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Shá?! And Other Words That Originate From Chinese Dialects

Shá?! And Other Words That Originate From Chinese Dialects muTu Note - Learn Chinese in 5 Minutes Due to its size and the remoteness of many of its smaller towns and cities, China boasts a nearly endless number of dialects, so many in fact that it’s nearly impossible to create a comprehensive list of them all. Furthermore, many of the 200 or so dialects currently thought to be in existence are so dissimilar that people from different parts of the country are often unable to understand each other. Luckily for us language learners, Mandarin was installed as China’s official language in the 1930s, with the government promoting it as the “common speech” (普通话 pǔ tōng huà) ever since. With the advent of technology and the relative ease of long-distance communication, numerous words and phrase s that were once considered curious have captured the public’s imagination and entered the national vernacular. Not only are these relatively fun to use, but they’ll also help you sound like a zhōng...