Cantonese or Mandarin

What would you choose?

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Cantonese
• or
• Mandarin
• Chinese
• Foreign
• languages
• taiwan
• china
• shanghai
• beijing
• tibet
• taipei
• japan
• singapore
• asia

[spore637]

I can teach you CantoneseXDD

[laoshu505000]

@spore637 cool

[pepperrgirl]

Good info...plan to tackle Mandarin in '14 for medical and business but still thinking of cantonese (far future for patients and friends).

[laoshu505000]

@pepperrgirl That would be awesome

[laoshu505000]

@MastaKadaj To me Bruce Lee isn't dead. His spirit is well alive. This is just me though..

[MastaKadaj]

@Shadowfury Wanting to learn a language because of one person, who's dead, is a bit odd. But hey, go with what you wanna learn. (Both Jet Li and Jackie Chan can speak Mandarin, btw. Granted, Jackie Chan's native language is Cantonese.)

[Shadowfury]

@MastaKadaj That is true. That's why Mandarin has more speakers !

Anyway, I want to learn Cantonese first because what Moses said... I realized that Bruce Lee only knows Cantonese, and I know this because he said in an English interview here which I saw on youtube that he only knows Cantonese. But yeah, that's the reason why I want to learn it because of Bruce Lee and a lot of the Martial arts films in Hong Kong.. which ends up getting dubbed in Mandarin and English anyway. lol

[MastaKadaj]

Mandarin is used waaaay more than Cantonese. If you're thinking China as in Beijing and Shanghai, you're thinking Mandarin. If you're thinking Hong Kong, Kowloon or Macau, you're thinking Cantonese. Taiwan and Singapore speak Mandarin, too, so that's even more Mandarin speakers.

[iamscar13]

The Cantonese were the first Chinese people to immigrate to North America (they built our railroads!), which explains why a majority of the Chinese in the US and Canada are Cantonese, or are from Cantonese descent. If you want to learn Chinese strictly for business purposes, I'd say Mandarin. If you want to learn it for fun, I'd say Cantonese, b/c most famous kung fu stars, action choreographers, and their films, are in Cantonese. (Cantonese humor is hilarious as well)

[ksacha77]

I learned a little Mardarin in school and have forgotten most of it. I don't have anyone to practice with. All my Chinese friends here in Seattle speak Cantonese. When I start working on it again, I think I'll switch to Cantonese.

[MercedesSantiaga]

I'm learning mandarin. Mandarin sounds better -- to my American ears. Most kung fu stars speak BOTH languages, so that's not a good reason. Mandarin is considered "basic" chinese now, so it will be more universal there. I will study cantonese after I have mastered Mandarin. Mandarin is more like English, and is very simple to learn. The words are stretched out, the intonations in cantonese like waaaaaaaah in certain words lol its strange to me.

[HeavyMetalHindu]

The first language I ever seriously tried to study was cantonese, and in my opinion once you find material to study with, cantonese is the easier of the two to learn to speak because there's a greater number of possible sounds, which makes each word more distinct and easier to not confuse with homophones. Learning to read and write it though is more difficult because cantonese-speakers who are literate tend to use traditional characters as opposed to simplified.

[flashatizer]

I've been trying to learn Cantonese but I can't seem to get a hold of it. I have a question, do you have any tips for someone who speaks Mandarin that wants to learn Cantonese?

[shedisek]

I would LOVE to learn Shanghainese but it seems sooooo difficult. Back in high school I was fortunate enough to study Mandarin in school but I was ignorant and not into learning languages at the time so I didn't really retain anything. Also, I wasn't really feeling Mandarin, but Cantonese and Shanghainese are very very interesting to me. My only problem is that there aren't that many resources for Shanghainese at all. Have you ever looked into this language?