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Even in Cantonese speaking regions, the written language is still based on Mandarin. In other words, you need to use Mandarin grammar and Mandarin vocabulary to read and write.
Anyone who is serious about learning Chinese should start with Mandarin, unless there is some very special reason.
I don't think that's entirely true, though it's becoming more true. There is some grammar, idioms, and general word usage in Hong Kong newspapers that are not what standard Mandarin newspapers would use. However, I have read that it's become more and more common for people to adopt more standard Mandarin usage for such in both the written and spoken language.
I don't think that's entirely true, though it's becoming more true. There is some grammar, idioms, and general word usage in Hong Kong newspapers that are not what standard Mandarin newspapers would use. However, I have read that it's become more and more common for people to adopt more standard Mandarin usage for such in both the written and spoken language.
Actually written Cantonese, which is very different from standard written Chinese, has become quite popular lately in Hong Kong. Used to be most Chinese writing in HK was pretty standard and only gossip-style tabloids used written Cantonese but now many advertisements, newspapers, and even some government published signs and stuff use Cantonese. I watched the movie Juno on HK HBO and the subtitles were in Cantonese too.
The majority of writing is still in standard chinese, but written Cantonese is becoming more and more popular. And yeah, even "standard" chinese in HK is a bit different than what is used on the mainland. It's a bit more formal and uses more older vocabulary.
A way that I describe reading Chinese to people is like this...
Let's take a headline from today off CNN's webpage: "What's Your Presidential IQ?"
When you read that, did you read every individual letter in sequence and use it to form the word? Did you read "W h a t ' s Y o u r P r e s i d e n t i a l I Q ?" I'm guessing you didn't; you most likely saw each individual word, recognized it as that word and not the letters that form it, which allowed you to read and understand it in a second or so.
It's basically the same in learning to read Chinese. Take "你好:" "ni hao," literally "you good," or "hello." When a Chinese person sees "你," ni, they recognize it as meaning "you." When they see "好," they recognize it as "hao," which means "good." So, when they see "你好," they immediately recognize it as meaning "hello," all the same that an English speaker recognizes and understands "How are you?" almost instantaneously upon reading it.
The radical elements of Han characters are similar to the alphabet (although not "the same" at all), as far as recognition is concerned. Even if I see a sign on the street that I don't understand, I recognize the radicals, and I can use the radicals to search for the words as soon as I have access to a dictionary.
You are deeply misinformed. Cantonese still has about 60 million native speakers in Guandong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, and Macau.
yeah, that tiled the balance dramatically!
or maybe it is you who is misinformed. In Guangdong, Cantonese is hardly the dominant language. Try to watch TV or listen to the radio, and tell me how much is in Cantonese vs mandarin.
Plus, it is just one of dialects in China. In Jiangsu-Shanghai-Zhejiang area, 80 million speak Wu, does that mean Wu challenges Mandarin? Wu Chinese - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cantonese is nothing but a regional dialect of China.
or maybe it is you who is misinformed. In Guangdong, Cantonese is hardly the dominant language. Try to watch TV or listen to the radio, and tell me how much is in Cantonese vs mandarin.
So is Navajo or Cherokee just a regional dialect since most of the radio and TV in Oklahoma or New Mexico is in English? Maybe English is just a regional dialect in Miami since most of the radio is in Spanish...
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Plus, it is just one of dialects in China. In Jiangsu-Shanghai-Zhejiang area, 80 million speak Wu, does that mean Wu challenges Mandarin? Wu Chinese - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This isn't Highlander--it is not an all or nothing question. Mandarin can be a dominant national language while people still speak and respect local languages.
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Cantonese is nothing but a regional dialect of China.
Linguistically, Cantonese is a regional dialect the same way that French and Spanish are regional dialects of Italian. The only difference is the amount of government recognition and support. Speaking of Wu, some schools in Shanghai now are starting to teach kids Shanghainese again. Schools in Taiwan teach Taiwanese and Hakka. Schools in Hong Kong and Macau still teach, primarily, in Cantonese. I hope different Chinese regions continue to promote and protect their local customs, cultures and language while still teaching everyone Mandarin.
or maybe it is you who is misinformed. In Guangdong, Cantonese is hardly the dominant language. Try to watch TV or listen to the radio, and tell me how much is in Cantonese vs mandarin.
Plus, it is just one of dialects in China. In Jiangsu-Shanghai-Zhejiang area, 80 million speak Wu, does that mean Wu challenges Mandarin? Wu Chinese - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cantonese is nothing but a regional dialect of China.
The government ordered the media to switch the language to Mandarin. Trust me, aside from Shenzhen which is mostly comprised of people outside of Guangdong and hence can only speak Mandarin, the rest of Guangdong can speak Cantonese. I live in HK and travel to mainland sometimes.
I don't think that's entirely true, though it's becoming more true. There is some grammar, idioms, and general word usage in Hong Kong newspapers that are not what standard Mandarin newspapers would use. However, I have read that it's become more and more common for people to adopt more standard Mandarin usage for such in both the written and spoken language.
Local newspapers in mainland China use some dialect too. But that's like 1% of the whole text and is easy to pick up.
The Chinese textbooks in Hong Kong, for example, don't use those Cantonese words.
Shenzhen grew manyfold in the last 30 years, and the way that it grew so much in such a short amount of time was because people relocated there from other parts of China for economic opportunities. Because of this, SZ's language is certainly predominantly Mandarin, and Cantonese culture itself has less a palpable influence than other Guangdong cities. In GZ, Guangdong, etc you'll hear plenty of Cantonese, but most people have enough of a command of Mandarin that you can communicate fairly easily. You have to go to a pretty gully area outside of the main metro areas or talk to old folks before you run into someone who just plain can't speak Mandarin.
If you get into a taxi here in Guangzhou, you'll sometimes have to say your destination in two or three tonal variations (for instance, Liede cun [Liede village], I'll have to often say "lee-AY-duh soon," "lee-UH-duh soon," "lee-AY-duh swoon," using either the first or fourth tones on "cun") before they'll understand it, because the driver's native language could be any one of a number of different dialects. My pronunciation is okay, but I thought it was just my accent until I saw my girlfriend (who is a native Xiang (Hunan) dialect speaker, fluent in Mandarin, and speaks a fair amount of Cantonese) and multiple Chinese friends have the same issue, and that's the explanation I was given.
As far as the usefulness of Mandarin versus Cantonese, although I would also generally steer most people in the direction of learning Mandarin and that's what I've concentrated on myself, to say that there are only 60-odd million Cantonese speakers in Asia and thus it's a wasted effort is somewhat of a misnomer in many ways. Many overseas Chinese communities were originally made largely of Cantonese immigrants, and so Cantonese use has long been disproportionately heavy overseas. Though this is, of course, changing as more mainlanders have money and more of them move abroad for college or professional work, there's still an outsized Cantonese influence on these communities.
And that's the other caveat: regardless of your visa status with another country, China requires its citizens to prove their income, employment, or educational status before they are allowed to exit China, whereas HK, Macau, and (to my knowledge, at least) Taiwan will more or less let you leave as long as you have a visa. This means that until fairly recently, when mainlanders started making more money, there were just plain fewer of them leaving the country, whether it was immigration, tourism, education, etc. Even now, there is still a disproportionate number of Cantonese speakers who emigrate abroad because of their relative ease of doing so; there's also the increased community and familial presence of Cantonese people in overseas Chinese communities, who have historically helped out family members from the Cantonese cultural region in the process of immigration to those countries via sponsorship or monetary support that was less common for people from other parts of China.
There is (obviously) plenty of work available for foreigners in mainland China and that is a boon to learning Mandarin; however, there are also plenty of people in international business, finance, etc who emigrate to HK or Taiwan for some years, and for them, Cantonese makes a lot more sense. For someone who is less interested in moving to China but wants (or needs) to be able to communicate with members of their local Chinese immigrant/descendant community, it may make more sense to learn Cantonese than Mandarin, as well. Most of the Chinese Americans I knew in LA and SF were from Cantonese-speaking backgrounds, so if, say, you date or get married to a Chinese American and want to communicate with their family, Cantonese may be the most sensible and practical way to go.
And that's the other caveat: regardless of your visa status with another country, China requires its citizens to prove their income, employment, or educational status before they are allowed to exit China, whereas HK, Macau, and (to my knowledge, at least) Taiwan will more or less let you leave as long as you have a visa.
AFAIK, we can leave as long as we bring passports. I think it's the traveling destination that'd check if your visa status.
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