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Original Language



What was the true original language to this film? Cantonese or Mandarin?

http://www.chinamanschance.com

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Cantonese I think as there are English-Cantonese jokes in the movie that just don't work on the Mandarin soundtrack.

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Mandarin. I speak Mandarin and I also watch Mandarin with subtitles. There is no cantonese on the track.

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Well my Celestial DVD has the option to watch the movie in Cantonese or Mandarin.

I may be wrong but I always thought the movie was set in Guangdong near Hong Kong, as in the beginning you have Hsiao Hou returning from studying in Hong Kong. On the Cantonese soundtrack his character is always sprinkling English words into his speach, and Kara Hui is amusingly mistranslating it into Cantonese. Now I don't understand Mandarin so I have no idea if these exchanges are as humorous on the Mandarin track.

"Fatty, you with a thick face have hurt my instep"

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Here's the whole My Young auntie on youtube... it's in Mandarin. Does this sound like what you have? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpEXsL3niPs

Hsiao Hou's character enters at the 18:30 point of the movie.


hmmm... on the mandarin track he is speaking english throughout which she mangles into something else. Are you sure yours is Cantonese? Mandarin and cantonese are very distinct from each other. You can always tell cantonese because it uses 5 tones instead of 4 like Mandarin and Cantonese speakers have a tone that sounds like it elongates the words waaaaaaaaaaaa lol.

Oh yeah that link is a secret.

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Yeah that version on your youtube link is Mandarin. If you watch this clip you can hear both the Cantonese and Mandarin tracks playing at the same time as the uploader probably ripped it from a source that had different languages on the left and right channels http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqn5DQ9Jhzk

Also just found this trailer which has the Cantonese soundtrack on it http://youtu.be/VpYvsmSFTZc

Anyway it probably doesn't matter much if you watch it in Mandarin or Cantonese as it was shot without sound and the soundtracks were created later in post production like nearly all Hong Kong movies made before the mid nineties. I mean it's not as if it's a Stephen Chow movie that specifically relies on Cantonese wordplay to make sense (or nonsense).

"Fatty, you with a thick face have hurt my instep"

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you make a good point about how they were shot back then (no sound). So I guess it's right. I dont think i could bear the cantonese version lol

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