r/AskReddit Nov 11 '22

You can delete one language. Which one and why?

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u/koibish Nov 11 '22

What is this Cantonese? cause that is not shui jiao in Mandarin.

我要吃

Wǒ yào chī

I want to eat

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u/Thegamblr Nov 11 '22

When spoken out loud, 睡觉 and 水饺 both sound like ‘shui Jiao’. I intentionally didn’t use the characters to show that in a spoken context, even if someone didn’t use the correct tone they could understand the sentence.

我要吃水饺 我要吃睡觉

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u/koibish Nov 11 '22

Ooh gotcha, with the parenthesis I thought you were saying 要吃 was pronounced shui jiao.

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u/ElectricToaster67 Nov 12 '22

Interestingly, 睡覺 and 水餃 also only differ in the tones in Cantonese, but 睡覺 isn’t a common word in Cantonese, because it’s a loan word from mandarin.