taiwanese Hokkien dialect which Mandarin speakers can't understand at all.
The same is for Japanese Tokyo dialect and Kokugo (or hyōjungo) even if Kokugo is indeed based on Tokyo dialect they're not the same (even if some people says that they're the same, but it's like saying that Florentine dialect and Italian are the same, when they're clearly not).
Could you give me an example of how they’re different? I’ve actually spoken hyojungo all my life, and always considered then to be basically the same thing, and i’d genuinely love to learn.
@@sb792079 of the top of my head, I know they change the endings of verbs and adjectives, so you hear sugee instead of sugoi, though that's not unique to Tokyo as far as I know. If I remember correctly, the channel ilovelanguages has a video comparing standard Japanese and the Tokyo dialect
The same as standard italian and Firenze dialect. One is based of the other but doesn't mean they are the same, especially with the whole "gorgia toscana" thing going on. Edit: I studed chinese for a while and being italian I have your same book somewhere. 😂 They most common instance of Beijing accent I remember is probably in simple phreses like "你(的)家在哪里?" as opposed to "你(的)家在哪儿?" The 儿 sound is always used in Beijing accent. Since my professor was from Shandong but studied in Beijing he always used 儿 so it's weird to me cause I got a bit of Beijing accent but I was constantly reminded to use the standard form while writing.
Very interesting vid, I’m so amazed by your deep knowledge about the Chinese language. Let me make a small correction, I mean 生詞儿 is not used, but 詞儿 is. Historically, Mandarin actually refers to 官话 that was used by government officials during the Qing dynasty. Not only was the royal family from a different origin than the Han people, those officials coming from different regions throughout China also all spoke their own dialects, which means there had to be some kind of standard in order to communicate each other effectively. That’s how a standardized way of speech came out, and was then witnessed by Portuguese missionaries who started calling this language Mandarin. Today this term has become to be widely used to represent the Chinese term 国语, 普通话, but in principle there are differences. Guoyu and Putonghua are rather artificially created languages through broadcast and schooling systems not long after mainland China and Taiwan got split up after the communist party rose to official power in 1949. The concept of thinking of the Beijing dialect as just adding as many 儿化音as possible is wrong. There are many differences in pronunciation and lexicon compared to Mandarin. Just try searching for some vids labeled 北京话 or京腔 on youtube or bilibili, and you’ll find out what I mean.
When I took mandarin classes, my teacher told me "your tones are perfect...too perfect. You sound like you giving a news broadcast." I thought it was quite funny.
1:09 Taiwanese is a type of Mandarin? No, it is a type of Hokkien, which is descended from Old Chinese. Mandarin descends from Middle Chinese, and is also spoken in Taiwan.
So, the difference between a Master speaking Beijing and standard Mandarin is sort of like the difference between hearing a British villain speaking Cockney versus Received Pronunciation? It's a matter of believability as a refined individual?
To a much lesser degree, Filipino and Tagalog are also *not* the same, depending on whom you ask. It's safer to say that Filipino is "what Tagalog evolved into, within a span of 100 years." Officially, some will tell you that Filipino is standardized Tagalog. In normal conversation, you could still use both words to talk about the same language but when you start to look a bit into it, you realize that Filipino uses more loanwords that don't all necessarily show up in Tagalog. Household/everyday items, certain plants and animals, and even the concepts of *telling the time* and *counting money* (which, by the way, are now usually done in Spanish) -- there are alternate words for each unit in native Tagalog speech. Kind of like in English, how a prepared "cow" (Anglo-Saxon) evolved into "beef" (Norman French) or certain types of cars that were called "wagons" (like station wagons - Old Dutch btw) evolved into "automobiles" and "vehicles" (both ultimately from Latin.) English is a Germanic language that's been adapting more and more Greek and Latin vocabulary -- the same way that Tagalog is gradually evolving into Filipino by incorporating more and more Spanish/English ways to describe things.
I lived in Beijing for the first 5 years of my life as a European. I learnt Chinese and English simultaneously throughout this time from my 阿姨 and local friends. When I can back to my home country I barely used my Chinese skills but about 4 years ago there was a Malaysian couple that spoke standard Chinese and needed directions for a bus stop, and I found it extremely difficult to communicate with them due to my usage of 北京话 such as 那儿I obviously must have a very thick accent. Got the message through eventually though.
I lived in Beijing for 7 years with Chinese wife (Beijing born and raised). She, and her daughter could not understand Beijing Hua, and very few Beijingers seemed to use it. I only learnt it existed when some one who I could normally understand accidentally spoke to me with Beijing Hua, and he realised that I could not understand. " Sorry, Beijing Hua". I asked the wife about it, and she just said "Oh, I don't speak that " Learn standard Mandarin-no one outside Beijing will understand Beijing Hua, especially when spoken by a foreigner, who already makes enough mistakes !
Just got back from China. My Mandarin is solid enough that I was able to communicate just fine and understand a good chunk of what people were saying. The hardest person to understand was a taxi driver I rode with in Beijing. It was a real challenge. Fun accent, tho.
Hey, Metatron, have you every wanted to learn a language with a super complex case system, such as Hungarian? Or a language with very difficult phonemes (some languages from the Caucasus region or one with clicks)? How about Creole or indigenous languages?
The exception to preferring Standard Mandarin in classical movies would be if it was a movie about pirates. Then, surely, Beijing Accent would be the best choice ! 🙂
So as a Chinese that born in the north (LiaoNing), the north accent of mandarin is very close but the tone, we can understand each other.But don't worry，In our education system，all the people from mainland China and Taiwan can speak mandarin，and if you speak mandarin，you can also communicate with the person from Hong Kong，Singapore and Malaysia，so if you want to learn Chinese，I suggest you to learn mandarin，its more useful.
Lol yeah it's different. I'm getting used to it. CaoCao or Jonathan Kos-Read has some of the best Beijing accent of any foreigner. And he learned it in only a couple years back in the day.
I'm learning 國語, but (as a guy) I have been told (even by Taiwanese people) that I sound a little 娘 😂 Meanwhile, while I feel the Beijing accent is like the American southern accent, I have to admit it sounds very manly. It's so strange knowing the meaning of words, but not having a "feel" for the language yet.... One day
Can you make a video about the myth that English is a descriptive language and other languages are prescriptive? This topic is popping up too many times lately.
si (pronounced like Russian сы) becomes thi. It doesn’t apply to any other syllable, only this one. For example, the word for 40 is pronounced sì shí in standard mandatin, but becomes thì r if someone has a heavy Beijing accent.
This might be a slightly strange question to ask but what kind of language would you recommend learning for writing a fictional character? For example, one of my characters is German (but I write the books in English) and so would it be better to learn the German from the region they are from so they sound authentic or would the standard German I did at GCSE level be useful as the books are in English?
Standard would probably be best. The majority of people in German-speaking countries read and write in Hochdeutsch even if they usually speak their local language. Often, they don't know how to write their local language, if a writing system even exists beyond regular people trying to modify German spelling
@@jessepriest2883 Thanks, so translated into English for the benefit of the audience, knowing standard German would make best sense to help them sound like a German person.
@Ed Space. So I had a blond moment and was thinking about you writing dialogues in German, so I figured writing the same way actual Germans write would be best. If we're talking about simply stating a character is speaking whatever language while writing the dialogue in English, I would say it depends on your character's back story. In some regions, the local language is still very common, like Bavaria, but in others, it's uncommon and mostly used in very rural areas. So I would think a bit about if the character is from a city or not and then research the region to see if they would speak only Standard German or the local language as well, but they most likely wouldn't speak only the local language unless they're from a really rural area and never went anywhere else
@@jessepriest2883 Thanks for understanding, sorry I might have explained it badly (my English isn't always the best). I'll have a look around and see, since he's from a farming village near Potsdam that will be a good place to start looking.
@Ed Space. oh man, I never once thought once thought there was a problem with your English! And I went ahead and looked a few things up, your character could definitely speak both Standard German and Low German/Low Saxon. Brandenburg is the state Potsdam is in, and by now the majority of them speak Standard German, but a farming village is exactly where they would keep speaking Low Saxon, especially if it's to the South or Westol of Potsdam
5:03 Yeah, it's pretty based, that's why I'm gonna learn it. I just reached my sinophile arc after my weeb arc, feel a bit of a connection with Metraton here.
Beijing accent is 北京口音. Beijing dialect is 北京话. They aren't the same things. You wouldn't say that an Italian speaking English is speaking Italian, right? It is still English.
I don't consider 北京话 a different language. A closer analogy would be Cockney and RP. Even Cantonese would still be closer to Mandarin than English vs Italian.
@@MenglinGao No. Cockney and RP are accents. That would be 口音. When we say 北京话, we are saying Beijing dialect. Some say dialect, others will say different language. Cantonese (广东话）would be a different language/dialect from 北京话.
@@callistoscali4344 There is no way that 北京話 is a different language from 普通話. It is a dialect. Also, 廣東話 is a dialect of 粵語, and not related to 普通話. They are two different languages descended from Middle Chinese. I don't understand why, when it comes to speaking of Sinitic languages, it's so difficult for people to distinguish a language from a dialect.
Add 儿 to everything and you've now mastered Beijing accent.🤓
not everything, bro.通常情况下对于非正式语言，非重要的事，不重要的地名，或者非常熟悉但不是名人的普通人，以及小物件。后面可以加“儿”
当然以上只是大概，还要加上语感觉。例如说毛巾，不能说“毛巾儿”
@@minliu5352 pretty sure it was a joke
@@FitProVR他不知道儿
@@8pija22他不儿道
...and also the american accent lol
Personally, I prefer the Beijing accent. There’s a certain charm to it.
你好，我开始了学习中文，因为我看了你的关于李白的视频。我知道我的中文不很好但是，我很喜欢这个语言的声音，我也很喜欢学习怎么写汉字。 谢谢你Metatron.
你好，我是看了你关于李白的视频，开始学习中文的。我知道我的水平还不高，但是我很喜欢中文的发音，也很喜欢写汉字。 谢谢你Metatron！
Beijing accent sounds leisure and funny, while Taiwan accent sounds gentle and cute for both men and women.
I was born in Hong Kong. So I am a native Cantonese speaker. You mentioned Chinese poetry. Ancient Chinese poetry rhymes better in Cantonese. That reflects, probably, what the more common dialects sound like at the time.
I am in my sixth year of learning Mandarin. I am learning Putonghua but will learn local dialects when I can spend time a Chinese speaking country. Putonghua + local dialects is the usual way to go, even for Chinese people.
Taiwanese isn't a type of Mandarin, it's a Hokkien dialect that has localized to Taiwan. There is a distinct Taiwanese accent and nomenclature, but it's completely mutually intelligible with mainland accents as opposed to the Taiwanese Hokkien dialect which Mandarin speakers can't understand at all.
The same is for Japanese Tokyo dialect and Kokugo (or hyōjungo) even if Kokugo is indeed based on Tokyo dialect they're not the same (even if some people says that they're the same, but it's like saying that Florentine dialect and Italian are the same, when they're clearly not).
Could you give me an example of how they’re different?
I’ve actually spoken hyojungo all my life, and always considered then to be basically the same thing, and i’d genuinely love to learn.
@@sb792079 of the top of my head, I know they change the endings of verbs and adjectives, so you hear sugee instead of sugoi, though that's not unique to Tokyo as far as I know. If I remember correctly, the channel ilovelanguages has a video comparing standard Japanese and the Tokyo dialect
@@sb792079
Nai > nee
Janai > janee
Tewa > cha
@@sb792079じゃない＞じゃねえ
てしまう＞ちゃう
でしまう＞じゃう
Example: 食べてしまう＞食べちゃう
死んでしまう＞死んじゃう
たい＞てえ
行きたい＞行きてえ
なくて＞なくちゃ
なければ＞なけりゃ＞なきゃ
Example:
勉強しなければならない＞勉強しなきゃ
The same as standard italian and Firenze dialect. One is based of the other but doesn't mean they are the same, especially with the whole "gorgia toscana" thing going on.
Edit: I studed chinese for a while and being italian I have your same book somewhere. 😂
They most common instance of Beijing accent I remember is probably in simple phreses like
"你(的)家在哪里?"
as opposed to
"你(的)家在哪儿?"
The 儿 sound is always used in Beijing accent.
Since my professor was from Shandong but studied in Beijing he always used 儿 so it's weird to me cause I got a bit of Beijing accent but I was constantly reminded to use the standard form while writing.
Very interesting vid, I’m so amazed by your deep knowledge about the Chinese language. Let me make a small correction, I mean 生詞儿 is not used, but 詞儿 is.
Historically, Mandarin actually refers to 官话 that was used by government officials during the Qing dynasty. Not only was the royal family from a different origin than the Han people, those officials coming from different regions throughout China also all spoke their own dialects, which means there had to be some kind of standard in order to communicate each other effectively. That’s how a standardized way of speech came out, and was then witnessed by Portuguese missionaries who started calling this language Mandarin.
Today this term has become to be widely used to represent the Chinese term 国语, 普通话, but in principle there are differences.
Guoyu and Putonghua are rather artificially created languages through broadcast and schooling systems not long after mainland China and Taiwan got split up after the communist party rose to official power in 1949.
The concept of thinking of the Beijing dialect as just adding as many 儿化音as possible is wrong. There are many differences in pronunciation and lexicon compared to Mandarin. Just try searching for some vids labeled 北京话 or京腔 on youtube or bilibili, and you’ll find out what I mean.
could you talk about greek I've been learning koine greek for a while if you could tell us the grammatical differences from modern greek
Brilliant question!
When I took mandarin classes, my teacher told me "your tones are perfect...too perfect. You sound like you giving a news broadcast." I thought it was quite funny.
Show off 😂
1:09 Taiwanese is a type of Mandarin? No, it is a type of Hokkien, which is descended from Old Chinese. Mandarin descends from Middle Chinese, and is also spoken in Taiwan.
So, the difference between a Master speaking Beijing and standard Mandarin is sort of like the difference between hearing a British villain speaking Cockney versus Received Pronunciation?
It's a matter of believability as a refined individual?
Yes, the Beijing accent is associated with Manchu "gopniks" on a cultural level
Finally someone explains what is so different about mandarin and pu tong hua. lol Thanks for this video
To a much lesser degree, Filipino and Tagalog are also *not* the same, depending on whom you ask. It's safer to say that Filipino is "what Tagalog evolved into, within a span of 100 years." Officially, some will tell you that Filipino is standardized Tagalog.
In normal conversation, you could still use both words to talk about the same language but when you start to look a bit into it, you realize that Filipino uses more loanwords that don't all necessarily show up in Tagalog. Household/everyday items, certain plants and animals, and even the concepts of *telling the time* and *counting money* (which, by the way, are now usually done in Spanish) -- there are alternate words for each unit in native Tagalog speech.
Kind of like in English, how a prepared "cow" (Anglo-Saxon) evolved into "beef" (Norman French) or certain types of cars that were called "wagons" (like station wagons - Old Dutch btw) evolved into "automobiles" and "vehicles" (both ultimately from Latin.)
English is a Germanic language that's been adapting more and more Greek and Latin vocabulary -- the same way that Tagalog is gradually evolving into Filipino by incorporating more and more Spanish/English ways to describe things.
I lived in Beijing for the first 5 years of my life as a European. I learnt Chinese and English simultaneously throughout this time from my 阿姨 and local friends. When I can back to my home country I barely used my Chinese skills but about 4 years ago there was a Malaysian couple that spoke standard Chinese and needed directions for a bus stop, and I found it extremely difficult to communicate with them due to my usage of 北京话 such as 那儿I obviously must have a very thick accent. Got the message through eventually though.
Everybody here should learn Shanghainese
🙀🙀🙀
Boy do I love how you bring up the substitution of -z- sound to -th- sound in 北京话!
I lived in Beijing for 7 years with Chinese wife (Beijing born and raised). She, and her daughter could not understand Beijing Hua, and very few Beijingers seemed to use it.
I only learnt it existed when some one who I could normally understand accidentally spoke to me with Beijing Hua, and he realised that I could not understand. " Sorry, Beijing Hua".
I asked the wife about it, and she just said "Oh, I don't speak that "
Learn standard Mandarin-no one outside Beijing will understand Beijing Hua, especially when spoken by a foreigner, who already makes enough mistakes !
Just got back from China. My Mandarin is solid enough that I was able to communicate just fine and understand a good chunk of what people were saying. The hardest person to understand was a taxi driver I rode with in Beijing. It was a real challenge. Fun accent, tho.
Hey, Metatron, have you every wanted to learn a language with a super complex case system, such as Hungarian? Or a language with very difficult phonemes (some languages from the Caucasus region or one with clicks)? How about Creole or indigenous languages?
The exception to preferring Standard Mandarin in classical movies would be if it was a movie about pirates. Then, surely, Beijing Accent would be the best choice ! 🙂
There was a eunuch in the Story of Yanxi Palace who pronounced 皇上 as huararrrwwwr
I have friends from Beijing and I have studied a couple of lessons in Contemporary Wushu Taolu Changquan, Nanquan, and Taijiquan 24 form and Sanda.
Finalmente un canale di un italiano che parla il cinese su youtube.. Bel canale complomenti👌👌
So as a Chinese that born in the north (LiaoNing), the north accent of mandarin is very close but the tone, we can understand each other.But don't worry，In our education system，all the people from mainland China and Taiwan can speak mandarin，and if you speak mandarin，you can also communicate with the person from Hong Kong，Singapore and Malaysia，so if you want to learn Chinese，I suggest you to learn mandarin，its more useful.
Lol yeah it's different. I'm getting used to it. CaoCao or Jonathan Kos-Read has some of the best Beijing accent of any foreigner. And he learned it in only a couple years back in the day.
Glorious
Great video as usual metatron!
I'm just gonna say it: Standard Mandarin sounds nicer than the Beijing Accent. Erhua sounds awful.
Isn't that how the British see the Americans with their rhotic "erhua"? Lol
Eccellente.
There are a few other terms for "standard Chinese", but which may have political or regional connotations: 国语 华语, for example
I love the mandarin spoken in Shanhai
I'm learning 國語, but (as a guy) I have been told (even by Taiwanese people) that I sound a little 娘 😂
Meanwhile, while I feel the Beijing accent is like the American southern accent, I have to admit it sounds very manly. It's so strange knowing the meaning of words, but not having a "feel" for the language yet....
One day
你说的太棒了🎉比中国人还清楚！U r so amazing and even have a better understanding than Chinese，lol，I am a native Chinese speaker😊
wow the china map is so wrong bro
Beijing accent is pirate speech. Aaarrrrrrrrr.
Very impressed that a Sicilian understands all this. Grazie mille.
Accurate.
bin qi ling
BING not BIN. 😮💨
So... the Beijing Accent to Chinese is like a Cockney Accent to English?
Feels like it sounds kinda like the southern accent in US😂
@@WilsonHanArt1679 yeah, it does specifically Georgia
Cf. Standard English is the same as Queen's English?
The standard English in Britain is received pronunciation
@@IR-xy3ij Oh
@@IR-xy3ij Thank you
I'm going to love your mandarin vids. I'm awful
erhua is a cheap way to sound cultured if you're malaysian chinese.
Can you make a video about the myth that English is a descriptive language and other languages are prescriptive?
This topic is popping up too many times lately.
Wait, what?? Who's been saying that? Describing one language as descriptive and another as prescriptive doesn't even make sense
@@jessepriest2883 Quite a few, that's why I asked
"ng" in Beijing dialect is pronounced as "eng", So Beijing will be pronounced as "Beijieng"
what word is pronounced with a 'the'!!!!? Btw you wrote 儿化 instead of 儿话
儿化音, 没错。
si (pronounced like Russian сы) becomes thi. It doesn’t apply to any other syllable, only this one.
For example, the word for 40 is pronounced sì shí in standard mandatin, but becomes thì r if someone has a heavy Beijing accent.
This might be a slightly strange question to ask but what kind of language would you recommend learning for writing a fictional character?
For example, one of my characters is German (but I write the books in English) and so would it be better to learn the German from the region they are from so they sound authentic or would the standard German I did at GCSE level be useful as the books are in English?
Standard would probably be best. The majority of people in German-speaking countries read and write in Hochdeutsch even if they usually speak their local language. Often, they don't know how to write their local language, if a writing system even exists beyond regular people trying to modify German spelling
@@jessepriest2883 Thanks, so translated into English for the benefit of the audience, knowing standard German would make best sense to help them sound like a German person.
@Ed Space. So I had a blond moment and was thinking about you writing dialogues in German, so I figured writing the same way actual Germans write would be best. If we're talking about simply stating a character is speaking whatever language while writing the dialogue in English, I would say it depends on your character's back story. In some regions, the local language is still very common, like Bavaria, but in others, it's uncommon and mostly used in very rural areas. So I would think a bit about if the character is from a city or not and then research the region to see if they would speak only Standard German or the local language as well, but they most likely wouldn't speak only the local language unless they're from a really rural area and never went anywhere else
@@jessepriest2883 Thanks for understanding, sorry I might have explained it badly (my English isn't always the best). I'll have a look around and see, since he's from a farming village near Potsdam that will be a good place to start looking.
@Ed Space. oh man, I never once thought once thought there was a problem with your English! And I went ahead and looked a few things up, your character could definitely speak both Standard German and Low German/Low Saxon. Brandenburg is the state Potsdam is in, and by now the majority of them speak Standard German, but a farming village is exactly where they would keep speaking Low Saxon, especially if it's to the South or Westol of Potsdam
5:03
Yeah, it's pretty based, that's why I'm gonna learn it.
I just reached my sinophile arc after my weeb arc, feel a bit of a connection with Metraton here.
我艹，老北京人儿！哈哈哈
冰淇淋
Beijing accent is 北京口音. Beijing dialect is 北京话. They aren't the same things. You wouldn't say that an Italian speaking English is speaking Italian, right? It is still English.
I don't consider 北京话 a different language. A closer analogy would be Cockney and RP. Even Cantonese would still be closer to Mandarin than English vs Italian.
@@MenglinGao No. Cockney and RP are accents. That would be 口音. When we say 北京话, we are saying Beijing dialect. Some say dialect, others will say different language. Cantonese (广东话）would be a different language/dialect from 北京话.
作为一个北京话说得很溜的非北京人，我觉得北京话和普通话的差别就是英国普通话和cockney的区别，遣词造句上几乎没有任何区别，唯一的区别在一些词汇和口音上。我也会说上海话，这才是个真的dialect@@callistoscali4344
@@callistoscali4344 There is no way that 北京話 is a different language from 普通話. It is a dialect. Also, 廣東話 is a dialect of 粵語, and not related to 普通話. They are two different languages descended from Middle Chinese. I don't understand why, when it comes to speaking of Sinitic languages, it's so difficult for people to distinguish a language from a dialect.
@@artugert What's exactly the point of disagreement?