Answerer 2
As far as I know, the people who speak Cantonese can understand the people who speak Chinese easily, because Mandarin is the official and standard language in China. And Mandarin is learned in almost every school. Therefore, Mandarin is more commonly used than Cantonese. In my opinion, if you want to choose one of them to learn, you’d better choose Mandarin because you will find it beneficial for you in your future life. If you are interested, I suggest you take a free trial at
http://echineselearning.com/free-trial/index.html. I hope it helps you out.
If you want to learn to speak Chinese, I suggest you take a look at
http://www.echineselearning.com/resources/speak-chinese/index.html.
Well, if you have other questions related to Chinese speaking, please feel free to email me at jennifer.zhu@echineselearning.com or you can still ask questions here. I will be glad to help you to speak Chinese.
, answered by
Chery
Answerer 3
As far as I know, the people who speak Cantonese can understand the people who speak Chinese easily, because Mandarin is the official and standard language in China. And Mandarin is learned in almost every school. Therefore, Mandarin is more commonly used than Cantonese. In my opinion, if you want to choose one of them to learn, you’d better choose Mandarin because you will find it beneficial for you in your future life. If you are interested, I suggest you take a free trial at
http://echineselearning.com/free-trial/index.html. I hope it helps you out.
If you want to learn to speak Chinese, I suggest you take a look at
http://www.echineselearning.com/resources/speak-chinese/index.html.
Well, if you have other questions related to Chinese speaking, please feel free to email me at jennifer.zhu@echineselearning.com or you can still ask questions here. I will be glad to help you to speak Chinese.
, answered by
Jennifer
Answerer 5
I disagree somewhat with the other people on this board, including Jennifer. The answer is a bit subtle.
If someone is completely monolingual in Cantonese or Mandarin (i.e. no experience with the other), they generally cannot understand the other. However, all Chinese dialects are related, so some words and phrases will sound familiar. Generally speaking, the more colloquial the phrases, the less similar Chinese dialects are.
However, most Cantonese-speaking people in Mainland China and Hong Kong can indeed understand Mandarin because they are being exposed to it more and more, especially after HK reunification in 1997. Likewise, with experience, Mandarin speakers can understand Cantonese, too. There are some correlated sound shifts that occur (look it up), so it is possible to guess what some unknown words would be in the other dialect.
As for which dialect someone in the Western world should know, it depends on your reason for learning Chinese. Certainly, Standard Mandarin is the official language of Mainland China and Taiwan. Furthermore, far more Chinese-learning resources are available in English for Mandarin than for Cantonese. Thus, if you ever plan to get serious about studying Chinese or travel to China, you should learn Mandarin first.
However, keep in mind that, for historical reasons, Cantonese speakers outnumber Mandarin speakers in places like the UK, Canada, and Australia. If you just want to learn some conversational Chinese to chat with waiters in your city, then maybe Cantonese would be more useful for you.
Please contact me at pmchang51@yahoo.com for more information. I'd love to help you.
, answered by
Peter
Answerer 6
Cantonese speaking people, assuming no Mandarin training, can somewhat understand Mandarin, say, about 70%.
Mandarin speaking people, assuming no knowledge of Cantonese, can understand literally nothing in Cantonese, less than 10%.
That is because the intensive use of slang and not-existing character in Cantonese.
eg
Mandarin Cantonese
他, 肔, 它 佢
N/A 咩, 嗰, 吖, 啫, 咪, 哂, etc
東西 嘢
the list goes on forever.....
, answered by
(o_O)