Listen To These 25 Different Chinese Dialects

Chinese spoken language has hundreds of dialects that vary depending on one’s home province, city, and even county. In this video, I ask passers by in Yangshuo to teach me how to say, “你吃饭了吗?” (Have you eaten?) in their local dialect.

Top Comments:

1. In Malaysia we greet with friends like, “eh u haven’t die ah?!”.
2. I can hardly understand the dialect of my neighbor town.
3. There are 10 major language groups in Chinese language, and over 800 classified Han Chinese dialects. There must be more unrecognised ones.
4. I came from Hubei Province, I can’t understand the language of people in Fujian Province.even one single word..
5. My favorite Chinese greeting among friends they haven’t seen in a while is “ni pang le” 你胖了 (you got fat) 😊
6. “Have you eaten” is a common greeting for Chinese in south China (Two Guang) in the past for sure, despite what other Chinese here that claimed otherwise. The latter could be born in the recent three decades and did not follow tradition religiously or born in northern part of China or simply not aware.
7. I’m from Taiwan. My grandparents’ generation use “Have you eaten?” for greeting in Taiwanese(kinda like South Fukien dialect, which is used in specific area). It is because in old time, there were wars and natural hazards or bad economy, lots of people suffered from hunger. So asking “Have you eaten?” is a way to show sincere and care. Some villages or old people still use it now. Just like English speakers like to talk about weather 😂
8. Great video! I live in Shenzhen and most of the people I meet are from different parts of China. Really cool to think about all of the different dialects in one city.
9. Ahh, I speak Teochew (the dialect from Chaozhou Guangdong). I wasn’t expecting to actually hear it spoken in this video haha. It’s always so interesting to hear all the dialects out there
10. Fun fact: most of these dialects are varieties/ dialects of mandarin, and fall in the branch of mandarin, hence bearing a lot of similarities to standard mandarin. However, varieties of Cantonese, and entirely different language of mandarin which falls under an entirely different branch of the Chinese languages, can also be heard here, since this video was filmed in guangxi. I’m a Hong Konger, and surprisingly they’re more easier to understand than the other varieties of mandarin. Maybe it’s cus of how Cantonese can only be found in the south and isn’t that spread out unlike the mandarin branch.