| In fact i believe that it is easier to learn Cantonese than Mandarin, because:
1.) For English speakers, it is easier to produce the Cantonese sounds.
2.) Cantonese has far more sounds than Mandarin, so even if you don't get the tones right, ppl are still likely to understand you.
3.) Most Hong Kong people speak the same style of Cantonese. So once you learn it, you will understand the locals here. However, Mandarin pronunciation varies extremely in the different provinces of China. So even if you learn Mandarin (Beijing style pronunciation) you are very likely to come across a lot of Mandarin speakers that you can not understand at all.
4.) Learning tones is a pain in any case. It does not make any difference whether there are 4, 5, 6, or even 9 tones. If you have never spoken a tonal language before, it takes a lot of time to properly learn it. Mandarin' tones are not easier to learn, just because there are less.
5.) And as other people said before, in Hong Kong you are primarily exposed to Cantonese, so there are much more opportunities to practice.
Last edited by geo-seb; 18-02-2007 at 01:49 PM.
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