Mandarin or Cantonese?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Lately, I’ve been reading the What Foreign Language Should I take?, thread. I noted how outside of the three choices mentioned in it that, besides Spanish, Chinese would be right up there with Farsi, in terms of a beneficial language to know.

After traveling to Taiwan and finding out (much to my distress) that all of my Cantonese dim sum restaurant Chinese was utterly useless, I am now curious about which dialect of Chinese is best to learn. I’d love to master all of the written characters but that is unlikely. Yet, I’d really like to ask simple questions when traveling and still remain convinced that it is one of the most important languages to learn in this modern world.

China Guy, or any of our other Sino savvy members, please let me know about your opinions. I feel that Cantonese would permit me to address the maximum of Chinese people, yet I find that Mandarin is the language of choice for government, management and those that I love in Taiwan. What’s a global citizen to do?

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And, no, this isn’t a food thread (for those of you who are oh-so shocked)!

3

My immediate (work) supervisor hails originally from Taiwan (can speak Mandarin), and my mother-in-law who used to work at a casino (as a pit-boss) learned to speak Mandarin to advance her job skills (in dealing with the majority of Chinese businessman tourists in Vegas) would influence me to choose Mandarin.

IIRC, both dialects are written the same. I don’t understand how, myself, because the New Years’ greeting in Cantonese “kung hay fat choy” is more like “gong shi fa chai” in Mandarin.

Someone once told me that Cantonese=Hong Kong and Mandarin=the rest of China including Taiwan, but I take that with a large grain of… rice.

-AmbushBug

4

Most of the 1.2B people in China understand Putonga (Mandarin), as opposed only the people in Goungdong, Hong Kong, and Macco understand Cantonese.

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[grateful crowd voice]

Thanks, Urban Ranger!

[/grateful crowd voice]

6

I think as a broad generalisation: Madarin (more beautiful, IMHO) is spoken by more people, but Cantonese is probably more useful, as it tends to be the language of the global Chinese diaspora (Chinatowns throughout the world).

7

That’s quite true due to historical and geographical reasons, TheLoadedDog. Still, they can understand Mandarin more or less, even though they may not be able to speak the language.

In the '90s (last century, that is), many Taiwaneses have moved overseas due to the booming economy of the region. Nowadays, the same thing is happening with Mainland Chinese.

8

I’m told the official language in China is Mandarin. That’s certainly what’s spoken during our negotiations here in Beijing. /shrug/

9

Living in the West, you are more likely to meet Cantonese speakers than Mandarin, due to the aforementioned diaspora. However, mainland China is opening up its frontiers now, so Mandarin will probably become more useful over the next few years.

I’m not sure how you were planning on learning this language, but I have found scant web resources on learning Cantonese, while there are plenty for Mandarin. The same probably goes for books and courses. Remember that both kinds of Chinese are tonal languages, so audio sources are even more useful than usual. The written characters are the same for both languages, but they are not mutually understandable - they’re about as close as German and English, possibly less so.

I recently started learning Cantonese myself. My favourite word so far is happy - ‘hoi sam,’ literally ‘open heart,’ which is a refreshing take on happiness.

10

Okay, here’s my take and it is a broad generalization. If you learn spoken Mandarin to a reasonable level, generally speaking you can communicate any where in the PRC, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong (at least with the under 40 crowd). There are many places where only dialect is spoken, including in China. Certainly, one has a better chance of being understood throughout the Chinese speaking world if the single version of Chinese chosen was Mandarin as opposed to any other single dialect.

Oh yes, the official language of China is Mandarin. I think it is still the official language of Taiwan (someone correct me but now Taiwan may have multiple official languages? At least school kids now have to pass Taiwanese language requirements which is a mighty big improvement over the days when they were beaten for speaking it on the schoolyard.). Singapore is English and IIRC Mandarin as a second language (Speak Mandarin campaign.

In the PRC, most people of the under-40 set can at least understand Mandarin owing to the spread of radio and television. I spent 3 years throughout the country side in Southwest China in the 1980’s, and usually at least one person could understand my Mandarin if not speak Mandarin themselves.

Now, if your love muffin is Cantonese, you’re living in the Bay Area and work takes you to Hong Kong, then it may make a lot of sense to learn Cantonese. However, absence a pretty compelling and usually personal arguement, this shouldn’t even be up for discussion as to which is “more” useful.

As for the written language, there are simplified characters in use in China and Singapore, and traditional characters in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Understanding one does not allow you to understand the other without some effort. Also, the written languages are similar but not the same. Perhaps like American English and Indian English? If you don’t like that analogy, just try doing an English crossword puzzle if you’re an American.

The Chinese diaspora is breaking down. Cantonese dialectswere usually the language of the diaspora from the first wave in the late 1800/early 1900. Lots of people in California for example speak Toi Shan or some other dialect, and can not really communicate in Cantonese. Picture a third generation American that only speaks a dialect at home with parents or grandparents. Then there was a wave around 1949 from different parts of China. Taiwanese came over in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. mainlanders started emmigrating from the 1980’s and now make up probably a major portion of those who speak Chinese as a native or second generation tounge.

11

Dear friend, my love of those in Taiwan is purely platonic. Arthur and Ann are truly wonderful people whom I wish to know for the rest of my life.

I just hope to visit my dear friends and be able to say more than “thank you” and “you’re welcome.”

Please understand, China Guy, that I have every intention of dropping in on you the next time I’m in your neighborhood, eh? It would be an intense personal pleasure to crack a tube of Tsing Tao with an honorable friend like yourself.

Until then, I’m hoping to brush up on my (proper) Chinese dialect for the occasion.

12

Mandarin. whatever the case was for Cantonese they have lost out with mandarin being chosen as the ‘common’ language. i see more movie artistes learning mandarin than the other way round…

Chinese are character symbols, the dialects pronounce them differently, though they be written the same. i’ve always liked how two people from different cultures (dialects) can easily communicate with each other on paper if the need arises.

13

Actually, I must point out that every Chinese can communicate on paper is a popular misconception. More generalizations to follow.

First, there are those who write simplified versus traditional or long form characters. PRC and Singapore are simplified, and Taiwan and HK are long form.

Now, those who know one can read the other form after putting some effort into it. But there is no way that someone who has been exposed exclusively to simplified charaters can read a newspaper in long form or vice versa. It just can’t happen. Now I can read both, so it can’t be that hard. My point is that one has to make an effort.

As for writing both, that requires some serious effort.

Now, these days perhaps more Taiwanese and Hong Kongese can read simplified owing to much greater exposure than before. Also, in the pc world, one can switch fonts to convert one into the other. But certainly 20 years ago, the vast majority of Taiwanese and Honkies could not read a mainland paper.

Take common characters such as love (ai with no heart), dragon (long), buy & sell (mai mai) or allow/let (rang). If you have never seen them side by side before, a novice would say WTF?

The newspaper standard or vocabulary is kind of ranked Taiwan, HK and China in decending order. Thus a Taiwanese has an easier time understanding the vocabulary level in the PRC than vice versa.

Hong Kong Cantonese is full of slang. It’s really tough of outsiders, even native Mandarin speakers, to understand a lot of what is printed in a HK newspaper. Hong Kong is really it’s own unique Chinese speaking/writing world.

Finally, I’ve been in Han Chinese places in Sichuan, Yunnan, etc where people could barely understand my “standard” mandarin, and there was no way I could understand their local dialect. They were not speaking Mandarin with a heavy local accent, these guys were speaking only dialect. Anyhoo, in some of these places, it was a rare person that could write basic Chinese.

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I (used to) speak conversational Cantonese, picked up in Hong Kong.

My take is that Cantonese is a far more difficult language to learn, due to its nine tones, opposed to Mandarin’s four. It took me 18 months before I could even say “hello” to the degree that a native speaker would understand me. Couple that with the limited spread of Cantonese in East Asia, and that a lot of Canto speakers can get by in Mandarin, I’d say learn Mandarin.

Having said that, almost every Chinese restaurant I’ve been to anywhere in the world has been run by Cantonese speakers - this once helped me out greatly during a very confusing meal in Vietnam - but unless you’re planning a global culinary expedition, Mandarin’s the way to go.

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You’d be more than welcome. We could have a fine time eating jellyfish and 1000 year old eggs and wanniluo and all sorts of fine ningbo cuisine. Tsingtao is fine although sadly it’s hard to find something better here. There are a few microbreweries around but finding something better in a bottle is a challenge.

16

Cantonese is good for swearing at people, Madarin is good for everything else.

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I took Mandarin back in college (still have all my books if you’re interested in them, think I may even still have some teaching tapes as well, dunno, have to dynamite the house to find 'em), my instructor was from mainland China and his advice was to learn Mandarin, plus certain keywords and phrases in other dialects. Reason being, if you sounded more like a native, you were less likely to get snubbed. Anybody know of a good weichi (think that’s how its spelled) program I can download off the web. Tried to learn it years ago, but the program was really crappy.

18

My view is they have about the same reading level, but Taiwanese newspapers have more localised terms (something like slang).

There are a lot of Cantonese dialects instead of other languages found in the province such as Hakki. Like Shanghainese is not considered to be a dialect of Mandarin AFAIK.

Now, Hong Kong newspapers use pretty standard Chinese writings. Most slang terms are limited to the headings, and even those are limited to the more popular, tabloid style papers.

19

Bwahahahaha. Very much so considered a dialect. In some places, Chinese is broken down into 5 major dialects, and Shanghaiese (or rather Yangzi River delta, eg Zhejiang and Jiangsu) is one. I’ve never verified this, but it was said that there was a vote in the Taiwan parliment back in 1950 to determine what would be the national language of Taiwan. Sahnghaiese lost out to Mandarin by one vote.

Joke people used to tell was that Zhu Rongji, Jiangzemin and the others would hold a meeting. At the very end, they would turn to Li Peng and ask in Mandarin “do you agree?” The point being that almost every one on the politboro had spent years in Shanghai except for the Beijinger Li Peng.

20

That settles it right there. Learning an inflection based language is hard enough without having to master nearly a dozen vocal shadings. Mandarin it is.

Tuckerfan, if you ever run across those books, please send them my way. I’d be grateful.

China Guy, please let everybody (i.e., all us honkies) out there know just how incredibly tasty 1,000 year old eggs are. In fact I’m going to start another thread about it right now. I had them in Taiwan and they were a true delicacy.

Thank you everyone, for all of the excellent input to this thread.