Hello,
I just moved to HK and am trying to decide if it is worth the time to learn Mandarin. I will likely be here 3-5 years, possibly longer. I have met a couple of folks from the U.S. who tried to learn the language, but found it too difficult/time consuming, and eventually called it quits.
Have any expats succeeded in learning Mandarin to the point where you could conduct business in the language? (just speaking, not reading or writing). If so, how long did it take you to reach that level of proficiency, and what approach did you use (eg, private tutor vs. group classes, etc)?
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merm
17 yrs ago
Most hongkoners say they don't speak a lot of Mandarin whereas most foreigners who have lived just a few years in China and who speak varying degrees of Mandarin claim to understand and speak a lot of it.
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Thanks Cara.
Do you happen to know any expats who have learned Mandarin from scratch, and how long it took them to become proficient enough to conduct business in the language?
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Oski
17 yrs ago
IMHO, it depends entirely on you. Other peoples' experience offers inspiration only. There was this Aussie lawyer at my previous job who did it. He can carry on a near normal conversation in Mandarin. However, he was the type of person who approached everything with the utmost seriousness. He had daily classes, did his homework, practiced whenever possible. This guy insisted on speaking Mandarin to our HK staff, much to their embarrassment at times. HK does not offer you immersion environment for Mandarin. If you want to learn for real, you need to treat it as the second most important thing in your life, work first, language learning second. Do everything you can to create learning opportunity.
If you can do that, you will become one of the few people who succeeds. Otherwise, you'll learn "ni hao" and quit.
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Thanks Oski. Regarding the lessons this Aussie lawyer took, do you know if they were private 1-on-1 or group?
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"if you are planning on living in hk, cantonese is much more useful here. however, if you will be doing business in china, then mandarin is the way to go."
Indeed. I am learning Cantonese since I will not be doing biz in China. I just want to communicate better with the cashiers, the taxi drivers, the shop keepers and the guards at our complex. A hobby really.
My tutor also teaches Mandarin, and we often discuss the languages. I now think that if you are a Westerner, knowing one of the languages makes the learning second much easier. They are very similar in grammar and the words are often the same with wildly different pronunciations.
"HK does not offer you immersion environment for Mandarin"
Immersion is important. I practice on hapless taxi drivers and shopkeepers. It really helps. No way to do that in Mandarin.
"If you want to learn for real, you need to treat it as the second most important thing in your life, work first, language learning second. Do everything you can to create learning opportunity."
Very true, especially since the Chinese languages are so different from Indoeuropean ones. You will have to learn grammar from scratch. Very little of what you know from English or French or Danish or Italian will apply.
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There bound to be very successful cases like Oski's colleague. However, I really doubt if you are learning Mandarin here in Hong Kong as a hobby or light heartedly, it is quite difficult (I wont say impossible because people wl say nothing is impossible) to come to a level where you can be proficient enough to conduct business in the language. I really doubt it. Environment always comes first. Hong Kong you know is not one. UNLESS people in your work place all speak Mandarin and it is a must for them to speak Mandarin when they are at work, then you might hv the advantage of having of 9-6 Mandarin environment. Otherwise, you will be just left in frustration after starting it and have to call it a quit. Also you must bear in mind speaking is much more easier than listening so you might be able to speak to a certain extent after a lot of hard work but still you might not be able to understand when real Mandarin speakers speak to you in real life. This applies to us (Hong Kong Chinese) too. If you got time, spending just one year in Beijing wl make all the difference.
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What's wrong with learning Cantonese as a hobby?
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Oski
17 yrs ago
Regarding you question, Newbie, I think he had a combination of classes. My former employer paid for group lessons. (many HK employers do.) On top of that he paid for private sessions on his own. I don't think the group lessons helped him very much except giving him chance to practice, he was very far ahead of everyone else. But I think he got a kick out being the best in class.
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So what you are saying is basically if they don't speak English in Hong Kong, the person is not worth talking to. So does that mean you wouldn't bother talking to Li Ka Shing because he cannot speak English and is therefore not worth wasting time over. And how do you know that, if you don't understand what they are saying in the first place. That is a pretty poor generalisation, what you are saying is that 95% of Hong Kong's population is not worth talking to which is completely elitist.
And its not close to impossible to learn the language, it may be difficult, it requires a lot of effort which most people are not prepared to put in, but there are lots of people that come to Hong Kong and learn passable Cantonese because they are prepared to make the effort.
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"there is no NEED to learn cantonese, but as you are living in a chinese city, the attempt to learn it puts you leagues ahead of many that don't bother."
Very true. The level of hospitality increases dramatically if you make the effort, even if said effort is at the level of a three year old. Just being able to say "this one", "that one", "how much?" and so forth is very helpful if you venture outside of the big malls and expat shops.
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He does speak English, but its very rudimentary and always prefers to use Cantonese.
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Expat newbie, it is difficult to answer your question without knowing exactly what you mean by conducting business. For example, some Hong Kong people use the same 5-10 English phrases over and over again to do business, and they are doing fine. I think it won't take long to learn the most frequently used business phrases in Mandarin and to get to a level to understand/guess the meaning of relevant answers. Probably takes a couple of months.
However, I guess you are asking about learning enough basic Mandarin to be more or less fluent in everyday conversation, plus business lingo. I needed around 3 years to get down the basics in speaking, reading, and writing. By that I mean I am fluent in simple conversations, but have trouble with advanced topics, especially those I am not that interested in like banking, finance, trade etc. I think to become truly fluent in Mandarin I need another 5 - 10 years.
I mostly used 1-1 tuition, because I don’t like language classes where students mispronounce words in chorus and the teacher does not care enough to correct everyone. However, I got some friends who studied Mandarin in CUHK and liked it very much.
By the way, I completely agree with what others said about Cantonese. Hong Kong is the perfect environment for learning Cantonese – that is if you venture into territory outside Hong Kong’s expat enclaves. Mandarin is and will remain quite useless here. Most Hong Kong expats who study Mandarin instead of Cantonese have a very good reason and long term motivation, such as frequent business in Mainland China or a relationship with a Mainland Chinese.
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I think Newbie has her own reason of wanting to learn Mandarin instead of Cantonese. Honestly it is much harder to learn and speak Cantonese than Mandarin. It is ok if it is just for fun to say leiho, zosan etc but to the level of conducting business... oh.. i can already feel the frustration there.
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I am pretty sure newbie is a guy Mighty, not that it makes much of a difference.
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I think if you're staying in a foreign country longer than a year you should attempt to learn the local tongue if just out of respect. However Mandarin is hard and i don't think Kevin Rudd understands a lot of it even though he seems to be able to say something.
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DB, really? Aiya, sori-la... Newbie
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I thought the guy was supposed to be totally fluent wasn't he? I heard he lived in Beijing for many a year, and is a complete sinophile, and one of the qualifications he was touting when he was up for election was his understanding of both language and culture of what is going to be Australia's largest trading partner if it isn't already.
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There's Cantonese and there's HK Cantonese: "sori-la." ;)
"Honestly it is much harder to learn and speak Cantonese than Mandarin. "
I am finding the pronunciation, which most people find hard, to be the easy part. According to my teacher I am not quite nailing every tone, but it's close enough that with context it's perfectly understandable. The hard part for me is remembering to add all the little context words that don't exist in Indo-european languages, and which one to use.
Practice practice practice. Practice whenever you can. Learning a language is hard if you're shy or afraid to make mistakes "in public". You will get it wrong and often.
My teacher says that his fastest student went from zero to fluent in Mandarin in about five months, but he did pretty much nothing but study the language.
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learning to read Cantonese is extremely hardcore and very impressive indeed.
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I dont think it is, it might be the same script but they are two almost completely different languages. I wasn't differentiating between either anyway, I am not sure where or why you would think I was either so worry about your own hair colour, and by your logic everybody in the world is going to learn the language you speak so dont bother learning anyone else's. You sound like such a sensible reasonable person and always give such sound advice.
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ppatio, your misguided, elitist attitude disgusts me.
I've lived in Sweden for 6 years now and even though many Swedes have a grasp of the english language that would put many native english speakers to shame, I would never be so arrogant as to adopt the attitude that if a person will not adapt to suit me then they're not worthy of my time. I speak English with many of my swedish friends but I always initiate conversations with new people I meet in their own language whether it be Swedish, Danish, German, Italian, French or English -whenever the situation arrises and whenever I can.
Expat newbie, I've looked into which 'chinese' to learn in great depth as as I'm soon making a move to HK I would like to learn the local tongue for the reasons mentioned above. I've concluded that for my needs (I won't neet mandarin for any kind of business need and will be living in a densly expat populated area), Cantonese is the way to go as it will help me understand and make myself understood in communications with building guards, maintenance people, waiting staff, shopkeepers and the regular guy on the street from whom I may need to ask directions.
It counts for A LOT to people when you show that you're making an effort. Even if you're really stilted, getting your tones muddled and using a fair bit of sign language to try to fill your linguistic gaps, you'll find that your experience over all will be a more positive one and you may be able to look back in years to come and not see yourself as having turned out as a jaded, grumpy old piece of work that considered oneself to be better than 98% of ones neighbors.
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I agree completely with adele78. While you might not want to make the effort of becoming fluent, learning a few phrases is the least most people should do. Way to go learning Swedish too. Tonal language and everything. ;)
"I dont think it is, it might be the same script but they are two almost completely different languages."
As I see it they are actually extremely similar in all things apart from pronunciation, where they differ greatly. My Cantonese book is for Mandarin speakers so I get all the words and sentences in both traditional and simplified Chinese. The characters in any given sentence are almost always the equivalent of each other in simplified and traditional. I have quizzed my teacher, who teaches both languages, about this and he agrees with my impression. I'll ask him about the Mandarin phrase and it will be the same order, number of syllables and characters but the words will sound completely different.
To give two examples (Mandarin first):
Ni hao = lei ho.
chong rii-dien lei = chong soi-din lei
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ltxhk
17 yrs ago
I would invest in learning Mandarin (or Cantonese) if I was planning to be here for at least 3 years, for all the positive reasons listed above but also because it is more than possible.
Moons ago before the hand-over and when there were very limited expat learners of either Cantonese or Mandarin, I went down this path. I thought that at least I should attempt to know some of the local language. I focused on Mandarin because my employer had growing operations in Taiwan and China and was offering to pay for the Mandarin lessons. After about 6 months of group lessons focused on speaking, I was travelling to China and Taiwan extensively. While on these travels I made extensive effort to use my limited Mandarin, and it grew from there. Within 2 years I was able to communicate effectively for leisure and also within my line of business. I am not a linguist and actually found learning to speak even French very difficult. But due to my travels, I was able to find lots of opportunities to "practice" Mandarin. I have never mastered reading Chinese, but I also did not make any effort to do so. I learn to read enough Chinese to support the oral studies, and can basic characters and signs. Some grasp of Chinese characters is helpful in understanding the language structure.
To this day, my Mandarin is far superior to my Cantonese. I will almost always speak Mandarin in HK when individuals struggle with English..... and the levels of HK comprehension of Mandarin are now relatively high.... so they are talking in Cantonese and I am talking in quasi-Cantonese and Mandarin, and we are able to communicate reasonably well. My take on HK is very positive since I do not struggle with language and cultural misunderstandings (so much of "cultural" issues are based within the language).
Few xpats who have been in Asia a long time came here planning the "permanent" move...... so by the time you are here a long time it will be even more difficult to take the plunge to learn the languages. IF you invest in learning Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese), you will never regret it!
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"reading canto is the same as reading mandarin, blondie (are u a natural blonde?)."
Actually that is not true. Cantonese has its own writing system with around 3000 characters that don't exist in standard written Chinese. Of course, many texts published in Hong Kong are written in standard Chinese, but you can also find a lot of written Cantonese, especially on the web, in local tabloids, and in advertisements.
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Thanks for infor seb-in-hk.
However isn't Simplified Chinese a simplification of the Traditional characters? That is, aren't they the same characters modified to be simpler to write?
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Yes, simplified and traditional characters have the same meaning. So when writing standard Chinese, either can be used. But Hong Kong Cantonese has its own additional character set that is mixed with standard traditional characters when writing Cantonese as it is spoken.
Here is an example for the phrase "They are (over) there.":
他们在那里 (Standard Chinese using simplified characters)
他們在那裡 (Standard Chinese using traditional characters)
佢哋喺嗰度 (Cantonese using 4 Cantonese-only characters + 1 standard Chinese character)
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Everything said by seb-in-hk is 100% correct. My salute to you. However (no intention to confuse people here but just for those who are interested in understanding it more), the third sentence you wrote there (100% correct) is only for conversational Cantonese (in Hong Kong). That wont be acceptable if you write those in a proper school exam and lots of teachers are trying very hard to correct that in teenagers' writing because they are so used to use those conversational sentences in their sms messages and blogs etc. And it is also why a Mandarin speaker probably writes better than a Cantonese speaker because most of the conversational mandarin sentences can be written as they are but not the case in Cantonese.
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IslandHopper, I 100% agree with you. But... dont ban this member.... let us have some fun.... Just like Sharon Stone's saying about karma.. I am sure this member is regretting what he has said
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