Cantonese vs Mandarin - Which is harder? (From someone who's learned both)
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- čas přidán 8. 05. 2020
- I saw a few videos comparing the difficulty levels of different languages and I thought I would do one on Canto/Mandarin since I have a fair amount of experience with them both.
This is purely my opinion. If you agree/disagree then please feel free to let me know in the comments. My Cantonese is far from perfect so there's probably a good few tonal mistakes in there
No one:
Me who is native Cantonese: reads English subtitles
Some of his Cantonese sounds off though so I had to read the subtitle occasionally too!
@@chatnoire89 yeah but I understand it most of the time
唔睇英文字幕都ok嘅，但係有就睇囉
@@chatnoire89 agree, eg at 7:32 when he said "jung dim" with a high tone jung, sounding like 中點 or 終點 (central point or destination point), rather than a low tone 重點 (main point as per subtitle). Subtilties like that is what makes Cantonese so hard to master. Sure people can make themselves 80% fluent, but only a tiny tiny portion of none native Canto CZcamsrs are actually nailing their pronunciations - and this chap isn't one of them.
I read english subtitles 'cos I want to practice more english and judge his cantonese XDDDD
As a Cantonese speaker, I’m impressed by your vocabulary and expressions. 真係好犀利。👍🏼
And also his mastery of the intonation and pitch ranges
真係好叻！👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I'm native Cantonese speaker but had to speak and write English everyday because of career need. That's why most HK people are fluent in English. But many of us can't speak Mandarin accurately. Our accent matters. 😅
u speak Cantonese so amazingly well👍👍👍
besides learning difficulties on ds 2 languages
how u feel about them?
saaaaaammeee, he might still have an accent and some words are a bit off key, but it's not a big issue. Also, the points he made on stating that we don't know the tones in our own language is sooo true, we just say it, we learn by hearing words, looking at them and repeating them, getting continuously corrected along the way. The best way to learn is to get a local who's willing to converse with you in cantonese and judge you on what you did wrong, since that's the easiest way to learn
00:58 when he says “keep住”👀
Nicee👏🏼👏🏼
Yea
keep 住又中又英咁真係勁local XD
This is seriously impressive. I’m British born HK Chinese and can hold a conversation but I’m not as fluent as you. As a more native speaker my pronunciation might be a bit better but your vocabulary is outstanding. Well done, you’re an example to us canto speakers!
Same here. When my mum came to visit me, I took her out for lunch at a HK-style restaurant and after the waiter took our order, she started scolding me very loudly that a "foreigner" can speak better canto than me 😆
I love your expression "我都唔知喺邊到查，大佬。" It is very native!
Your Cantonese is brilliant man.
His Cantonese is better than mine. I am Malaysian Chinese. I speak Cantonese hockien malay and English .
@@louong93 judging from your surname you probably learnt Cantonese later on in your life, so it’s fine
@@robloxianalamat1019 I am Malaysian Chinese. Cantonese and mandarin is widely spoken in Chinese society in Kuala Lumpur Malaysian.
@@louong93 yea but you probably speak hokkien at home
@@robloxianalamat1019 right.
I am a begginer in both and I am not sure why Cantonese sounds more beautiful to my ears.
I totally agree with you! I prefer Cantonese :)
There are only 4 intonations in Mandarin, and Cantonese has 9 so it sounds more fluid and conversational
A big part is the consonants in Cantonese are far more pleasant, I think!
@@JtheWizard Cantonese actually only has 6 realistically. And of the 6 tones, 4 of them are flat tones which means it uses musical tones, it is also "softer". Mandarin's 3rd and 4th tone are very sharp to the ear.
yay!!
As a native Cantonese speaker, I'm truly impressed with your Cantonese fluency and pronunciation accuracy. Much respect for you! Thank you for supporting Cantonese!
I've been teaching my British boyfriend Cantonese. He found it struggling with the tones so he was kinda giving up, then I told him how amazing and precious Cantonese language actually is, he became more interested. Wish he can reach your level one day
Wow your grasp of Cantonese is astounding.
Native Cantonese speaker here.
Super impressive!!! Especially when you naturally say ‘大佬’ 😂😂😂😂😂
PS: HongKonger
RESPECT! your cantonese is really really good considering you only started learning 5 years ago. btw we most commonly write 'spoken' Cantonese in WhatsApp, but the easiest way for some people is to spell them out in English, which can be quite free-style xDDD Kei sud gum yeung wui yung yi ho doh daan haai kei ta yan ng yat ding tai duck ming :P nei ming ng ming?
ngor tai duk ming
她讲的会容易学点，但是其他的东西我看不明白，我是大陆人学习粤拼可以看懂的你意思
My guess would be 其實 噉樣 會 容易 好多 但係 其他人 唔一定要 睇得 明
hai ya, gum yeung fai hou dor.
May Shuen Poon 是呀这样会好点
I’m so envious of your Cantonese! It’s amazing! I also have some videos of me speaking Cantonese of my channel, but my Cantonese isn’t nearly as good as yours haha
you're too humble, just checked out ur vids, ur cantonese sounds really good to me ;)
@@NokNokOlliesHere Awe, thank you!
Same here! I watched some of the videos on your channel and your Cantonese is pretty fluent! I was able to understand every single word you said without paying extra attention (you sound natural), keep up the good work!
Coming from ABC , both of you are impressive. It’s certainly not easy to pick up fir nonnative speaker point of view. More than bbc, abc, and CBC that’ I know. The explanation is crystal clear. Thank you.
There is now a youtube channel based in Hong Kong that is called Cantonese 101. Very useful in learning spoken Cantonese. However, anyone who is a first time Cantonese learner with no Chinese linguistic background, be aware of their playlists that compares sentences to the pictures of activities going on because those playlists actually are teaching you formal written Chinese with Cantonese pronunciations, which is pretty much spoken Mandarin with Cantonese pronunciations, first time learners should hold off on those playlists and focus on the other videos.
As a linguistics major and worked on Cantonese phonetics for my thesis, I really appreciate the effort you’ve put into the language! I agree with all of your points and they are well articulated. Good observation!! 👍🏻🙇🏻♀️
Damn. If I learn Cantonese, I can impress women like you. Time to start!
Very impressive. I went to school with a lot of expat kids and they never learned how to speak Cantonese even after living there for years. It's a shame.
As a Hongkonger i completely agree with u about all the points you said that makes it hard to learn cantonese. Even when I was a kid in school learning to speak a new word, I need to think of 3 known words that match the new word's consonant, vowel and tone. But one thing might helped with tones is that in cantonese 394052(186) in order is exactly tone no. 1 to 6 (9). So copying the correspondent number to the new word was the way to make sure you pronounce correct tone of new word quickly.
香港人都會寫廣東話口語
不過有啲字真係唔識寫
就會英文求其拼出黎🤣
例如“吐”的意思，口語的讀音是lur，但沒有人知道lur的正字是什麼
@@ordinary_human +1 lol
Exct7ly
係"黎"仲係"嚟"？
有啲字香港同內地都唔同嘅
I randomly came across one of your videos from 2016 and thought that after just one year of learning your Cantonese was fantastic already! This is just the second video I clicked on and my goodness has your Cantonese incredibly improved! Love this. Keep it up!
Your cantonese is getting better and better! The accent and pronunciation is absolutely impressive! I’m glad that you love our culture and language. Can’t wait to see more content from you! Love from hk❤️
Alex, all the points you've made are spot on and I am in total agreement of the challenges of learning Cantonese. However, you are doing so well, so please don't get discourage and give up. As you may have read from the native Cantonese speakers who've commented here that they thoroughly understand you without having to read the subtitles. You are an amazing inspiration and I am very proud of you. A little background about me. I am Chinese by ethnicity however born and raised in the U.S. in a household brought up with Cantonese speaking parents. So I've pretty much have been raised with Cantonese as my first language. I've never studied Cantonese in school but have learned Mandarin in school. So I understand perfectly what you mean about having less tones in Mandarin and that the written and spoken languages are the same, which makes perfect sense right?! Any ways, keep on keeping on. You are doing great!
You've got to make more videos man! I love listening to you speak cantonese. Keep it up!
3:29 this is so true. I consider myself pretty proficient in verbal Cantonese, but I have no idea what the hell news reporters are saying 70% of the time. It's like they're speaking a totally different language.
We text in Cantonese most of the time, eg. we text "宜家" instead of "現在". Every single word we say can be written, some of those are very complicated so that we usually use word with same tone to present :)
這是所有方言的毛病，大家都不知道寫正字而使用借音字或是加個部首就變成方言的特定用字，這在廣東話裏特別多，讓方言寫出來變的很沒水準，完全沒有中文字的涵意在裏面，只有音
so yi hou dall yun dou text like this
What's 宜家? IKEA? Do you mean 而家？
@@puccarts 现在 在粤语里面的读音 就是宜家
@@puccarts yi ga
Hi there, HK-er here
Found out your channel after watching 秋山燿平 (Japanese) and Steve Kaufmann (Canadian) speaking cantoese
just watched your clip in 2016, your canto has been improved a lot since then and your canto accent is so much on spot right now
Keep it up, much love from Hong Kong
Thank you for explaining. Much appreciated.
The reasons you have provided are spot on! I really hope one day we can develop a slang dictionary for Cantonese. It is a really beautiful and complex language.
I dunno why this video popped up on my channel but I did click in and watch it. Your canto is amazing in terms of the usage and fluency. To be honest, I’ve got quite a few Gwailo’s friends and they all said they wanted to learn Cantonese, but at the end of the day 9 out of 10 gave up, only one left still figuring it out how to learn Cantonese. You are the number 11. Thumbs up for your hard-work.
You are spot on the differentiation of both Cantonese and Mandarin. For the time you spent learning both languages, you have accomplished the language skills many locals would admire. Thank you for sharing.
I am actually so impressed that you have learnt Cantonese to such a level within 5 years times and with so little learning resources! I can speak Cantonese fluently because my parents are from Hong Kong, even though I also live in the UK. I have never really thought about how difficult Cantonese can be, since as you have mentioned I have not gone through the tonal route. Trying to learn Japanese right now, so I’m a bit jealous of your ability to learn so quickly. You’ve given me a bit of hope that it is achievable!
多謝你整依條片！！你好有心，多謝曬你，愛你💓
Just found this channel, and your Cantonese's got improved so much when compared to the first video!
Wow, Alex. This is the best comparison I have seen on CZcams. Your Cantonese is pretty good. Extraordinary. You are the one in a million that mastered Cantonese. Great job.
Super impressed with your Cantonese 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 it’s surely one of the hardest languages out there n ur nailing it!! It’s also a language that many are trying to preserve (along with Traditional Chinese) 💜
Thank you for spreading the word and informing about Canto x
Your Accent has improved alot, being in HK has really helped, I can honestly say that before I went to HK the first time my vocab was limited but i stayed proper far out and for 6 weeks so I had not hoice but to use Canto and it helped me improve so much, really impressed plus I can actually understand a majority of what your saying, I don't keep up with my speaking but I still sing from time to time (i'm more old school lol) but I really like what you're doing, keep at it.
Omg Alex your Cantonese sounds amazing! Please keep making Cantonese video👍🏻
Amazing take on the topic! As a Cantonese speaker myself I also hope more foreigners will learn Cantonese. There’s one thing I’d like to add tho, which is that we do write out spoken Chinese but only in informal settings, e.g. when we are texting/ on social media (it almost seems a bit weird to type in written Chinese if it’s not for anything formal)
you did a good job in differentiating Cantonese and Mandarin, both in spoken and written format. Well done and I appreciate your work and look forward in watching your next episodes :-)
This video pretty much single-handedly helped me decide to learn Cantonese first! Thanks so much
You are doing well man, keep it up!
Your Cantonese is amazing. Great work. Keep it up!
Thanks for the excellent rundown. It's very helpful to rapidly get an idea of the level of effort required to learn Cantonese.
I know you weren't intending to dissuade people from trying, but for me personally, with no pressing need to learn it right now, it sounds like it wouldn't be worth the effort. I did enjoy visiting Hong Kong a few times, though. If I ever have a chance to get a job there and stay for more than a few weeks, then maybe I'd give it a shot.
Thanks again.
You are amazing! wow! You sound Perfect with your Cantonese! I am thoroughly impressed! :D
I am so impressed and super thrilled that you chose to learn Cantonese. And you speak very local Cantonese, props to you!
Man, you're brilliant!
You speak cantonese so well!!! The best foreigner i hv ever seen! Subscribed!
good job man, your cantonese accent has improved tremendously compared to your first vid four years ago.
Super impressive!!! Your Cantonese is really good! Happy to have a foreigner willing to learn our language ❤️
Wow! I’m impressed with your Cantonese, it’s really good man!
Alex, 你好叻! 解釋得好清楚，keep up the good work 👍 👏
Thumb up to you!! Your cantonese is amazing and thanks for learning cantonese
Amazing job Alex. Your vocab and sentence structure is amazing=) by my standards, as a Canadian born Cantonese speaker.
Really impressive Cantonese skills, really proud of you as a Hong Konger, Add Oil
Pretty impressive mate! Keep it up 👍
The difference between this new updated video and the one you did years before is startling. In the old one, a blind Hong Konger could tell you weren't from there LOL. But in this new one right now, you've gotten a lot better and faster in formulating your thoughts. Well done.
Wow your Cantonese has come a long way. I just watched the video you posted a few years ago then saw this one.
You are so clear headed of our culture. Appreciated
Thank you for your sharing. Appreciated for your analysis about Cantonese vs putonghua.
Your Cantonese speaking is really fluent in term of terminology and sentence structure . Happy you like Cantonese coz I am hongkonger speaking Cantonese. Stay healthy . May God bless you.
Omg your Cantonese is really good! The combination of words to make up a verbal sentence is as good as the locals.
ur pronunciation its pretty decent, keep it up bro, amazing video
Epic mate! well done on your spoken Contonese, I am impressed. I am trying to learn to Manadrin being a native Contonese speaker, it is tricky!
你講得真係好好呀! 我好佩服你! 如果你需要練習,我哋呢度咁多人都會好樂意幫你呀！ 努力呀!
That's a great point you that you made about written Chinese being very different to spoken Cantonese. I learnt spoken Cantonese naturally from young, but I can imagine how confusing it would be to try to learn it as a second language if your main resources are written material!
I am so proud of your Cantonese! I think you used to study Cantonese very hard in Hong Kong, and you must be interested in learning Cantonese, which is why your Cantonese pronunciation is very good!
Wow. You've only learned it for a few years and you're so good at it.
I'm always pretty amazed what an effort you can put into it to speak fluent Cantonese. You must be very motivated when you started the language; keep on speaking Cantonese (y). I should do that also more often, haha
Your Cantonese is better than mine (coming from a native speaker)omg you should be so proud of yourself! Also I love the way you sometimes add in extra English words it makes it sound even more natural!
First time watch your video, found that you re gorgeous. My mother tongue is Cantonese, understand Putonghua major in linguistics in European languages and Chinese. Really love to develop a tool to help people speak Cantonese.
Omg...your cantonese is so good. You're one of us now.
雖然有時發音發唔正，但講野個tone真係好自然好流暢，好厲害呀！😊👏🏻
Your speaking is so smooth👍🏻
I'm very impressed by the fact that you manages to use some very unique slangs words we hong kongers use alot, like the ones with both Cantonese and English in it.
Alex's canto is amazing! I know there are limited resources for learning spoken canto so the best way I suppose is talking to canto speakers more. I agree that tone in canto is very difficult and we don't really know how to pronounce a word systematically (it's all in our blood!) - there's an online dictionary from CUHK that I find very useful for the tones.
Oh wow I don’t know how you do it. If I hadn’t learnt Mandarin, Cantonese, English and Thai from a young age I don’t think I would be able to learn them! Kudos 🙏🏻
Woww!!!!! Cantonese is awesome!!! I'm born in the US but grew up speaking Cantonese from my parents but yours is soo much better than mine!! Keep going, super impressed!!
Thanks a lot!!
Awesome, in such short period you have learned both Chinese dialects. Not only learned and differentiate but speaks so well. Congratulations and keep it up! :)
Omg as a native Hongkonger i think your Cantonese is so fluent and I actually don't find it difficult to understand! 👏🏻 Really appreciate that you've made so much effort in learning both languages and trying to make videos introducing them 👍🏻 Thank you for being willing to learn Cantonese and supporting it 🙆🏻♀️ Though being a difficult language to learn, Cantonese is truly a beautiful language 💓 I hope it can still be preserved and passed down even though it's overlooked by many
So damn cute. I've recently been wondering about theses differences. Thanks for the video post.
I feel you,I'm not a Chinese ,and it's so relatable, I'm secondary students, I started learning Cantonese since I was in primary 1 and till now my Cantonese is same level like yours!!!
You are very very amazing, just 1 year in Hong Kong and can speak so fluent and good cantonese! Really jealous! Should be admiration.☺️
Your cantonese is really good. Keep it up!
As a Kongie, I'm impressed by your Canto. You speak so fluently and sound native!
Hi there ! I am extremely impressed about the way you are speaking Cantonese. I am from Hong Kong but live in Europe more than 40 years. I never come across a European speaks so good Cantonese like you. Other than English, I speak German and Russian too. But I still think Cantonese is way ahead comparing with other languages in expressions. Well done !!
I'm hong kong born but came to canada at a young age. almost lost my native language and decided to relearn it. now i'm learning mandarin for the first time. cantonese is way harder. the verbal street cantonese and the "book" cantonese makes it such a hard language to learn. i never realized the difference until i started mandarin chinese. you're canto is so good! lol puts me to shame being native born. randomly came across your channel (was suggested). i'll sub! cheers!
wow.. someone posted your clip in Twitter.. and brought me here.. your Cantonese is much better than my English... 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 I hope one day I can speak English as fluent as you speak Cantonese .. add oil 加油 🙌🏻🙌🏻
Good to see u again here
It’s great to see that you can speak both Chinese dialects! I speak both too and it’s not easy to learn both as it’s confusing and difficult to sound out the differences. Well down for trying.
Honestly Cantonese makes Mandarin look like a piece of cake. jan1 wai6 ngo5 gok3 dak1 gwong2 dung1 waa2 mat1 je5 dou1 mou5 resources tung4 maai4 mou5 jat1 go3 official typing system.
Yes, romanization system is not standardized unfortunately, but most dictionary nowadays use Jyutping.
middle chinese had like 4 tones
Good point, and you even made it by using "jan1" instead of "yan1". For those who are wondering, both are correct depending on which method you're using.
I originally thought you were saying 真(jan1) but realized it was 因(yan1). And it would use zan1 for 真.
True, but imagine me trying to learn shanghainese, no romanization system and no resources at all
@@juliette7151 shanghainese
Your Cantonese is awesome and better than most ABCs here in the states! Very impressive!
Your Cantonese is really good for a non-native speaker. I'm aware that it's hard to learn the language, I even need a Cantonese dictionary app myself (glad there's one) to learn the Cantonese characters cuz we weren't taught how to write spoken Cantonese at school, only taught the formal writing style was taught. And yeah, linguists in HK need to beef up more resources to preserve the language since lesser people now are speaking it. So kudos to you for learning it!
Hi there, I'm a native Mandarin speaker but I like watching old Hong Kong movies a lot. So I can understand part of Cantonese by listening but still need to read the subtitles to fully get your information. I do think Cantonese is more difficult to learn simply because I personally believe its tones are more complex. But from a historic stand of point, I think Cantonese is closer to the ancient Chinese language while modern simplified Mandarin has taken away some complexities as well as some unique features from the original language for the easier-learning and wider-spreading intentions. Anyway, both languages are from the same language family and share a highly similar historic origin. Despite there are many differences between two languages, they are interconnected. I like your ways of thinking of the two languages, interesting video!!
It’s insane how good your Cantonese is. And yes your points are all legit
As a kid, together with my now late grandmother who wasn't Cantonese, I used to watch various Cantonese TV drama serials, although I didn't understand the language and still don't.
So u r doing excellent !
Hi Alex, it’s so good to see and hear you again. I started learning to speak Cantonese about 5 years ago and I remember I came across your video... it was very inspirational to me! About 2 years ago I started to learn some Mandarin too. Your insights on the differences are really spot on! I prefer Cantonese.... probably because I’m better at it than mandarin! Keep the videos coming!
Darrell Wong That’s really cool to hear your progress mate! I prefer Cantonese too for the most part. You should make a video of yourself speaking some Canto.. would be good to see
AlexHarris1094 haha I’m no where near as good as you but thanks for keeping me going!!!
There aren’t too many Cantonese speakers here in NZ except in the yum cha restaurants.... that’s where I get most of my opportunity to practice although more and more of the waitresses now speak mandarin.
Serious props to you. I'm a BBC and can only hold basic conversations in canto. Yeah, some of your tones are off, but your grammar, vocab and overall grasp of the language is way better than mine. I do agree with you on your points. When I need to look up chinese words and for the canto pronunciation, I use the MDBG Chinese Dictionary (online), which shows the tradtional, simplified, meanings in english, mandarin pinyin and cantonese jyutping, as well as voice clips so that you can hear the pronunciation in both languages, so it's very useful!
I am so happy to see a foreigner that can speak cantonese and mandarin better than me... I am a chinese hong kong born person raised in Canada ... I can only speak very simple cantonese and no mandarin ...i can’t write or read either. I am so inspired by your skills. I want to be your friend. Keep making these interesting videos.
I admire you for learning multiple languages. Best of luck!
I never comment on CZcams so this one is probably my first one. I have to say that I totally admire your analysis regarding my language! It’s so true and practical!
I really appreciate the comment mate! Im so lazy when it comes to making these videos to be honest but it’s comments like these that give me motivation to get off my arse and make more
@@AlexHarris1094 I was so impressed by your fluency of Cantonese at the beginning as I know many foreigners in hk prefer Mandarin to Cantonese, not to mention how difficult to learn Cantonese according to what you said in the video.
@@jamielai6783 If you exclude the tones, I think cantonese is as easy as Mandarin to learn according to him.
If cantonese have more number of learning material, apps and support from Chinese government then it might be much easier to learn cantonese than what it is now.
I pretty much agree with all your points! The only thing I’d differ on a bit is the finding Cantonese speakers, but I think that’s because in the States we’ve historically had more Canto-speaking immigrants. So even my small hometown in the middle of the country had Canto speakers but no Mando speakers. As far as getting HKers to talk to you, I have heard some people pretend to be Russians who don’t speak English, haha. But I have never tried it myself.
I'm Chinese, born in UK and your Cantonese is sooo much better than mine! 🤭
Totally agree with your experience. I’m born in the 四大天王 era which at the time was still during the Hong Kong golden age. It’s the time of the Stephen Chow movies, Jackie Chan movies and at that time Chinese communities outside of China where primarily all speaking Cantonese. That’s mainly why I learned Cantonese first as I only got introduced to mandarin years later when I attended university. I pretty much faced the same challenged you did plus the fact I was not in a Cantonese speaking environment as we speak English and French where I live. Still, I managed to pull it off but even after more than ten years now though I can speak it, I still feel i reach my limits too quickly. Took me only a year in China and my mandarin level totally killed my canto one. Thank you suitable language environment. I did never gave up on my Cantonese however. Part of my teenage years and the first foreign language I learned. I’m kinda attached to it.