一个视频告诉你中国方言的起源

@rawbird5341
Hakka itself has so many accents that some are unrecognizable from each other.

客家话本身就有很多种口音，以至于有些口音之间完全无法互相听懂。

@arthurmoran4951
maybe they are not accents but properly dialect of the hakka Chinese language

也许它们不是口音，而是客家语这一汉语语言中的不同方言。

@CheahMichael
Yep, because Hakka itself might be influenced by nearby dialects

是的，因为客家话本身可能受到了周边方言的影响。

@Leokoolok
Hakka is a foreign language and not that close to Chinese tbh

客家话其实是种外来语言，老实说，它并不那么接近汉语。

@rawbird5341
 wtf, no, how is Hakka a foreign language? It is a Chinese language that evolved from Chinese people who migrated away from the central plains to the south. If anything, it’s more Chinese than mandarin is, it’s closer to ancient Chinese language than mandarin is.

你说什么呢？客家话怎么是外来语言？它是一种汉语，是那些从中原迁徙到南方的汉族人发展出来的语言。如果说起来，它比普通话还更“汉”，它比普通话更接近古代汉语。

@wernerschneider4460
I have a brother-in-law, whose parents emigrated from China to the Philippines, where he was born. With them, he communicated in their Chinese dialect. He told me that nobody in Beijing understood a single word when he once travelled there as a tourist. And he didn't understand anything which was spoken there. Except when somebody used English.

我有一个妹夫，他的父母从中国移民到菲律宾，他是在那里出生的。他和父母交流用的是他们的汉语方言。他告诉我有一次他去北京旅游的时候，当地人一句他的话都听不懂，他也一句都听不懂北京人说的。除了有人用英语的时候还能沟通。

@EliasssY
I been to manila, they speak hokkien there. Depends where your brother in law went, and what language/dialect was spoken at that place.

我去过马尼拉，那里的确讲闽南语。你妹夫去的是哪儿、当时当地讲的是什么语言或方言也会影响交流。

@marcusklee
Singaporean here. A bit of history here. 
Hokkien is indeed the commonly spoken Chinese dialect in Singapore, but there still exists very small pockets of Cantonese speakers, like my family. We are 100% Cantonese (i.e., both sets of parents are Cantonese), but this figure is dropping rapidly. Today (June 2025), you can hardly find any young (30s and below) fluent Cantonese speakers. Inter-marriage between different dialect groups doesn't help the numbers either. 
In addition, in an effort by the government to 'unify' ethnic Chinese Singaporeans as one people, the government back in 1970s  introduced Mandarin as a common language, which was termed 'Mother Tongue" today, and is taught as a default compulsory 2nd langauge in educational curriculum. Simultaneously, Cantonese TV shows which we'd get from Hong Kong's TVB were no longer aired/allowed (slightly draconian) and the ones that were shown on TV were dubbed in Mandarin. Even Cantonese movies today are dubbed into Mandarin in Singapore. 
The only time where I feel 'liberated' and 'free my tongue' is when I travel to Malaysia and Hong Kong, where I can speak the language and understand. Or to Chinese restaurants in any western countries. 

我是新加坡人，来讲点历史。
在新加坡，闽南话的确是最常用的汉语方言，但仍然存在一些小群体讲粤语，比如我的家庭。我们是百分之百的粤语人群（也就是父母双方都是讲粤语的），但这个人数现在正迅速下降。到了今天（2025年6月），你几乎找不到30岁以下讲流利粤语的年轻人。不同方言群体之间通婚也让这个人数更少了。
此外，为了让新加坡华人“团结为一个民族”，政府在上世纪70年代推出了普通话作为共同语言，并称其为“母语”，如今它是学校课程中默认的第二语言。同时，过去我们从香港（特区）TVB看到的粤语电视剧被停播或不再允许播放（有点极端），取而代之的是配音成普通话的版本。即使是今天的粤语电影，在新加坡播放时也大多被配成普通话。
我唯一能感觉解放了舌头、可以畅所欲言的时候，就是去马来西亚和香港（特区）旅行的时候，那时我能说粤语、也能听懂。或者在西方国家的中餐馆里也可以。

@Jumpoable
Hokkien is NOT Min; it's Minnan (Southern Min) because the Min area (Fujian province) is so mountainous that linguists split it into 3 or 4 language areas. What they speak in Fuzhou (the provincial capital of Fujian as well as in Flushing) is NOT mutually intelligible with Hokkien/ Minnan languages, as Fuzhounese is considered a Mindong (Eastern Min) language with a completely different set of tones & phonological rules.

闽南语不是“闽语”；它是闽南语（Southern Min），因为福建省地形太多山，语言学家把闽语划分为三四个不同的语区。福州（福建省会）讲的并不是和闽南语或福建话可以互通的语言，而是福州话，属于“闽东语”（Eastern Min），有一套完全不同的声调和语音规则。

@jack_kay
Using a European frxwork, the varieties of Chinese are languages.  Saying you speak Chinese is like saying you speak European.  The conversation/pronunciation/grammar may be different but the written form unifies the language.  So the major language groups or families would be analogous to Slavic, Germanic & Romance languages families (like Yue, Min & Mandarin for example).  These are all European languages (even broader Indo-European) families but mutually unintelligible.  So there are varieties of Romance languages such as Italian & Spanish, in which even without training, Italians can understand 50-60% of Spanish.  This is similar to Cantonese & Taishan.  Likewise a Cantonese speaker has no hope of understanding a Shanghainese speaker, when spoken, without out exposure or training.  This is the same case for an English speaker & a Polish speaker.

用欧洲语言的框架来看，中国的各种“方言”其实应该被归为不同语言。说你会说“中文”，就像说你会说“欧洲语”一样。口语交流、发音、语法都不同，但统一的书写系统让它们看起来是一个语言。所以主要的语言群或语系，可以类比为斯拉夫语、日耳曼语和罗曼语（比如粤语、闽南语、普通话）。这些都是欧洲语言（甚至更广义的印欧语系）的一部分，但它们之间并不能互相理解。
就像罗曼语族里的意大利语和西班牙语，即使没学过，意大利人也能大致听懂西语的50-60%。这类似于粤语和台山话的关系。相反，一个粤语使用者如果没有接触或训练，是根本听不懂上海话的。
这跟一个讲英语的人听不懂波兰语是一个道理。

@cmaven4762
This is a good analogy. The reason people keep getting confused is that the average person doesn't think of "European" as a language, even though most Western European languages are written with the same scxt. Meanwhile, because all the Chinese language family members used the same logographic system, the concept that all the speakers are using "varieties" of the same language has been perpetuated. I think what makes it more confusing is that at various points in history many of these languages, like, say, Portuguese and Romanian, would indeed have been mutually intelligible dialects [in this example, of Latin].

这是个很好的类比。人们总是搞混，是因为普通人不会认为“欧洲语”是一个语言，尽管大多数西欧语言都用同一种字母系统。而中文语言家族中的成员都用同一种表意文字系统，这就让“大家都在说同一种语言的不同变体”这个概念被长期维持下来了。
更混乱的是，在历史上的某些时期，很多语言确实曾是互通的方言（比如葡萄牙语和罗马尼亚语都是从拉丁语演变而来，在某个时期它们互通）。

@cricketgc6826
Bro your mandarin is fantastic...you are doing a fantastic job in explaining Chinese culture and related topics to China. I'm of Chinese descend and a Malaysian,  I can speak and understand a little Mandarin and my dialect is Hakka. There are sub-dialects in Hakka (mine being Hopoh) so do all the other major dialects as well. You are American, i hope and pray oneday you will be called upon by your country to help with establishing a better understanding between the people of the US and the people of China for world peace and prosperity for all. The world is sadly lacking in understanding of one another but most sad is the greed of those corporations and people in power and they are destroying the planet. World Peace.

兄弟，你的普通话太棒了……你在解释中国文化和相关内容方面做得非常棒。我是马来西亚籍华人，我会说和听一点普通话，我的方言是客家话。客家话中也有次方言（我的是“河婆话”），其他大方言中也一样有各种分支。
你是美国人，我希望有一天你会被你的国家召唤，来帮助增进美中人民之间的了解，实现世界和平与共同繁荣。这个世界太缺乏相互理解了，而最令人遗憾的是，那些大公司和掌权者的贪婪，他们正在摧毁这个星球。愿世界和平。

@christopherlord3441
I work as a translator and often work with a large Chinese agency that has project managers working from home all over China. They get the job because they can speak English (though we mostly communicate in Chinese) and so they often have to deal with translations in languages they can't speak themselves. Many of them clearly don't understand the linguistic situation in Europe, and think that European languages are more or less like Chinese dialects or as you say fangyan. I work mainly with Romance languages but they sometimes ask 'Can you do Dutch to Norwegian?' or something, and seem a little bit surprised when I say no.

我是一名翻译，经常和一家中国大型翻译公司合作，那里的项目经理分布在中国各地，在家办公。他们能胜任这份工作，是因为能讲英语（尽管我们主要用中文沟通），但他们经常会接触自己不会说的语言的翻译任务。
他们中的很多人显然不理解欧洲的语言情况，他们觉得欧洲的语言差异就像中国的方言或“方言群”。我主要处理的是罗曼语系的语言，但他们有时会问我“你能翻译荷兰语转挪威语吗？”之类的内容，当我说不能的时候，他们好像还挺惊讶的。

@isaganipalanca8803
You forgot to mention that the considerably large and influential community of overseas Chinese in the Philippines mainly speak Hokkien - like my mother and her family, as my maternal grandfather emigrated to the Philippines from xiamen in the late 19th century. My mother spoke not only Hokkien, but also Mandarin and Cantonese. As a child I had a tutor who taught me Hokkien and Mandarin simultaneously. Too bad I never followed through. As an adult, I studied Japanese and Korean (I never got the tones of Chinese,so I tried non-tonal languages!), being quite surprised that the many phonemically adapted words originating from Chinese in these two languages sooner resembled Hokkien phonetically than any other Chinese dialect.

你忘了提一点：菲律宾的华人社群非常庞大且有影响力，而他们主要说的是闽南语——就像我妈妈和她的家人一样。我的外祖父19世纪末从厦门移民到菲律宾，我母亲不仅会说闽南语，还会说普通话和粤语。
小时候我有家教老师，他同时教我闽南语和普通话。只可惜我后来没继续学。成年后我转去学了日语和韩语（因为我总是搞不懂汉语的声调，就想学无声调语言），结果我很惊讶地发现，这两种语言里很多从中文音译来的词，音韵上反而更像闽南语，而不是其他汉语方言。

@DavidHoughton17
They are def independent languages just like how Italian, Portuguese and Spanish are separate languages.

它们绝对是独立的语言，就像意大利语、葡萄牙语和西班牙语是不同的语言一样。

@josenwushangkehan
The actual explaination is far more complex than what you had described....However this is a very good simplification for Non Chinese to get the idea....It is still a good job though...

实际情况比你描述的要复杂得多……不过这对于非中国人来说是一个非常好的简化说明……你依然做得不错。

@rastisdiq4142
Actually every language in the world had the same situation before unification policy by the state.
İ am a kurd and we have like 7 dialects maybe 2 of them can understand eachother

实际上，世界上的每种语言在国家推行统一政策之前都经历过类似的情况。
我是库尔德人，我们有大约7种方言，其中也就两种彼此能勉强听懂。

@EricLeung-hk
Officially Cantonese is 9th most spoken language in the world, it has her own phases and grammatical pattern, and difference in pronunciation.  For written Chinese, it could be classified as simplified Chinese which is office in CCP china, and traditional Chinese which is from ancient Chinese which is still using in Taiwan or Republic of China, and place like Hong Kong if it is not banned very soon.

粤语在官方统计中是全球第九大语言，它有自己独立的语气和语法结构，以及发音上的区别。
书面中文方面，可以分为“简体字”，这是中国共产党统治下的官方文字；还有“繁体字”，源自古代汉字，现在仍在台湾（地区）（中华民国）和香港（特区）使用——当然，如果在香港（特区）没被全面禁止的话。

@ilFrancotti
You can read all the European languages that are written in Latin if you know Latin.
But that doesn't mean you are going to understand them because the sound of the same Latin letter may vary significantly from language to language, compared to the original Latin sound.

如果你懂拉丁语，你可以阅读所有用拉丁字母书写的欧洲语言。
但这并不意味着你能理解它们的内容，因为相同的拉丁字母在不同语言中的发音可能会和原始拉丁语有显著差异。

@etorawa9367
Southern China kind of feels like the Caucasus in a way. There are all these mountainous, remote regions where people were cut off from the rest of the country for centuries. Over time, they developed their own languages and distinct cultures, some of which are radically different from the Mandarin speaking, northern Han norms. And yet, many of them still identify as Han Chinese, which shows just how broad and flexible that identity really is.

中国南方在某种程度上让我联想到高加索地区。
这里有许多山区和偏远地区，几个世纪以来都与国家其他部分隔绝。随着时间推移，这些地方发展出自己独特的语言和文化，有些甚至与说普通话的北方汉族主流文化完全不同。
但这些人中很多依然认同自己是“汉族”，这也说明了“汉族”这个身份有多么宽泛和灵活。

@barbarossarotbart
People should not forget that written Chinese is a logographic writing system. That makes it possible to be understood across languages. A very usefull tool in an empire in which several language families are spoken. You have no need to translate anything. And that's the reason they did not replace it with a more modern writing system.

人们不应忘记，中文是一种表意文字系统。这使得它可以在不同语言之间被理解。
在一个存在多个语言家族的帝国中，这是非常有用的工具。你无需翻译任何内容。
这正是他们没有用更“现代”的文字系统取而代之的原因。

@flyingzone356
Please stop confusing Sinitic languages (Yue or Cantonese, Shanghaiese, Hokkien, Hakka, Teochew, etc.) with Mandarin dialects (Sichuanese, Harbin dialect, Northeastern Mandarin, Taiwanese dialect etc.). Yes, they all belong to the Sino-Tibetan language family, but Sinitic languages are distinct, mutually-unintelligible languages, and Mandarin dialects are mutually-intelligible (to various extent).

请不要混淆汉语语言（如粤语、上海话、福建话、客家话、潮州话等）与普通话方言（如四川话、哈尔滨话、东北话、台湾（地区）普通话等）。是的，它们都属于汉藏语系，但汉语语言是彼此不能互通的独立语言，而普通话方言在不同程度上是可以互通的。

@dantankunfiveancestorsfist
China written language or dialect is the greatest invention of ancient communication it allows every different language group this include Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese and all of China to understand each other. Because of nationalism some countries such as ancient Korea and in many degree Japan started to modify the general written communication with their own written characters. That is why today Koreans and Chinese can no longer communicate with each other in writing both will have to instead learn English.

中国的书写语言或方言，是古代交流中最伟大的发明。它让不同的语言群体——包括韩国人、日本人、越南人和整个中国——都能互相理解。但由于民族主义，一些国家（如古代的韩国，以及某种程度上的日本）开始用自己的文字来修改这种通用书写方式。这也是为什么今天韩国人和中国人不能再通过文字交流，必须改为使用英文的原因。

@Wann-zo7rn2qn4i
Now you understand why China need a putonghua.  The scxt, Hanyu was sexted and enforced by Qin Shi Huangdi.  He was the one who mandated a common scxt,  a common set of laws, common weights & measures, common currency to enable the smooth running of the government. And they diligently recorded everything.  And that's the legacy he left to China.  Isn't it amazing that a Chinese high school graduate could still largely read something written almost 2000 years ago, whatever dialect he speaks at home.

现在你应该明白中国为什么需要普通话了。汉字书写系统“汉语”是在秦始皇时期被选择并推行的。
他规定了统一的文字、统一的法律体系、统一的度量衡和货币，以确保国家政务的顺利运作。
他们还非常认真地记录一切。这就是他留给中国的遗产。
难道不令人惊叹吗？——无论在家说什么方言，一个中国高中毕业生至今仍大体能看懂2000年前写下的文字。

@SDZ675
So it's very similar to Medi Europe. Many romance languages had the same roots in Latin and used Latin as a lingua Franca. Interesting that it's mostly the mountains to the south that kept dialects distinct, but also makes sense since for most of Chinese history, the Imperial capitals were either in the North or the West.

所以这与中世纪的欧洲很相似。许多罗曼语言都源于拉丁语，并使用拉丁语作为通用语。
有趣的是，中国南方多山的地形让各地方言保持了差异性，这也说得通，因为中国历史上大多数皇都都在北方或西部。

@davidcamacho5421
Thank you. I think your explanation  is well done. I see a lot of similarities between Thai and Cantonese. Especially the counting is near identical as well as the grammar.  I live in HK and Mainlanders cannot understand Cantonese at all.

谢谢你。我觉得你的解释非常好。我看到泰语和粤语之间有很多相似之处。
尤其是数数的方式几乎一模一样，语法也很相近。我住在香港（特区），内地人完全听不懂粤语。

@danielzchang
I am from Fujian province, and I noticed this video has one major mistake about Fujian Province. Within Fujian there are four major dialect groups, the so call Hokkien is only spoken in the Southern areas, while Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, speaks Fuzhou Dialect, or the dialect of the middle of Min. If you visit the Chinatown in Manhattan, NY, or in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, you will not hear Hokkien, you hear Fuzhou dialect everywhere.

我来自福建省，我注意到这个视频对福建有一个很大的误解。在福建省内部有四个主要方言群体，所谓的“福建话”（Hokkien）只是南部地区的语言，而省会福州讲的是福州话，也就是闽中方言。
如果你去纽约曼哈顿、洛杉矶、旧金山或芝加哥的唐人街，你不会听到福建话，你会到处听到的是福州话。

@jvp9703
I speak Cantonese and can understand a lot of Mandarin without formal education, so I think they're still dialects given that any small amount of studying will drastically increase inteligibility.
You can't say the same thing for English and Polish for example.

我讲粤语，但即使没有正式学习，我也能听懂很多普通话，所以我觉得它们还是方言。因为只要稍微学一点，理解度就会大幅提高。你不能把英语和波兰语也这么说，那根本不行。

@eddiebrock649
Informative, one part missed out was the different dynasties in China's history where different races were in charge and they used different dialects as their official languages and there's specific Chinese words that dialects like Cantonese, Hokkien uses and makes no sense in Mandarin or other dialects.

这视频很有信息量，不过有一点遗漏了——中国历史上不同朝代由不同民族掌权，
他们采用的官方语言也不同，而且像粤语、福建话等方言中有些汉字词汇在普通话或其他方言中完全说不通。

@monkeyrun
each "dialect" is a country being "united".
Calling them a dialect is like if Hitler successfully takes over Europe, and call Spanish and French a dialect.

每种“方言”其实都是一个国家被“统一”了。
称它们为“方言”，就好像希特勒成功征服了整个欧洲，然后把西班牙语和法语也叫做“方言”。

@88klac
In SE Asia many Chinese will speak more than one Chinese language/dialect, and often mix them up together. Thus in a family maybe the father is a hative Hakka speaker,, the mother Cantonese, and they both speak some Mandarin.  The family langage can be a mixture of Mandarin/Hakka/Cantonese.

在东南亚，许多华人会说不止一种汉语方言，而且常常混着说。比如一个家庭中，父亲是客家话母语者，
母亲讲粤语，他们俩都会讲一些普通话。于是这个家庭的日常语言可能就是普通话、客家话、粤语的混合体。

@karynang6149
Shouldn’t have used the USA as an example given that people who identify as modern Americans all descended from immigrants about 250 years ago. Thus evolution of languages there aren’t going to be the same as China which has thousands of years of language evolution.
It would have been interesting to compare to any country in Europe though, such as Italy, French, etc… who probably had many dialects/ sublanguages too until they were centralised.

不应该用美国做例子，因为现代美国人的祖先大多是在250年前左右移民过去的，
所以那里的语言演变不会像中国这样，经历了数千年。
如果拿中国和欧洲国家做比较就有意思多了，
比如意大利、法国等，它们过去也有很多方言或“次语言”，直到中央集权化才逐渐统一。

@kenlui2159
The Chinese are the native people of China naturally they have thier own dialects. The native people of America were close to wiped out when Westerners stole their lands, that's why there is no dialects in America

中国人是中国的原住民族，自然有他们自己的方言。
而美洲的原住民在西方人掠夺他们土地时几乎被消灭了，
这就是为什么美国没有方言的原因。

@diarmaiddillon1568
What a bunch of crap .  A guy with some toff British accent referring to the United States as "our country" , feigning perplexion on behalf of many "westerners" who would find this situation "unusual" despite 100s of millions of people in Europe speaking descendant daughter languages of different Proto-Indo-European dialects, who perfectly can understand the linguistic complexity of the Han language. 

真是一派胡言。一个带着绅士腔的英国口音的人竟然把美国称作“我们的国家”，
还假装代表许多“西方人”对这种语言情况感到困惑，尽管欧洲有上亿人都在说从原始印欧语不同方言演变而来的语言，
他们完全理解汉语语言系统的复杂性。