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Why do Chinese movies/tv shows always have subtitles-- in Chinese?

I noticed this in China, and never understood the reasoning behind it. I mean shows in China, not shows from china seen over here.

Public Comments

  1. because of the different dialects such as Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka, etc but eventhough Chinese has different dialects when speaking, when writing it is all the same. (understandable by all dialects)
  2. because there are many different dialects in china and not everyone understands mandarin (the main dialect in Chinese movies/tvshows) so with the subtitles on the bottom everyone can understand it.
  3. some people may be deaf..or they can't really hear what's happening
  4. There are dialects, accents, which are not familiar to Chinese people from other part of China. Plus some of the puns / jokes are hard to be understood without reading the Chinese characters themselves.
  5. there are so many dialects in china..... such as cantonese, toisan, mandarin, hakka, shanghainese, etc..... these languages are completely different... most of the films use cantonese or mandarin.... not everyone in china can understand those two.... however, the writing is the SAME. so if they dont understand the speech, they CAN read the writing.
  6. Because China is really big and the population is big too so there are many different dialects( for example Hokkien, TeoChew, Cantonese, HaiNan ) but they are generally written in Mandarin. So they have subtitles to make sure everyone understands what they are saying. Plus, Chinese outside China may not understand the Beijing dialect, so we read the subtitles!
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