They **** everything up. I've seen many dramas that were originally in cantonese but dubbed in mandarin, and vise versa.

But it has been a long time since I've used D-Addicts, their torrents rae all too high quality for my shit house Australian internet connection.

Well I don't know D-addicts, I assume it's an online drama streaming site, won't it just be obvious if you click it and listen the first minutes...?

kazelee wrote:

Musashi wrote:

Well I don't know D-addicts, I assume it's an online drama streaming site, won't it just be obvious if you click it and listen the first minutes...?

If only life were so simple....  sigh...

Aww...
But thats no easy feat. tackling cantonese for obviously more tones but also since study material is not as abundant as mandarin. And spoken is quite different from written language. Good luck though.

Last edited by Musashi (2009 July 07, 5:15 pm)

You can tell by the tones.  The sound and the flow of the two languages are quite different, thanks to the tones.  Another easy way is by learning the numbers 1-10 in both Cantonese and Mandarin, then try and identify when they're spoken.  But if you can't tell the difference by now, then you're gonna need a lot of listening practice.

The easiest way IMO, is... to look at the Hanzi subtitles if available. Mandarin is in simplified Hanzi, and if you're studying them (traditional or not) then you should be able to tell which is which.(of course unless the Audio is Cantonese or Mandaring and the subs are in the other, then haha, I have no easy way to tell you, but just go to youtube and listen to each language eventually you  can pick them out rather easily, I promise, haha)

Yonosa wrote:

The easiest way IMO, is... to look at the Hanzi subtitles if available. Mandarin is in simplified Hanzi, and if you're studying them (traditional or not) then you should be able to tell which is which.(of course unless the Audio is Cantonese or Mandaring and the subs are in the other, then haha, I have no easy way to tell you, but just go to youtube and listen to each language eventually you  can pick them out rather easily, I promise, haha)

This is not accurate. Mandarin is written using Simplified Chinese if it's from the Mainland or Singapore. It's written in Traditional in Taiwan. And yes, sometimes you will have something that gives you the choice of Simplified or Traditional.

The real way to tell is this: Cantonese sounds like fighting cats, and Mandarin sounds pleasant.

Really, if you can't tell by the difference in intonation, listen to the syllables. Mandarin syllables will only end with a vowel, -n, or -ng. Cantonese has these plus -p, -t, -k, and -m. And they say aaaaaah a lot at the end of sentencesaaaaaah.

bflatnine wrote:

The real way to tell is this: Cantonese sounds like fighting cats, and Mandarin sounds pleasant.

Really, if you can't tell by the difference in intonation, listen to the syllables. Mandarin syllables will only end with a vowel, -n, or -ng. Cantonese has these plus -p, -t, -k, and -m. And they say aaaaaah a lot at the end of sentencesaaaaaah.

You've got it backwards ! Heh, imo Cantonese sounds better than Mandarin.  There's so much more character to the language.  I love that aaaaahh sound !

stehr wrote:

bflatnine wrote:

The real way to tell is this: Cantonese sounds like fighting cats, and Mandarin sounds pleasant.

Really, if you can't tell by the difference in intonation, listen to the syllables. Mandarin syllables will only end with a vowel, -n, or -ng. Cantonese has these plus -p, -t, -k, and -m. And they say aaaaaah a lot at the end of sentencesaaaaaah.

You've got it backwards ! Heh, imo Cantonese sounds better than Mandarin.  There's so much more character to the language.  I love that aaaaahh sound !

I actually really like Cantonese too, I was just having some fun.