Chinese dialects and accents: how close are they? We measured (video)
We compared how 22 Chinese varieties say the same words, from Beijing to Hokkien, and clustered them. Plus Taiwan vs mainland Mandarin: accent, words, script.
Chapters
- 0:00Start
- 0:21The short answer
- 0:42How many Chinese dialects are there?
- 1:13How alike they sound
- 2:27Mandarin speakers catch little of the south
- 3:09Words drift less than sounds
- 3:34Tones, endings and erhua
- 4:35Taiwan and Singapore Mandarin
- 5:37Which variety should you learn?
- 6:06What to do next
Transcript
Start
Shenyang is 600 kilometres from Beijing, yet the two cities say everyday words almost the same way. Shanghai and Suzhou are just 100 kilometres apart, and they sound more different. From SayMei Guides, by Mei Lin: Chinese dialects and accents. How close are they? We measured them.
The short answer
The short answer: Chinese is a family of about ten groups. Mandarin's accents, from Beijing to Sichuan and Taiwan, stay close to each other. The southern groups, like Cantonese, Shanghainese and Hokkien, sound as different from Mandarin as separate languages. In a listening test, Beijing listeners caught almost none of their words.
How many Chinese dialects are there?
So how many Chinese dialects are there? Linguists count about ten groups, with hundreds of local varieties. Chinese calls them all 方言, regional speech. Mandarin alone has 799 million speakers: two in three. Min, Wu and Yue follow, with about 70 million each. Cantonese is the best-known Yue variety, Shanghainese is Wu, and Hokkien and Teochew are Min. So is Taiwanese, a form of Hokkien.
How alike they sound
But how alike do they sound? We let the characters do the work, because Chinese varieties write a shared word with the same character. Take 人, person. Beijing starts it with a curled R, Cantonese with a Y sound, and Hokkien with an L. For every pair of 22 cities, we compared a median of 574 shared characters, scoring the first consonant and the rest of the syllable. Then we grouped the cities by sound. The tree splits off the southeast coast first: Min. Hokkien and Teochew sound 78% alike, and Min's three cities sit far from all the rest. Wu comes next. Cantonese clusters with Hakka and Gan. And the Mandarin cities huddle together. Beijing and Shenyang score 87%. Two surveys of the same city average 92%. On a map, the closer two cities sit, the more alike they sound. Left to right runs roughly north to south. Top to bottom sets Wu apart. Huang and colleagues found the same two patterns in the Linguistic Atlas of Chinese Dialects. That's the shape of Chinese: one huge, fairly uniform north, and a south packed with very different speech.
Mandarin speakers catch little of the south
Do these scores match what people understand? In a 2009 experiment by Tang and van Heuven, rural listeners heard sentences in 15 varieties. Listeners from Beijing caught 77% of the words from Jinan and Taiyuan, and 62% from Chengdu. From Suzhou and Xiamen, 5%. From Guangzhou, 3%. From Fuzhou, none at all. Understanding runs one way, though. Every city's listeners understood Beijing speakers well: 87% of words on average. They hear standard Mandarin at school and on TV. So if you learn Mandarin, expect to follow most of the north, and almost none of the south without study.
Words drift less than sounds
Here's a twist: words drift less than sounds. Beijing and Guangzhou share roots for about three in four basic meanings, yet sound only half alike. The words that do change are some of the most common. Cantonese and Hokkien say eat with 食, the first character of 食物, food. That's why reading carries further than listening: formal written Chinese follows Mandarin everywhere.
Tones, endings and erhua
The south also kept old sounds that the north lost. By the traditional count, Beijing has four tones, Shanghai five, Xiamen seven, and Guangzhou nine. Cantonese, Hakka and Hokkien still end syllables in P, T or K: 十, ten, ends in a P in Cantonese. Learners notice tones first. But in the listening test, consonants and vowels tracked understanding, and tone pitch didn't. Inside Mandarin, Beijing is the odd one out. It adds an R to the ends of words, called 儿化, as in 哪儿, where. In the 1964 survey, 14.6% of Beijing's words had it, and Hefei's almost none. Beijing also curls the tongue for Z H, C H and S H, where Shenyang and Chengdu say Z, C and S. So if a speaker from Chengdu or Taiwan drops the R, that's a regional accent shared by millions.
Taiwan and Singapore Mandarin
What about Taiwan? Both Taiwan and the mainland teach a standard built on Beijing's pronunciation, and speakers understand each other without much trouble. But Taiwan's everyday Mandarin often softens Z H, C H and S H, rarely adds the R, and lets syllables keep their tone. And it's written in Traditional characters. Words differ most for things named after 1949. A video is 视频 on the mainland, and 影片 in Taiwan. And watch out for 土豆: it's a potato on the mainland, and a peanut in Taiwan. Singapore writes Mandarin in Simplified characters, like the mainland. But in speech, it carries the sound of Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese. Syllables keep their full tone, and local words fill the gaps: even the word for taxi comes from English. The dialects themselves are fading. Three in ten Chinese Singaporeans mostly spoke one at home in 2000. By 2025, that was down to about one in fifteen.
Which variety should you learn?
So which variety should you learn? The one spoken by the people you want to talk to. No one in particular? Standard Mandarin: every school, exam and app teaches it. Family from Guangdong or Hong Kong? Cantonese, or add it after Mandarin. Family that speaks Shanghainese, Hokkien or Hakka? Start with Mandarin, then learn theirs from your family. And none of these is broken Mandarin. Each has its own sounds, words and grammar.
What to do next
What to do next? Compare your family's city with the tool on the page. Unsure? Learn standard Mandarin first. Don't chase a Beijing accent: clear tones matter more than the R. And expect local words. People will understand you. You can talk with Mei Lin for free: your first lesson is 10 minutes, with no account and no card. She teaches standard Mandarin, and can show lessons in Traditional characters. The tree, the map and the city comparison tool are on the page at saymei dot app.