Can Hakka and Teochew understand each other? 雞同鴨講 (collab with Hakka Scribbles, full length version)

How similar are Chinese “dialects”, really? Can different “dialect” speakers understand each other?

In this video we collaborated with Sung Chang-Da of Hakka Scribbles to put this to the test! (This is the full length version, a shorter edit is on Instagram:   / csgppnunr6u   and Facebook: https://fb.watch/7mn6-p8Mxo/)

Chang Da shares insights into Hakka language and culture, as well as his beautiful calligraphy, on his social media channels:

Instagram:   / hakka_scribbles  
Facebook:   / hakka.scribbles  

We each prepared sentences in our languages for each other to guess. If you would like to play along at home, here are the rules: First listen to the sentence being spoken out loud. If you can’t figure out the meaning, then you may see the romanization. And if that still doesn’t help, then the Chinese characters are revealed.

Which language do you think is easier to understand?

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Contents

00:00 - Start
00:07 - Intro
00:59 - How we learn our heritage languages
03:05 - Dictionaries for Hakka and Teochew
04:38 - Rules of the game
04:57 - Start the exam...
05:53 - Teochew sentence 1
09:05 - Hakka sentence 1
11:27 - Teochew sentence 2
14:45 - Hakka sentence 2
18:28 - Teochew sentence 3
21:23 - Hakka sentence 3
28:07 - Having a chat...
30:21 - Teochew sentence 4
36:00 - Hakka sentence 4
39:15 - Teochew sentence 5
44:01 - Hakka sentence 5
46:30 - Teochew sentence 6
49:52 - Hakka sentence 6
53:48 - Teochew sentence 7
57:13 - Hakka sentence 7
1:00:47 - Teochew sentence 8
1:05:29 - Hakka sentence 8

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Links to resources mentioned in the video:

Taiwan MOE Hakka dictionary: https://www.moedict.tw/
Teochew online dictionaries: https://www.mogher.com, http://www.czyzd.com
WhatTCSay3 App (Android and iOS): https://tcknow.com/whattcsay3-is-here/
Chang Da’s posts about his roots-finding trip to China:   / cfwshygfmo0  ,   / cflobyrfnph  
“Southern Min as a Migrating Language” by Pico Ding: https://www.springer.com/book/9789812...

Image source:

Fujian Map modified from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Original by ASDFGH at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons

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Visit our Learn Teochew language guide for heritage speakers:
https://learn-teochew.github.io
Follow our updates on Facebook:   / learnteochew  
Twitter:   / learnteochew