# Mandarin or Cantonese?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mandarin-or-cantonese/165163>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [March 30, 2003, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mandarin-or-cantonese/165163 "2003-03-30T04:21:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Space\_Vampire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Space\_Vampire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Space_Vampire)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2003, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mandarin-or-cantonese/165163/21 "2003-03-30T23:31:45Z")

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I speak both sort-of-semi-functionally. Mandarin is obviously the better chocie if you want something easier and more widely spoken, but Cantonese is infintely cooler. Cantonese has a bit more… cache since not too many people learn it, but it’s also so hard (tones being only one of many reasons) that the number of really successful foreign learners out there is pretty minimal.

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**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\
**Post date:** [March 31, 2003, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mandarin-or-cantonese/165163/22 "2003-03-31T06:59:54Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> Originally posted by \*\*China Guy \*\*  
> … Actually, I must point out that every Chinese can communicate on paper is a popular misconception. …

my bad, i had generalised. i’ll say instead that being able to read simplified means i can understand (mostly) newspapers from hong kong, china or taiwan without being totally lost.

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