How many of the most difficult Chinese dialects do you know?

Though the Chinese language is very famous in the world with many people learning and studying Chinese speeches and characters, it is very hard to get a true understanding of Chinese language, especially the dialects which are impossible to master without certain abilities. However, thought hard to learn, it wouldn’t hurt to know something about them. Let’s take a look of some of the most difficult Chinese dialects.

1. Wenzhou Dialect that Makes Ghosts Sorrowful
Wenzhou people are good businessmen who travel almost everywhere in China for business. Just as famous as Wenzhou business, Wenzhou dialect has acquired a reputation of ghost’s language. Of cause not literally, it’s just so hard that only Wenzhou people can understand it, hence the nickname.
Another fun story tells that during the anti-Japanese war, the Eighth Route Army would use Wenzhou people to communicate with their dialect for confidentiality reasons, so that the Japanese wouldn’t understand a thing even though they intercept the information, which helped winning the war.
There are many stories about the dialect. For example, Wenzhou people will talk about terms and prices openly in front of negotiation opponents without any confidentiality concerns, an evidence of how difficult Wenzhou dialect is.

2. Cantonese that is very different from Mandarin
Cantonese is the most popular Chinese dialect that has its own pronunciation and characters. Many Guangdong people can’t understand or speak Mandarin, because they can’t convert between them, hence the great difference.

3. Manlam Dialect that cross borders
Manlam dialect is hard to learn. It will take a lifetime living in Fujian before you master it if you don’t have any linguistic gift.
By the way, Manlam dialect, though hard to learn, is very wide-spread even to foreign countries by many people from southern Fujian.

4. The Suzhou soft dialect
Suzhou dialect is a soft treat to the ear and makes people very comfortable, as if greeted by an ancient elegance with fragrance of books, especially so when girls are speaking it. However, such beautiful dialect is among the most difficult Chinese dialects to learn and understand.

5. Elusive Shanghai Dialect
Though close to Suzhou and Hangzhou dialect, Shanghai dialect, to some content, is high profile, especially so in modern time when Shanghai is highly developed and people speaking fluent Shanghai dialect may avoid be taken as despised countrymen. Shanghai natives oppose people from other places, therefore people speaking fluent and pure Shanghai dialect can be treated as natives, and even avoid being oversold.

6. Naturally Advantaged Shanxi Dialect

As a origin of ancient culture, Shanxi not only have advanced culture and economy, but also advantaged dialect. Many dialects reveal elegant traces of ancient culture. Shanxi has special geographical location and very unique dialect that is not communicable from south to north. In Shanxi dialect, one sentence can mean very differently when spoken in different speed and implication.