Question by houstonmoneyman: Is there a certain dialect of Chinese that is more useful to learn than the others, Mandarin, Cantonese etc ?
Is there a universally understood Chinese language, or a “simplified” version? I want to learn Chinese, but I don’t know if I should learn Mandarin, Cantonese, or other.
Best answer:
Answer by Devin Fleenor
mandarin is more widely used, but the similarities between the two dialects should allow for basic understanding of simple phrases in both. so you could probably hold your end of a simple conversation knowing either one while speaking to someone using the opposite dialect.
What do you think? Answer below!
First of all, Mandarin is the official language of China, so if you ever decide to learn Chinese, Mandarin is what you should learn. There are plenty of dialects across the Chinese country, but Mandarin is the most widely used language in China, and it’s the one that everybody is supposed to know.
The “version” that is being taught now is “simplified” Chinese, which only means that some characters are written in a simplified way compared to the “traditional” version of the past (grammar and pronunciation are the same).
Example:
国 Guó –> simplified chinese for “country”
國 Guó –> traditional chinese for “country”
The government of the People’s Republic of China in Mainland China has promoted simplified characters since the 1950s and 1960s, in an attempt to increase literacy. They are officially used in the People’s Republic of China and Singapore, while traditional chinese characters are used only in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao.
Cantonese is for sure the second most widely spoken variety of Chinese; it’s spoken mainly in the Southern part of China (Shanghai), and is very much different from Mandarin; in fact, grammar and characters are often different, different idioms and words, and the main problem is that Cantonese pronunciation is totally different from Mandarin pronunciation; all these factors make the two languages not mutually intelligible (they might be just sometimes, in case of simple written sentences).
Example:
I LOVE YOU:
Mandarin: 我爱你 (wǒ ài nǐ)
Cantonese: 我愛你 (ngóh oi néih)
DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?:
Mandarin: 您说英语吗? (nǐ shuō yīngyǔ ma?)
Cantonese: 你識唔識講英文呀? (neih sīkm̀hsīk góng yìngmán a?)
Ok well, Mandarin is the most widely spoken Chinese language (spoken almost everywhere in China). Most of China writes in simplified script (think of them as two different “alphabets” to write the same thing even though they’re not technically alphabets).
I would say go learn Mandarin unless you’re planning to stay long term in Hong Kong, Macau or to an extent Guangzhou. Most people will understand you if you speak Mandarin, (maybe not HK or Macau) but for the other places, if they don’t “understand” you, it probably means they don’t want to talk to you.
When with a group of people, just don’t expect people to be using Mandarin to accomodate you (it’s very hard to swich languages with someone if you’ve been speaking to that person in a particular language all your life, it’s kind of ingrained in your head. Even my dad doesn’t accomodate me when he speaks with his friends, with me in the conversation (he has to translate everything) even though we can all speak Mandarin, my family friends perfer to speak in their own language (which my dad did not teach me).
Oh, and there are some people who don’t understand Mandarin at all because they’ve only been using their regional language all their lives, but that number is decreasing and you should be fine at least in large cities.
Mandarin can be written in both scripts, Cantonese, I’m pretty sure someone probably has figured it out but I have no idea how to write it using simplified script because the simplified characters for it doesn’t exist (from what I recall the HK Special Character Set is ony offered in Traditional). I suppose you’re a learner so don’t worry about this too much, doesn’t apply to you I don’t think.
The other languages (e.g. Shanghainese etc) can be written but it’s hardly ever because of the lack of standardisation (also because it’s not taught in schools)
I suggest you learn Mandarin, which is more widely used in China main land.
Mandarin is the official language of China. So you’d better learn Mandarin to make most of people understand.