Which Chinese dialects are mutually unintelligible with Mandarin

Several Chinese dialect groups are mutually unintelligible with Mandarin, meaning speakers of Mandarin generally cannot understand them without prior learning. The main Chinese dialect groups that are mutually unintelligible with Mandarin include:

• Cantonese (Yue), spoken in Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macau, has zero mutual intelligibility with Mandarin.
• Wu dialects, including Shanghainese and dialects spoken in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, are largely unintelligible to Mandarin speakers, though some Wu sub-dialects have varying degrees of mutual intelligibility among themselves.
• Min dialects, spoken mainly in Fujian province, Taiwan, and parts of Southeast Asia, show significant differences even within the group and are generally unintelligible with Mandarin.
• Hakka, spoken in southern China and Taiwan, is also a separate group with little mutual intelligibility with Mandarin.
• Gan and Xiang dialects, spoken in Jiangxi and Hunan provinces respectively, are distinct enough to be unintelligible to Mandarin speakers.

Within Mandarin itself, there are sub-dialects with partial mutual intelligibility, with some southwestern and lower Yangtze Mandarin dialects being harder for speakers of the Beijing dialect (basis of Standard Mandarin) to understand.

In summary, Cantonese, Wu, Min, Hakka, Gan, and Xiang are major Chinese dialect groups mutually unintelligible with standard Mandarin, with some variation within each group. ^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}

References

• How does mutual intelligibility between Mandarin and …

• Varieties of Chinese

• Mutual Intelligibility of Sinitic Languages

• The Many Dialects of China

• Mandarin Chinese

• Your Guide To Understanding The Chinese Dialects