Hey Guys,

Any of you tried to learn Mandarin in HK? Any courses you'd recommend?

Figured I should learn anyway and it WOULD help in communicating..

Last yer I was surprised that a lot of ppl do not speak or dont even understand english in HK so from last November I'm learning Mandarin on the weekend with a chinese friend of mine.. I hope that this time ,when i come to hk, they would understand my mandarin...anyway i'm ot xD

[ Last edited by  fiol77 at 1-9-2008 18:01 ]

You'll find that a lot of people don't speak Mandarin either, although they usually understand it.

WGs aside, I think the general English level of locals here is better than China, Japan or Korea.

i don't know what to say but honestly when i talked to them in english (i'm not talking about wg^^) they seem not to understand me at all.. I'm talking about kids with the same age as me (23years old), dunno the "adults" but in my experience i had a lot of problem with only english, i mean ok they don't speak it but at least understand it,which would have been useful sometime.
I hope that at least they would understand my mandarin ^_^

not to mention in the restaurants (no fancy or western ones)... lol ..

best way to learn Mandarin is to go to one of the language schools in Bejing for 3 months ...
and you get to meet up with a lot of chicks learning and teaching !

Hehe sounds like a good idea. Don't think I can take 3 months out tho.

Yeah I think you're probably right for non-WGs.

I speak moderate Cantonese, not so good with business or sex jargon lol, but I just think that Mandarin will be useful int eh furture as I plan on sticking around China for the forseeable future. Also it has ancillary benefits

To: fiol77, if you want to communicate with Wgs then I think on the whole Mandarin is going to be pretty good but a lot of HK locals don't speak Mandarin so well.

well i know about wg, they always asked me "do y speak any Putonghua?" and I always said "nope" so there were no conversation at all most of the time this time i know some Mandarin, not like a native speaker but i can make some conversation so the atmosphere would be more friendly than last year lol.
About HK ppl, a friend of mine who lives in HK (he's chinese born) said to me that mandarin is more useful than english, if they don't speak they at least understand it. well ,i'll see on December

I think it depends. But armed with English and Mandarin you should be alright with most people. Especially if you stick to Kowloon/TST and HK Island.

People who grow up in HK are meant to learn Mandarin and English in school, but like most second languages it's a case of keeping in practice. Can't say I can remember much French .

Your friend is kinda right about understanding Mandarin. Because some of the words just sound accented but others sound completely different. So I think it does rely on the other party to have learnt some Mandarin previously, fo you to be understood.

[ Last edited by  bbbjp at 2-9-2008 05:37 ]

movies have helped me to improve my understanding of spoken mandarin...speaking on the other hand has been hard for me

Except when in large hotels, I speak Mandarin wherever I go in HK. But that said, even tho the level of Mandarin comprehension here is much improved over the last 30 yrs, many of the locals still struggle to express themselves in the national dialect. But seeing that a sizable percentage of the local population doesn't understand English at all, in spite of more than a century under the Brit boot, with them Mandarin will at least get your meaning across. However, if you stick to Central, Wanchai, CWB and TST, English will serve you well.

Shenzhen, tho situated in Guangdong province, is an overwhelmingly Mandarin speaking city. Only a tiny fraction (10%?) of Shenzhen's population is from Guangdong, the rest are from other parts of China and are much more comfortable with Mandarin. I have never met anyone in Shenzhen who wasn't fluent in Mandarin.

Mandarin is also the HK monger's tongue of choice. The vast majority of these girls, esp. the Hotel Res girls, are imports from outside the Guangdong area and don't speak any Cantonese. In fact, in the last year, every girl I've done, Hotel Res or 141 walkup, was a Mandarin-speaking Mainlander. So regardless of what you think about the greater usefulness of Cantonese in HK, if whoring is what you care about, Mandarin is the way to go.