Is Hokkien closer to Cantonese or Mandarin?
The reason for such a huge difference is that, Hokkien is a much older language, older than Cantonese. It might have descended directly from old Chinese. Hokkien is called Fujianhua (福建话) in Mandarin. From this definition, it seems that it is the dialect spoken in Fujian province.
How many tones is Hokkien?
7 tones
Hokkien has 7 tones, not four like Mandarin. So-called “Taiwanese” is a kind of Hokkien, which is a kind of Chinese. There are several major dialect families of Chinese: Cantonese, Mandarin, Hokkien, and Wu (including Shanghainese), to name four.
What is the difference between Mandarin and Hokkien?
Mandarin is the official lingua franca of Chinese used in China, Taiwan, Singapore. Hokkien aka Ming-nan yu 闽南语 (Ming Family) is a dialect spoken in southern Fujian province (eg. Xiamen, Quanzhou), Taiwan and Singapore.
Why is Hokkien so hard?
Reasons why Hokkien is harder than Mandarin ： Hokkien contains many archaic chinese languages features that are not existent in Mandarin Chinese, this is evident in ancient chinese vocabulary found in Hokkien. Hokkien has more tones than Mandarin. Hokkien has 7–8 tones while Mandarin has 4 tones only.
Are hokkiens Chinese?
Hokkien originated in the southern area of Fujian province, an important center for trade and migration, and has since become one of the most common Chinese varieties overseas.
What are Hokkien people known for?
Hokkien has one of the most diverse phoneme inventories among Chinese varieties, with more consonants than Standard Mandarin or Cantonese. Vowels are more-or-less similar to that of Standard Mandarin. Hokkien varieties retain many pronunciations that are no longer found in other Chinese varieties.
What is the difference between Hokkien and Mandarin?
They are both related Chinese languages though and they share some basic cognates and basic grammar. Hokkien descended from Old Chinese with many cognates from that language whereas Mandarin descended from Middle Chinese that underwent significant major sound changes such as shift of ‘K’ to “J’ as in Chicken ‘Ji’.
Does Teochew sound more like Hokkien or Chinese?
Linguistically, though, Teochew is a language in the Minnan family, of which Hokkien is part of, so it makes sense for Teochew to sound more like Hokkien.
Which is closer to the Chinese language Mandarin or Vietnamese?
Vietnamese is much closer to Southern Chinese languages than Mandarin Does Cantonese sound like Vietnamese?, Is it easy for Cantonese or hokkien speakers to learn Vietnamese or Mandarin? How about Vietnamese is it easy to learn Cantonese or teochiu?
What is the official language of mainland China?
Standard Chinese is the official language in mainland China, as well as in Taiwan, and is also known as Standard Mandarin or Modern Standard Mandarin. Wu Chinese is a dialect of Chinese that is predominantly spoken in the eastern region of China. The language exists in six main subgroups, which are geographically defined.