English speakers who've learned both Mandarin & Cantonese

Cantonese is a living language that has a lot of slang and changes regularly. Examples are the way you say 'how are you?' Traditionally it was pronounced 'Nei Ho Ma'. Now it is 'Lei Ho Ma'. The N has changed to L over the past 40 years.

This actually makes Cantonese one of the more exciting languages when you look at it through a linguists eyes. But it also makes it more challenging to learn.


Mandarin is more standard. While Beijing Mandarin is considered the academic standard for pronunciation, there are other acceptable accents too. Many people study in Taiwan where the accent is very different (much softer, the Sh sound becomes a softer S sound).


When it comes to usefulness, Mandarin wins hands down. So unless you have Cantonese only speaking family and you have a specific need to learn Cantonese, I think it is better to start with Mandarin. You will also be amazed at how much Cantonese you 'pick up' because you know Mandarin.


Then of course you need to decide if you start with conversation, then writting and reading. Or if you do all three at the same time...


Good luck!!

Mandarin is a dialect as much as Cantonese is a dialect. Mandarin/Putonghua happens to be official dialect.


Cantonese is worth perfecting if you're going to stay in HK, Macau, but even if you cross the originally and technically Cantonese-speaking province Guangdong, you'll still find many Mandarin speakers and those who speak urban Canto with an accent. In Shanghai, the dialect is still mainly Shanghainese, while many locals don't speak the Northern Beijing Mandarin very "purely."


Learn both if languages are your hobby. Mandarin is supposedly easier because of its 4 tones as supposed to Canto's 9, so I'm not sure why your boss thinks Mandarin is easier to speak. But in the end whichever you're exposed to more often helps you learn more about the nuances. Tones are just guides. Average Chinese people have quite different pronunciations than the official ones as you'll find.


Trying to speak "properly" as taught by schools is not the same as the vernacular.


The grammar is relatively the same - why people think that Cantonese and Mandarin are two different languages? They are different dialects within the same language. This is not like in India where there are actually different systems of writing as well as spoken languages. Westerners have a great deal of trouble understanding this, and I am tired of explaining this.


Whether you should pursue Mandarin or Cantonese more deeply depends on whether you're going to stay in a predominantly Cantonese-speaking area on a long-term basis.

In Mandarin you write the way you speak, whereas Cantonese is colloquial. Having said that, there's an increasing trend of putting Cantonese into writing, often phonetically since some spoken words have no accepted written form. There are people who read and write Chinese who come to HK and can't make out what the words on some of the billboards mean, you have to pronounce the words in Cantonese to get the meaning. If you're interested in speaking and writing Chinese, Mandarin would be easier. BTW not everyone speaks the official Beijing Mandarin, which is considered by some Mandarin speakers to be difficult to understand (all those r's). The "plain" version is easier to learn. Personally I think Cantonese if far more difficult for an English speaker.

"When it comes to usefulness Mandarin wins hands down."


Not in Hong Kong it doesn't nor in the longer established overseas Cantonese speaking communities in the UK etc.


Mandarin may be'easier' having less tones to worry about but locally there is more opportunity to practice Cantonese.


Whichever you go for it's worth the effort.

My fiancee is also a Hong Kong girl, so I'm learning Cantonese in order to better communicate with my in-laws.


By the way... "lei ho ma"/"nei ho ma" ...actually, the Cantonese sound is somewhere between N & L. (My fiancee just told me it should be more like N... many people pronounce it like L and she says that's a "lazy tone." Maybe that's also why the head teacher at my school pronounces 5 like an M, not an NG! Or a sound between NG & M, I guess...)


That's the tricky part --sounds in Cantonese (as well as Mandarin and Japanese) do not exist in English. Those subtle differences make ordering a hot lemon water so difficult! The locals know what I'm saying, but I know I'm messing up some of those vowels.


I have more trouble with the different vowels sounds than the tones. Anyway, good luck!

If you want a summary of links that I have put together let me know and I will send.

There are a wealth of great interntet resources out there but they can be tricky to find.

As they say, a language is just a dialect with an army...

I teach both Cantonese and Mandarin. Mostly, if students have business in Mainland China, I really suggest them to learn Mandarin. However, if students live here, I would suggest them to learn Cantonese. I am sure that a lot of locals can speak and well-understand Mandarin in Hong Kong but still Cantonese is our mother tongue.

About which one is easier, I would also think Mandarin is easier. Mandarin with an offical phonic system 'pinyin'but Cantonese withoutit, different books use differnt sets of phonic system, I can find out a few common sets but not unique. Mandarin has 4 tones but Cantonese has 6 tones(some books said 9 tones but that extra 3 tones are included in 6 tones already).

About grammar, Cantonese is a dialect which we used to speak but suppose not written even we can write all of them but improperate writen Chinese. Our writen Chinese base on Mandarin grammar. Grammar structure basically same or very similar. However, the vocabs we use would be differnt. So that's really hard to tell which one is better. Only consider which one is more useful for you and more interesting for you.

Enjoy learning.

Cheers

Hi PDQ,


I am a Chinese Woman, I want to have more chance to practice my english and know more foreign friend, u can practice Cantonese with me if you want, please pm me.