[freeier]

so based on this theory, languages evolved from the different provinces into the different dialects, which happened to be similar to each other but unfortunately pronounced differently ?

let's put it into a very practical logic... books, that record most of chinese literature and history, are writen, in, mandarin. even hk serious writers (the non tabliod ones) are writing serious literature in mandarin. i think HK's most well known writer, jing yong (not sure what his english name is), writes his books in standard mandarin. of cos the directors and movie companies can choose to film them in cantonese..

i look around me and half the people around me are recruited because they can speak some language we need them to. japanese, korean, mandarin, etc. of cos the core knowledge is needed, but if i were to choose between two guys that know our business decently well, i'd still pick the one that can speak one more language. especially when u do sales, try get a guy that can speak no mandarin but knows product well to do sales in china....

[kelw]

Actually, Cantonese is much, much closer to ancient Chinese than Mandarin is. The different tones of ancient Chinese were mostly preserved in modern Cantonese, but Mandarin has merged them into just four tones over the centuries. Cantonese also evolved from ancient Chinsese, but there were far fewer changes in pronounciation.

Try reading through an ancient Tang poem. You will find that it rhymes and flows more naturally when read in Cantonese than in Mandarin.

If you send a Mandarin speaker and a Cantonese speaker back to the Tang dynasty, the Mandarin speaker would likely be unintelligible to the Tang people, whereas the Cantonese speaker would probably be understood with some difficulty.

Mandarin did not become dominant until it was heavily promoted by the government with the founding of modern China.

[freeier]

I probably can agree with you on the pronounciation part. Even though we can't really determine how the langauge sound now versus 1000 years ago in the tang/song dynasty.
The easier way might be to see where the poets were or the capitals were and we shld then guesstimate roughly how the poems sound.

I am not sure how the cantonese courses are conducted in hk. But I'd think more of the mutated grammars and words are going to influtriate into cantonese than into mandarin. HK tend to have quite a way of juggling languages, very much like the japanese. My guess is that cantonese changed more during the past 50 years than it did during the 950 years before that.

Anyway, regardless, that's how i view it.
Until recently, I have never seen language as a way i'd differentiate myself from other competitors for job, but my employer obviously saw it differently. That's why i ended up in hk instead of staying as a trader in singapore.

[faguo]

Language Evolve simply...

For sure for Sale language is a issued and can make a difference depending of the level of the guy you do employ.

if you have the choice between Two average Guy one speaking Mandarin the other one not.. easy to choose. But if that your only reason of choice you are perhaps in trouble...

I did recruit a lot of Local Chinese in GZ the last 5 years and I never recruit some one because he do speak english (Or french) or for others reason as color, relegion, region, gender...
Skill & capacity of evolution in the Job has been my priority, I did even recruit people with poor english (All our documentation are in English as well as communication) because they did have the good personnality and attitude to do a proper job.