I live in Toronto, which has a big Chinese population, but most of them speak Cantonese.
Spanish.
Depends, is it for a job, or just your own personal benefit?
If its just personal benefit, go for the Cantonese. It's fun to badmouth people with a language they cant understand. XD
learn hokkien instead.
It's personal benefit, since i am part Chinese, but don't yet speak any dialect.
Go for the Cantonese. It'll let you communicate with the majority, and afterwards Mandarin if you choose to learn that to. (After learning your second language, i hear it just gets increasingly easier afterwards :D)
I thought learning Mandarin was mandatory in Chinese schools.
I think that I read somewhere that Mandarin is now the nationally language for China. Plus, Mandarin is pretty much overlapping Cantonese where I am. More businesses are using Mandarin and discarding Cantonese to attract the new wave of Chinese immigrants slowly coming into the area I live.
If you only care about being able to communicate with the locals, then Cantonese.
But if you want to say, do business or work in China, then Mandarin. Unless you want to go to Canton or HK, heh.
It really depends on what you want to do. I'll explain.
In mainland China, something like 70% of the population speaks Mandarin as a first language. Cantonese is spoken by about 20% of the population, maybe more, concentrated in the south and the cities on the coast. There are also some who consider this to be an ethnic difference as well, with even differences in physical anthropology, and speak of a Cantonese people who tend to be taller and lighter-skinned than the shorter, darker-skinned Mandarin people who make up the majority. The Mandarin speakers have historically considered themselves to be a distinct race or ethnicity, and in their own language, call themselves the Han people. But that's not really what you asked about.
Almost all Chinese immigrants to North America have always been Cantonese speakers. Since 1990, increasing numbers of Mandarin speakers have come to the US and Canada.
So, if you want to get around in Chinatown, and be able to flirt with the waitress, learn Cantonese. Cantonese is easier for a Westerner to learn, as Mandarin is a tonal language where every syllable has four possible completely unrelated meanings depending on inflection, and inflected / tonal langauges are the most difficult for a Westerner to learn.
If you want to go to China to teach English, or to do business, Mandarin. Even in the booming coastal cities, millions of Mandarin-speakers from the countryside are coming to look for work, so Mandarin is useful there as well.
If you want to visit Singapore, learn Hokkien. There are lots of Hokkien-speakers in Singapore.
And if you want a US government job, learn Fujien. Federal law enforcement agencies in the US, like the FBI, are desperate to find Fujien speakers, due to the appearance just in the past ten years of Fujien-speaking Triad gangs in Hawaii and California. There's a lot of money to be made, if that's what you want.
Oh, and, be advised: learning to speak, read, and write another language isn't something you can do in an afternoon, or even in a year. It takes hard work, dedication, and years of study to learn to communicate in another tongue. It's one of the most difficult intellectual feats human beings are capable of. If you truly want to do this it takes a committment of years of hard work. Which is probably why most people don't want to do it.
Damn Communists and their Mandarin
If you dont care bout books/net articles, you don`t have to bother about mandarin. Best if you could learn both.
Mandarin is a really beautiful language when sung, in my opinion. I like listening to music from Taiwan even though I'll probably never learn the language.
Learn Hindi. At least then you can say you're original.
>>12
Huh?
They both use the same written language.
>>15
No, Cantonese uses the traditional version of Chinese characters while Mandarin uses the simplified version.
#10, there are SO many misconceptions in that post, I don't know where to begin. Cantonese is spoken by MUCH less people than 20% of the Chinese population, and many of the 70% don't even speak "putonghua" Mandarin natively. And let's not set aside the non-Han peoples...
And the Cantonese ARE Han Chinese. Though they are genetically distinct from Han in the north (who tend to be light-skinned and tall, quite the opposite of your assertion), they are nonetheless considered part of the same culture.
Hokkien (AKA Taiwanese) IS Fujian. Unless you're talking about Fuchow, which isn't as affiliated with gangs as Hokkien.
Yes, Cantonese IS tonal!!! And not only that, they have TWICE the amount of tones as Mandarin!
Plese, do some more learning before posting, or at the VERY LEAST cruise on Wikipedia.
To the original - Mandarin it is. Since Mandarin is a lingua franca, Cantonese speakers are more likely to know Mandarin than vice versa. Besides, most documents in Hong Kong are written in baihua Mandarin. Written Cantonese is EXTREMELY informal.
Sorry for the necroposting - it just HAD to be done.
>>1 should learned the Japanese instead.
Chinese languages are unrefined to asian ears.
No, cantonese and mandarin both use traditional characters, but mandarin uses more simplified. Cantonese also has the same characters in simplified and traditional. So if you learn one of them, you'll be able to read both of them. But I think you should learn cantonese, since most people in your area speak it. Also because it sounds great.
>>Cantonese is easier for a Westerner to learn, as Mandarin is a tonal language where every syllable has four possible completely unrelated meanings depending on inflection, and inflected / tonal langauges are the most difficult for a Westerner to learn.
Sorry for necro-necroposting, but is it safe to assume that you know little-to-nothing about Cantonese? Cantonese has a significantly more complicated tone system than Mandarin. Mandarin has four tones, but Cantonese has at least six--traditionally seven, but the high falling and high level tones are conflating in most places. So although not all syllables are meaningful in all seven tones, a single syllable can have as many as seven meanings depending on inflection.
CANTONESE...I think they made a huge mistake making Mandarin an official language...I think Cantonese is easier to learn and also more fun to learn as you can watch (while learning) HK dramas and listen to Cantopop. There are a lot of "entertainment" stuff in Cantonese - HK movies, HK TV dramas, most good Chinese songs are in Cantonese - Cantopop has way more songs than Mandopop because of the monster-size entertainment industry of Hong Kong. Basically, everything fun can be enjoyed in Cantonese - people in the U.S., Canada, etc - most speak Cantonese. Sure, most people in China speak Mandarin but - they are still not yet developed and most you probably not interested in talking to. Learn Cantonese first, then Mandarin.
i am a chinese in singapore,
They learn Mandarin in school. Most speak Mandarin in addition to any provincial/hometown languages. So if you want to maximise the number of people you can communicate with (including most Cantonese speakers), Mandarin makes more sense.
Cantonese on the other hand is somewhat easier to learn. Although it's more complex in some ways, the pronunciation tends to be more familiar to an English ear. More tones, yes, but tones aren't as big a challenge as most people seem to think. Speaking Cantonese will earn you massive kudos and the north sucks anyway, fuck those guys.
If anyone has a decision to make like the OP had, talk to one of your friendly locals and see what they think. Picking the language you can practice most conveniently is probably the best choice. Really, as long as whatever you decide matches you current needs, it's not such a big deal since learning one as a speaker of the other if you choose to do so later is a lot easier than learning chinese will be the first time around.
>>16
No, it's just that Hong Kong is cantonese, and HK still uses traditional characters. Mainland cantonese use simplified.
I agree with >>20.
If you want to learn one of them as a practical skill, then Mandarin is the way to go. Don't listen to >>21's bs about mainlanders being "not yet developed", and not as many people outside China speaking Mandarin. Freaking 1billion+ people speak Mandarin, and even the Hong Kong-ers are having to adapt to speaking Mandarin for the purpose of trade. I speak Cantonese myself, and can understand Mandarin, but I find that Canto (although cooler imo), is kind of limiting. Personally, I think it is a dying language.
> most good Chinese songs are in Cantonese
> everything fun can be enjoyed in Cantonese
Oh please. Most Cantonese songs are sung by overrated Hong Kong actors turned singers who can't even sing. I love Hong Kong, but I don't like how you so ignorantly justify the learning of a language on "entertainment stuff" and then diss China, the next super economic power of the world.
The Cantonese tones are definitely alot harder to master. Westerners are harder to understand when speaking Cantonese than Mandarin. With Mandarin, the tones are more, shall we say, straight?
Though if you really want to tough it out with Canto, then if you manage to speak it fluently (I mean, really fluently) then you can pick up Mandarin in virtually a heartbeat (a few weeks).
of course Mandarin.
corrections to 10:
yes, 70% of Chinese speak Mandarin, and it's mandatory for almost all the students in China and teachers, officials and media as well.
only about 5% speak cantonese in the south. cantonese is way complicated to most Chinese, it sounds like a foreign langugage, difficult to understand.
while mandarin has four tones, cantonese have eight tones.
Speaking of good Chinese songs, what are some good Mandarian Rock songs?
Ade Irma - Bang Toyib
I learnt to speak both and personally i believe that cantonese sounds like dogs barking and ducks quacking when you hear ppl speak at the normal rate in hk or canton. but mandarin sounds much to formal when spoken, like ur expressing ur views on darwins theory of evolution or something.
Mandarin FTW, it is the official and the real Chinese.