FAQs
1. Which Language is better? Cantonese or Mandarin?
Since Cantonese is the main language in Hong Kong, you may need it for your daily life or survival. To be sure, it will make more fun if you know Cantonese during your stay in Hong Kong.
If you are considering staying or doing business with main land China, then Mandarin will be more suitable as it is the official language in Mainland China . For your information, Mandarin in Chinese is “Putonghua”. “Putong” means common and “hua” is language. It means Mandarin is common language in main land China.
Actually Cantonese and Mandarin are similar languages. Mandarin is an official language used in mainland China and Cantonese is the dialect of Hong Kong region. For written Chinese, grammatical structure of official written Chinese in Hong Kong is the same as the one in Beijing. However, traditional characters are used in Hong Kong during simplified characters are used in China.
For spoken, Cantonese and Mandarin are different in grammatical structure, vocabularies as well as pronunciation. Most people in Hong Kong could understand fairly in Mandarin but couldn’t speak well without proper training.
2. HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE UNTIL L CAN MANAGE THE LANGUAGE?
Usually, students can hold daily simple conversations about greetings, hobbies, weather, time, shopping, orientation, transport, colors, likes and dislikes, talking about family and friends, ordering food at a local restaurant after completion of an 80-hour- beginner’s course.
For further complex sentences, you need to go to intermediate and advanced levels.
Of course, it also depends on how hard you work and how much time you invest in learning the language. You can improve your learning success by creating learning posters, putting stickers all around your flat, writing flashcards, singing the sounds, and practicing the language by what you learned in every possible situation. It is important to be enthusiastic about the phonetic exercises since Chinese is a tonal language.
3. What is the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin?
Actually Cantonese and Mandarin are similar languages. Mandarin is an official language used in mainland China during Cantonese is the dialect of Canton region (incl. Hong Kong).
For written Chinese, grammatical structure of official written Chinese in Hong Kong is the same as the one in Beijing. However, traditional characters are used in Hong Kong for writing during simplified characters are used in China.
For spoken, Cantonese and Mandarin are different in grammatical structure, vocabularies as well as pronunciation. Most people in Hong Kong could understand fairly in Mandarin but couldn’t speak well without proper training.
