I am Chinese but I don’t speak mandarin. I speak a dialect called Hainanese. Whenever I hear people speaking ‘chinese’ I can always tell whether it is mandarin or Cantonese or whether they are speaking some other dialect which I am not rounded in.
But I’ve always wondered when I speak my dialect are mandarin speakers able to tell that I am speaking a Chinese dialect or does it sound like I am speaking some random Asian language?
Btw Hainanese sounds a lot like teochew so much so that I can understand a lot of it when I hear people speaking.