For a colang idea

Standard Mandarin. It's far easier to find good materials for learning it than for any other variety.

Hello Benny, I might hazard a guess that Shanghainese is the easiest dialect, due to its having only two tones, but it would only be easier than other dialects in a hypothetical world where all languages were equally accessible material-wise. Unfortunately, in reality, learning material on Shanghainese appears scant. Therefore, I think I might agree with linguoboy in saying that Mandarin is easier, since it has so much more material than minority Chinese languages like Shanghainese. And once pronunciation and the cumbersome writing system are mastered, Mandarin (and likely other Chinese languages) actually becomes fairly easy because of how simple the grammar is in comparison to some other languages'.

Actually, I had as much trouble with resultatives as I did with tones.

For me the aspect system in general has been very tricky to master. I still sometimes forget when I need to double up on 了 and when I don't. And don't even ask me when to use 在.

Even if we confine ourselves to pronunciation, it should be noted that Shanghainese has a richer vowel system than Mandarin and three-way voicing distinction in the stops (voiceless aspirated, voiceless unaspirated, voiced) that is devilish for speakers of most European languages to master. (Mandarin has a simple aspiration distinction that is very similar to that found in English.)

The Hardest this for me in Mandarin is the tones. I've been told that I make faces when I try to say them. The other thing that's hard is pronunceation is not always like English.

Perhaps because you haven't yet had to learn much syntax yet? In any case, all Sinitic varieties has tones. Shanghainese tones are more predictable, but that won't necessarily make them any easier for you to pronounce.


And that's true of every single language out there that's not English. Heck, it's even true of other varieties of English which aren't your native variety.

Not Min.