Learn Yu Wen Learn Chinese language and culture.

Do you speak Mandarin or Cantonese? Many Americans who consider themselves to be highly educated will ask me this question when I tell them that I can speak Chinese. However, Chinese consider both Mandarin and Cantonese to be the same language. Sure, most people from Beijing can’t speak Cantonese and most people from Guang Zhou can’t speak Mandarin, but both “languages” use han zi.

Han zi is what ties the country together into one Chinese language. Almost every city throughout the country has its own dialect, and Cantonese is officially considered a dialect. Shanghainese, Suzhounese and Nanjingnese are other dialects that are as equally misunderstood by the people of Beijing.

I taught English to adults my first year in China. During this time, most of my students were from Suzhou, but I also had students from Taiwan, Japan, Beijing, and all over China. I picked up a few words in Suzhounese my first year and it amazed me how my out-of-towner students could not understand this “dialect” in the least. I even translated some Suzhounese into Mandarin for one of my students from Beijing one time when a Suzhounese student was yelling, “man ha ku!” into her cell phone. The Beijingnese student asked what that meant and I replied, “hen hao kan.”

Even the grammar is different between these different dialects. While the question marker “吗” is placed at the end of questions in Mandarin, it starts the questions in Suzhounese.

On a trip to Macau, I met a couple of Macaunese of Portuguese decent who were chatting away in Portuguese. At that time, my Spanish was fairly decent and I asked them a question in Spanish. They replied in Portugese, but I was able to understand and we had a lengthy chat together using two different languages. These two languages are much more similar than many of the different Chinese dialects.

Travelers to China should understand about these dialects and the fact that even after years of studying Chinese, they may not understand a word that they overhear on a public bus in Suzhou. However, they should keep in mind that most people from Beijing can’t understand either. So, do you speak Mandarin or Cantonese or Suzhounese or Shanghainese or…?