If you were English-speaking and expecting to spend time in Hong Kong, doing business and mongering, which language would you focus on?
Should one concentrate on Mandarin, and learn only a handful of Cantonese words and sentences?

Thanks in advance.

Cantonese is still the main language in HK, Mandarin is NOW a very close 2nd, it used to be nonexistent.  English has always been a secondary language in HK.

If you are just intending to stay in HK for leisure and business then Cantonese is fine with some mandarin. However, if you intend to go up north for business and leisure in the future, best to learn Mandarin.

My advice would be to learn mandarin which opens more doors.

i would say cantonese is the main language in hk.. but after browsing through the 141... i saw that a lot of the WGs are from mainland china and speak mandarin only.. and only a few speak english...

pretty much, what asia-play said....

unfortunately my Mandarin is pretty non-existent.

Thanks for the replies...
May I ask a couple of other questions?  


1. Do Cantonese speakers in HK look down on Mandarin speakers a little?
2. Do most native HK still know some or alot of Mandarin?
3. If I stick with Mandarin, should I sprinkle in some Cantonese as a sign of respect when speaking with Cantonese-speakers?

If you asked this question pre-1997 then the main language was Cantonese and Mandarin was never used unless you ventured up north.

1) Why you say that? We welcome our mainland comrades with open arms!!!
2) However, must people in HK are trilingual - Cantonese, English and Mandarin.
3) Learning Mandarin is fine as a majority of Hong Kong people will understand.

lol canto is EXTREMELY hard to learn if you are white guy because of the strong accents and weird sounding intonations. your best bet is to learn pinying mandarin, and work your way up from there.

And from my own experience.... and what I would have done instead...

I certainly would have learned to learn Mandarin first i/o Cantonese. Mandarin - or Putonghua as it's now commonly known as - is a much more useful language to speak all around the world instead of Cantonese.  Yes Cantonese is widely spoken in Hong Kong - but more and more people here and elsewhere at least understands Putonghua, which is not the case with Cantonese.

On top of everything else, the 8 (??) "tones' of Cantonese makes it a more challenging language to master vs. Putonghua's 4 tones.  And Hong Kong Cantonese employs too many English derivative words i.e. tiksee for taxi etc - and one does have difficulty using it with Cantonese speakers in Mainland China as such words are NOT in such widespread and popular usage up there.  In fact, colloquial speakers of Cantonese would even have problems 100% understanding local television news programs - as such programs use 'Classical" cantonese phraseologies and words.

And last but not least - at least to me  - Cantonese is a much rougher language to the ears vs Putonghua - something akin to the difference between French and say Italian or Spanish.

Just IMHO

SEAJ

[ Last edited by  SEAJ at 11-1-2010 09:45 ]

Bros,

I must counsel about putting too much emphasis on the usefulness of Mandarin/Putonghua in HK.  There are only certain industries or areas where that is true such as banking and some areas of commerce. You have no idea how many times I've heard stories of taxi drivers getting really annoyed that people assume they know Mandarin.  Many are part of the older generation and are more likely to know English than Mandarin.  I should also point out that just b/c someone might understand what you're saying in Mandarin doesn't mean they can respond to you in a comprehensible way.  I'd put it at 50-50 since I've had friends try to use Mandarin, and if I hadn't been with them, they would have had no idea what the local store person or whoever was trying to say.  There are many HKers who think they know how to speak Mandarin, but quite frankly, they may as well be speaking out of their asshole.

grantorino2, as the other bros have already mentioned, if you're just in HK, focus on learning a few Cantonese phrases.  If you're going to be spending time in China, do the Mandarin.  When in doubt, English and/or a bit of sign language go a long way in HK.

Don't waste your time learning Cantonese. If you were absolutely sure you were going to spend all your time in HK, and perhaps marry into a local Cantonese-speaking family, then yah, maybe going with Cantonese would be the smart thing to do. But Mandarin in the language of the entire Chinese people.

The vast majority of HG's WGs are not native Cantonese speakers - most of the HGs don't speak a word of Cantonese - but do speak Mandarin.

20 years ago, nobody in HK spoke Mandarin, now the locals are falling all over themselves trying to get up to speed in the national dialect.

Learning Cantonese would be like going to live in Palermo and only learning Sicilian instead of standard Italian.

Believe me, if you don't learn Mandarin, you will dearly regret it.

some stats:  55% of pronounced words are the same syllable, perhaps same accent between Cantonese and Mandarin.  Another 25% are "direct translations", meaning that most words of a particular syllable translates to the same.  Example: many words in Cantonese that use the syllable 'hak' derives into the syllable 'ke' in Mandarin.  This is important so that if you knew of a translation from Cantonese to Mandarin for one word, you actually would know the translation possibly for 5 to 10 words in one shot.

As such, I would say that most Hongkies would nowadays understand 80% of Mandarin.  Especially if they have kids and they have to help with their Mandarin homework. Speaking is a different story.  I still have a lot of friends that won't speak unless forced to, and then they sound as bad as me.

If you want to mix in some some Cantonese with Mandarin, everyone's favorite Cantonese-only phrase will be 有冇搞錯 (yau mo gao cho), translating to 'are you kidding me!', with heavy emphasis on the 3rd word 'gao'.  Or the other very distinct 乜嘢話, ("maht ye waah", or slurred, "mehye waah"), meaning what?, or if said properly, could be interpreted as 'what the fuck did you say?'   Of course, there are tons of Cantonese-only words that are spoken only and have no formal written translation. A lot of the words with the mouth character to the left of the word is used as a made-up word.

'pert, you might be interested in this New York Times article on how Cantonese use in America's Chinatowns is being supplanted by Mandarin:

In Chinatown, Sound of the Future Is Mandarin

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/2 ... pagewanted=1&em

It's been a while since I've been in any of the older Chinese-American communities, so I don't have any first-hand experience of what's going on language-wise in NYC, Boston, or SF; however, in Seattle, where recent arrivals from the Mainland and Taiwan far outnumber the first wave of Cantonese-speaking immigrants, Mandarin is the de facto medium of communication in the Chinese community.

I've often wondered if I learned the ways in which sounds are regularly transmuted between Mandarin and Cantonese, whether or not I might be able to pick up on some of what's being said in Cantonese.

I had a Taiwanese GF who said she could understand a lot of Cantonese, even tho she had never studied it. I assume it's just an extreme example of the same thing that happens between radically different English accents: I have no trouble understanding Irish, Australian, or Brit English. But I'm now seeing a Taiwanese girl who, tho she speaks incredibly good English with an American accent, says that she has great difficulties with the English spoken in other countries.

in San Francisco Chinatown and pretty much the whole city of SF and for the most part Oakland, it's still pretty solid 90+% Cantonese and Taishanese.  However, in most of the other suburbs where there is a heavy Chinese presence, it's mostly Mandarin.  I would say that if you took all the Chinese speakers in the SF Bay Area and asked them what their primary language was, it probably would be about 60% Mandarin, 40% Cantonese, with about 80% of the Cantonese ones also being able to speak Mandarin as well.

NYC Chinatown is probably more Fujianese more than anything because of all the illegals that harbor there.

LA is pretty much all Mandarin everywhere, because there never was a big Cantonese presence to begin with.

Vancouver - pretty much mostly Cantonese because of all the Hongkie immigration from the 90s'.  Same goes for Toronto.

Thanks for the info. I'm originally from the Boston area, but lived in SF - just beneath Coit Tower - for a couple of years back in the early 80's;  haven't been back since tho.

Never been to Hong Kong B4.

I thought HongKongers are Mandarin spoken besides Cantonese.

Good info for non-Hong Kong based.

definately Cantonese, if someone speaks Mandarin to me i just stare at them -.- stupid

Mandarin is much easier and the whole of China's population understands it as well as more and more Hong Kong people.
All mainland gals speak and understand Mandarin.

You don't have to tell me, nor do I have to read about it.  I experience it on a daily basis since I do go to Chinatown daily.  But in reality, NYC Chinatowns are now a majority of Fujianese, so Fujianese is the main language now, Mandarin is a close second, Toisanese a far third and pure Cantonese is the last place Chinese minority.  You would be shocked at how little Fujianese speak Mandarin in NYC.