Learning different chineses

[justin9213]

The spoken language is mutually unintelligible in all pairings of Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese (Wu). Thus, a pure speaker of one dialect would find it very difficult to comprehend what a speaker of another is saying.

What do you mean by very difficult?
they will be able to get the meaning of what another is saying?

Phonetically, they each sound very different (though they have occasional similarities here and there). Mandarin has four tones; Cantonese has anywhere from six to nine tones (different sources categorize the tones differently); and Shanghainese has five tones.

If they all have different tones, then how can they communicate at all?

Furthermore, in terms of grammatical structure, unlike Mandarin and Cantonese which are SVO dialects, Shanghainese is SOV like Japanese. A very rough analogy of each dialect compared to the other would be spoken English to spoken French. Practically, the so-called dialects qualify as different languages in reality when spoken.

So SVO is they way english is spoken???

Nonetheless, the written language is identical amongst the three dialects, disregarding geographical considerations and the resulting difference between traditional and simplified characters.

If Cantonese has six to nine tones wouldnt they need more characters than mandarin and wu???

[nice gaijin]

What do you mean by very difficult? they will be able to get the meaning of what another is saying?

Not without an understanding of how the other dialect works. If they only understand their own dialect, communication is only possible through writing.

If they all have different tones, then how can they communicate at all?

The tones are not the only difference; the key words in Supervin's statement are "mutually unintelligible"

So SVO is they way english is spoken???

yes, SVO means subject-verb-object sentence structure.

If Cantonese has six to nine tones wouldnt they need more characters than mandarin and wu???

No, the characters mean the same thing, they are just pronounced differently.