Re: hakka: Re: Hakka: General Li Zong Ren?

[Chanh Lu <chanh@nms.fnc.fujitsu.com>]

CHUNG Yoon-Ngan wrote:

> Dear Hakka Friends,
>
> Please help me to answer Mr Kim.
> Actually I do not know much about this dialectal languages
> and do not know how to answer Mr Kim.
>
> On Wed, 20 May 1998, Seongchan Kim wrote:
>
>
> > 5. It is said that Hakka language can't be understood to non-Hakkas.
> >     But  Hakkas had come from North China. Local gazetteers say that
> > some words and sounds
> >     of the Hakka language are like more or less those of the Northern
> > Mandarin.
> >     How  much the Hakkas without any education can hear to understand
> > Northern Mandarin?

My parents, both of whom native Hakka speakers and didn't have any education in
Madarin, understand most of the conversations in Madarin in movies and TV
series from  Taiwan.  However, they seem to have greater difficulty
understanding Mainland Madarin ( Putonghua).  Also from my personal
observations, native Hakka speakers tend to pick up Madarin more easily than,
say, native speakers of Cantonese.

Chanh