35 points
*
23 points
Imagine if the OP sent their son to some other Chinese diaspora and comes back with fluent Wenzhounese and is completely unable to communicate with 99.95% of Mandarin and Cantonese speakers
7 points
since southerners including taiwanese don’t distinguish s/sh, z/zh, c/ch, and in some cases r/l and f/h, it could be a bit difficult to listen and understand for beginners.
8 points
*
3 points
I was thinking about from a learner’s perspective. and local people, especially middle age and older, don’t talk like people on TV.
but yeah sichuanese or like hubeinese with their weird bendy tones and stuff is way more difficult for me as a non-native than southeastern mandarin, but i found most people in central/western china can code-switch to a kind of standard mandarin as well
