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Cantonese vs Mandarin in Hong Kong?


dynaemu

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Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, please move if needed >__<

But my question is, I plan on living in HK in the future, because i have alot of cousins and relatives there.. but I question is.. should I be learning Cantonese or MAndarin?

I heard many people that cantonese is a dying language and mandarin will be HKs new language x_X so.. opinions/myth clearups from anyone would be nice..

THANK YOU!

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Cantonese is very much alive and kicking in Hong Kong. If you speak in Mandarin you can be understood but it will be more difficult for you to blend in with the locals (unless you stick with mandarin-speakers) and enjoy local culture. If your plan is to live in Hong Kong then it is worthwhile to learn Cantonese. IMHO it is harder to learn than Mandarin, though.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Assuming that your first language is English, your primary form of communication in HK is always going to be English. You'll never get your Canto to a level where it's better than the average HK'ers English.

If you have the ability to learn both languages at the same time (which I doubt, unless you are 7) then I would recommend learning both.

Otherwise, I'd say you would be crazy to learn Cantonese ahead of Mandarin, even in HK.

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Assuming that your first language is English, your primary form of communication in HK is always going to be English. You'll never get your Canto to a level where it's better than the average HK'ers English.

If you have the ability to learn both languages at the same time (which I doubt, unless you are 7) then I would recommend learning both.

Otherwise, I'd say you would be crazy to learn Cantonese ahead of Mandarin, even in HK.

What are you talking about? I use Cantonese everyday.... My primary form of communication in HK is always in Cantonese. I have NEVER heard Mandarin spoken in Hong Kong by anyone in my Residential Estate, Tuen Mun, Mong Kok, TST etc.

How is it crazy? I think its quite logical... Everyone speaks Cantonese, wouldn't it be crazy to learn Mandarin ahead of Cantonese (in HK)?

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How is it crazy? I think its quite logical... Everyone speaks Cantonese, wouldn't it be crazy to learn Mandarin ahead of Cantonese (in HK)?
That depends a lot on your personal goals. If Hong Kong for you is just a short-term experience, Mandarin will most likely be more useful in your future. However, if you are planning to stay in Hong Kong for the long term, Cantonese is an option worth considering.
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No it wouldn’t be crazy to learn mandarin ahead of Cantonese.

I assume the original poster would be looking at long term benefits of learning Chinese rather than just something that amounts to a neat little party trick.

As I said, his primary form of communication is going to be English – seeing as he has this communication skill already I would think that learning Cantonese is not as useful in the long run as learning Mandarin . . . . . . . . unless his goal is to look cool when ordering his pork buns in mong kok.

Most foreigners in Hong Kong don’t speak a word of Cantonese, the primary reason for that being that they don’t need to cos the greater part of the population can communicate effectively in English.

Much like a foreigner learning shanghainese in shanghai instead of mandarin – wrong choice!

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I would also recommend Mandarin before Cantonese, if one wants to learn the written language because Cantonese is a spoken dialect but most written materials, including those produced in Hong Kong are in standard Mandarin - more or less the same as the one used in the rest of China, although more it is often in traditional characters. Spoken Cantonese can and is written sometimes but it's not standard and there are not so many resources on it.

Diglossia causes lots of problems but there is only one formal Chinese language, which can be read with whatever your local dialect is.

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Hi Dynaemu,

My view is that you should learn Cantonese. You say you want to go there because you have family there? My assumption is that they speak Cantonese so you might as well learn what they speak.

I suppose it depends on your goal - if it is the aim of learning a new language, or the aim of being able to communicate in Hong Kong and make the effort. Mandarin would be a better language to know overall, but Cantonese would be better for you now in Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong everyone speaks English anyway, and I have heard a lot of Mandarin spoken there - but I still make a point to (try to!) speak in Cantonese as often as I can (Greeting's, thank you's etc) because I think that they appreciate the effort.

Good luck!

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Learn to speak Cantonese first since you're in HK. Otherwise you may face social mobility issues.

Learn to read Chinese in Mandarin. Of course it means you have to learn to listen and understand it first. Reading in Cantonese isn't too useful unless you have specific agendas.

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Actually you can do both at the same time.

(1) Cantonese -- Learn it informally. Since you have a lot of cousins and relatives in Hong Kong, just get well-acquainted with them and learn spoken Cantonese only. In fact, a lot of foreigners in HK, even including those local born South Asian descent, can only speak Cantonese but fail to read/write Chinese. Spoken Cantonese is a necessity if you plan to stay long term in HK. In fact, that will be quite sufficient since all signs/documents in HK are presented in dual languages.

(2) Mandarin -- Learn it formally in reading/speaking/writing. Go to a school or find a tutor to teach you Mandarin formally. However, it is advisable to learn the written form in both traditional and simplified scripts since HK uses predominantly traditional script.

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I'll have to disagree with the posters who have said that English is widely spoken in HK and that the OP's ability in Cantonese will have to compete with the local's abilities in English. Having lived here for four years, I would say that that is just plain false outside of a few areas on HK island and perhaps Kowloon Tong. A great many, perhaps most, HK people can't speak much English at all. IMO, any assertions to the contrary are based on pure myth. Sure, you'll bump into lots of people who will try their best to help you out in English (or show off their limited ability), but if you want to get by outside of certain areas where people with strong English skills concentrate, Chinese skills are important.

Outside of where I work, I rarely speak English here. This is not by choice, but out of necessity. I speak Putonghua well enough and I can understand a good bit of Cantonese. In the time I've lived here, I've found that in any sort of transactional situation outside of Central, if you want to make sure you get exactly what you need, English just won't cut it. At the bigger banks and shops, if you make a very standard request in English, it will be alright. However, as soon as you need anything even slightly out of the ordinary, you better be able to get it across in either Cantonese or Putonghua. Taking banks as an example, you would be able to make deposits and withdrawals using English, but you would likely have to use Chinese to make wire transfers or fixed-term deposits, and you would almost certainly need Chinese to buy things like insurance or investment stuff. Most bank employees I've dealt with are all too happy to switch to Putonghua; many of them become relaxed after switching even though they're often not so great in Putonghua.

Socially, you just will not fit in here without Cantonese unless you like hanging around a small percentage of the population whose English and social habits are similar to westerners and who see themselves as having a different identity from most HKers. If you are the only foreigner in a group of HKers who speak English well, they are likely to switch to Cantonese-and why not, it's their first language.

HK is not a good place at all for learning Putonghua. Most Putonghua CSL materials are in simplified Chinese, so the written language here will seem quite different to the beginner. Not many locals will speak Putonghua with an accent or vocabulary similar to what you would learn in class or from tapes. They will almost never speak it unless yo speak it to them first, so you will have no opportunity to learn from eaves dropping. IMO, for a foreigner to just avoid attrition in their Putonghua while living in HK, he would need to be at a high-intermediate level (i.e. 7 or 8 on the HSK). Anything less and the skills will go very rusty very fast. In order to handle transactional or social situations in Putonghua here, the foreigner often has to be good enough for the local person to "lean on" in conversation. You won't improve your Putonghua much this way, but at least you'll maintain it if you're already at a certain level. For me, speaking PTH to a HKer and to a Taiwanese or educated mainlander are very different experiences. With the latter group, I find much more complex grammar and specialized vocabulary coming back to me.

Finally, I would say that if you are Chinese or Chinese-looking, the pressure to speak Canto instead of Putonghua is great. Foreigners who speak PTH are well accepted; Chinese are not. Aside from a few people who seemed quite anglicised and either didn't know any PTH or were offended that someone would speak it to them (increasingly less common for the latter), I haven't seen any bad reactions from locals when I've spoken PTH with them. Their reactions to other Chinese who speak to them in PTH are completely different. Locals expect the few non-Canto speaking newly arrived Chinese to learn Cantonese, and for the most part, they do.

Much like a foreigner learning shanghainese in shanghai instead of mandarin – wrong choice!

Sorry, but it's not at all like a foreigner in Shanghai deciding to learn Shanghaihua instead of PTH. There are a damn lot of non-locals in Shanghai who don't speak Shanghaihua and thus use the common language to communicate with each other and locals. Most locals under 40 in Shanghai speak PTH well. Neither of these two things are true of HK. Nearly all of the migrants from across the border are from just across the border. They either speak Canto as their first dialect, or they speak another southern dialect like Hakka or Minnanhua and then speak Canto as a second dialect. These people, most of whom married into HK, speak PTH, but with a heavy accent. In Shanghai, Putonghua serves as a common language for mainlanders from all over. In HK, Canto fills that role.

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Very interesting thread.

Just out of curiosity:

1) Are there many schools that teach Cantonese in HK? Roughly how much per hour?

2) How many TV channels on public cable broadcast in Putonghua in HK? There must be 凤凰,I assume there might be CCTV. Are there many others?

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I think Jive Turkey's response was totally accurate! Everything he said was true!

1) Are there many schools that teach Cantonese in HK? Roughly how much per hour?

I'm interested to know too, I need an intermediate-advanced course that uses NO english.

2) How many TV channels on public cable broadcast in Putonghua in HK? There must be 凤凰,I assume there might be CCTV. Are there many others?

I turned on the TV just then and I get #1 TVB (Cantonese), #2 ATV (Cantonese), #3 English, #4 English.

Using the Cable-TV remote there is about 80 channels and looks like 1/3 cantonese, 1/3 mandarin, 1/3 English.

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Re TV channels. There are two TV stations here. They are ATV 亞洲電視 and TVB 無綫 /電視廣播有限公司, which run four totally free channels, two in Cantonese (Jade and ATV Local) and two in English (Pearl and ATV World), no subscription or satellite facilities required. Phoenix is satellite tv and as far as i know it broadcasts in Putonghua (I can watch it if i like but i don't).

Pay TV include Cable TV, Now and other choices which I don't know much about ...

BTW, when we describe a situation where we have to switch to speak in English we say 轉台 or 轉明珠台. :D

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Actually you can survive in Hong Kong with only English or without English.

If you just know English, as long as you are living on "Two points, One line" -- home and workplace and commute, there is no much problem. Other than Central, in a lot of other neighborhoods where foreigners live, i.e. Peak, Mid-Level, Repulse Bay and Chung Hom Kok, the service personnels in the business establishments over there can communicate in English.

And a lot of expatriates like Japanese, who live in concentrations in neighborhood like Tai Koo Shing, can just speak rudimentary English. But they don't have problem either. They commute by MTR where English is broadcasted and signs written in traditional script that is easily recognizable (which are more identical to Kanji), shop at Japanese department store/supermarket like UNY, bank at their own banks like Mitsubishi Bank, receive Asahi Shimbum daily in their mail box, send their kids to Japanese or international schools.....etc.

So it all depends on how you want to live there.

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On a related note, what do people in HK mean when they say 'Chinese'? When browsing job classifieds, I was under the impression that it would refer to Mandarin - until I stumbled across a few that were asking for Chinese AND Mandarin... :help

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When we say Chinese, we mean spoken Cantonese and modern standard Chinese in written form. The HK government promotes 兩文三語 . 兩文 = written English and Chinese; 三語 = spoken Cantonese, English and Putonghua.

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