Yes, he has been working for TVB for a long time, like at least 20 yrs if he still works for TVB. He usually played the role of some high ranking police officer.

is he the guy with the blond hair?  IIRC he acted in a number of cantonese serials

Yeah that dude. He's very respected actor, and more importantly, recognized as a local Chinese.

Why?. If the guy is resident in HK and doesn't travel to the Mainland or Taiwan, why should he learm Mandarin rather than Cantonese?

Mandarin is the national language of all China.
Wherever one goes in China, not to mention Taiwan or any other overseas Chinese community, Mandarin predominates.
Even here in HK, an ever increasing number of people can speak Mandarin, whereas 20 yrs ago virtually no one did. This trend will only strengthen in the future; the Mandarin juggernaut is unstoppable. I now hear it spoken everywhere in HK. Even the locals are rushing to learn Mandarin.
The Mandarin dialect is much easier to learn than Cantonese.
Something you brought up - you will never be ridiculed for making the inevitable mistakes when learning; and after a year or two, you will speak Mandarin better than most locals.
Mandarin speaking Westerners are very common, and no one bats an eye.
How reasonable is it to think that a Mandarin speaker won't venture into Shenzhen, which is Mandarin speaking, or other areas. (I must go to Shenzhen next week, and am looking forward to some serious punting in northern China.)
Even if you stay in HK, very few of the Mainland WGs speak Cantonese, and those that do don't speak it with enough proficiency to actually enjoy speaking it.  Mongering in Mandarin, I have a huge advantage over the locals.
Even if you spoke Cantonese, how likely would your wife and daughter be to stop conversing with you in English? It's very difficult to change languages in long-standing relationships established in another language.

But if you plan to stay exclusively in HK, and associate overwhelmingly with Cantonese speakers, who you think will likely converse with you in Cantonese, then perhaps Cantonese is the way to go. But to me it is too limiting. A foreigner living in Sicily would be much better off learning Italian than the local dialect.

But, this is an interesting question. What is the advice of the HK Chinese members of this forum? Should Jake learn Cantonese or Mandarin?

[ Last edited by  Marsupial at 13-10-2007 03:06 ]

both

http://www.hokwokwing.hk/

that's his own site

Yea, that's the dude!

"What is the advice of the HK Chinese members of this forum? Should Jake learn Cantonese or Mandarin?"

Yes, learning Mandarin is more beneficial in the overall sense. From my understanding, you speak Mandarin pretty much the way you write it as well, as in a formal literary sense. As for Cantonese, many of the phrases and terms are slangy. If you speak Cantonese the literary way, people would think you are strange or you don't know how to speak Cantonese. Actually, it wouldn't feel right to speak Cantonese the Mandarin way. For example, "why" is "wai sum mor" in Mandarin (well, Cantonese dialect) while "dim gui" in Cantonese. It would feel totally awkward to say "wai sum mor" while you are conversing in Cantonese.

BTW, local Macau people speak Cantonese also =)  After spending some time in 18 and Darling, I found out that some of the other nationals (Vietnamese, Thai, and what not) have picked up some Cantonese because they have to interact with the staff and other locals. However, I don't know how well they know about Mandarin.

On the other hand, a lot of the Chinese girls speak Mandarin, unless they are locals.

So the answer would be Mandarin.

Even in the U.S. more and more start to use Mandarin.

Consider that most of the PRC girls only speak Mandarin, why learn Cantonese

thanks for the link

well to my understanding....Canotnese was mostly spoken by people in hong kong and when they moved out or immagrated they took that language with them so you will see most of the chinese population in the early years will speak cantonese.  But from what I have seen is then the next genertation or the following generation (not to be rude, just my opinion) they lose that heratige and lose the cantonese language and speak the language where they are (mostly english from where I am from and I can honestly say that I have some cousins that has trouble speaking to my grandparents cause they can't speak it).  As for mandarian....both people from China and tawain speaks it.... and with more people from those country moving abroad and with now more people from China coming into Hong Kong, mandaran might be the language to learn....just depends on where you want to use it....

For the purposes of living in Hong Kong, learning Cantonese would be better. And more fun too.

For all purpose use in China with great usability in Hong Kong as well, go with Mandarin.

The Chinese community in Seattle is overwhelmingly Mandarin speaking. That's because they are mostly newer immigrants from Taiwan and the Mainland. This is the case all over the world. There still exist pockets of Cantonese speakers in the older Chinese-American communities like Boston or New York, but they are rapidly disappearing. All of their children, if they study Chinese, go to Chinese school and study Mandarin. European Chinese communities are also Mandarin speaking. Keep in mind that Mandarin is the default language of the Chinese. So if two speakers of different dialects want to converse with each other, they must speak Mandarin. Mandarin will eventually predominate everywhere. If you can only learn one dialect, and you choose Cantonese, you will not be able to converse with anyone outside the Cantonese community. Why limit yourself that way? I speak Mandarin everywhere in HK and never have problems finding Mandarin speakers among the HK people. 20 yrs ago it was very difficult to find anyone here who spoke Mandarin. From this you can see that Mandarin is becoming common in all Chinese areas regardless of the local dialect. The future is Mandarin. A foreigner would be much better of studying Mandarin.

well said....to bad for me I am to lazy to learn mandarin again....so think I will stick with my chingalish(cantonese+english)

yeah me too.
despite my constant travel to PRC i can hardly speak their language.
i think this is partly due to my arrogance...

sigh today my gweilo boss said to my chinese boss siad,"this client doesnt' speak a WORD of english!"
i guess sigh... i hate that but i look at myself i think... aren't i thinking the same in PRC?
"fuck the mainlanders doesnt' speak a WORD of cantonese! get me a Fucking interpretor"

Never heard of Hong Konger. Also refered to them as Cantonese.  Same crap in Taiwan, they want to be called Taiwaner, I said, what the hell is that some kind of a ship or something?

learning to speak a new language is not difficult .......................

learning the culture is ...........................................................

sometimes they go together. learn the language and sometimes the culture will come with it.

this is inevitable.
you do learn it.