[esque]

Hi

I'm moving to Hong Kong at the start of next year, and I'd like to start learning a little Chinese before I get there.

At first I assumed I should learn Cantonese, but I was speaking to a colleague who said it was all but a dying language and that Mandarin was much more worthwhile and "poetic" (!).

As this is my first post, I should let you know some background. My name's Karen, I'm 26 and I'm moving over from Australia at the beginning of next year with my husband whose job has been transferred. I'm not sure whether I'm going to be working, studying or both. My previous positions have all been in media so it might be an uphill battle for me to find interesting work...

Anyhow, I enjoy learning languages, but have never tried a tonal one before. Is Cantonese a better option for the immersion factor? Is Mandarin going to be more useful and interesting?

[stanleystanley]

i suggest u to start from the movies. try to rent some cantonese movies and some mandarin movies see what is your flavor. from my experience, ppl know cantonese can learn mandarin easily but not the other way around.

[carang]

in HK, cantonese is the main language. i learned some mandarin in canada before i moved here 10 years ago. i have forgotten virtually all of it(still remember some of the basics though)... i have picked up cantonese since i moved here. it is a much more difficult language than mandarin and it not much use outside of HK. even when i went over the border to shenzhen, most people couldn't understand me. i dont know if it was just because they assumed that i was speaking english, so didn't even bother to try to understand, or that they were from elsewhere in china and had migrated to guandong for work purposes. the only lady that could understand me was a waitress in a restaurant.

i have never taken a course in cantonese, rather, i pick it up a little at a time and what i know is what is useful everyday. i can order in a restaurant(dim sum as well as dinner dishes), i can go to a wet market and get what i need, i can talk to my taxi drivers and haggle prices in the street markets.

i have the added bonus of being married to a local and my in-laws do not speak any english. this has pushed me to try to learn as much as i can. my husband and i are raising our son in a completely bi-lingual environment(i speak english and he speaks cantonese)...

[timklip]

I think you should ask yourself "Is Hong Kong my final destination in China?' If so, you would get more functionality from Cantonese, but like cara says, if you cross the border to PRC, it's basically useless. It may be a dying language, but not in our lifetime for sure. Mandarin is a more musical language, easier on the ears I think, and I'm told much easier to learn...that said, I plan on learning Cant. in the next few years so I can communicate with my future in-laws as well!

[andy8002001]

Mandarin is definitely easier to learn - they have pinyin, which is basically spelling out the chinese words in terms of english letters, along with tone marks. Once you master the basic pronunciation for frequently recurring 'sets' of letters, it becomes very easy to pick up new words.

Cantonese - there is also a pinyin system, but it's not very commonly used. There are 6 major tones in Cantonese, compared to 4 more distinct tones in Mandarin. Much harder to learn and remember.

As has been pointed out here, mandarin is not useful for daily living in HK - cantonese is ten times more useful and will continue to be in the near future. But if you're planning on finding a job in HK, most employers look for mandarin skills now rather than cantonese skills.........so it depends whether you're after a job i guess

[JohanSWE]

Just like Cara i studied Mandarin before i came here.. and well i can just about rememher how to say..Im swedish.. and how are you :P
No regretts about changeing to cantonese either, and i havent had that much problem communicating outside HK, and i cant say i had any probelms using cantonese in Shenzen..everyone i spoken to has understood me...which in itself is a miracle if you count in the fact that my cantonese is horrible..almost as bad as my spelling :P
And Macau uses cantonese and so does areas around it, like Shun De and such even if their dialect is a bit different.

[esque]

Thanks everyone for the comments so far. I'm now leaning towards Cantonese again. While I think it would definitely be more broadly useful to know Mandarin, it seems Cantonese will be more helpful in daily life. And while it seems Mandarin would be easier to learn all things being equal, the fact that I'll be surrounded by Cantonese gives me a decent chance for practising.

[Vrindavan]

Learn Cantonese if you live in HK
and if your job does not require you to know Mandarin

[tealover]

I am a Chinese.
Mandarin is a must. Mandarin is the official language in China. Most of HK people are understand mandarin. Even the children in HK, they are compulsory to learn mandarin at school. In addition, learning Cantonese is more difficult than learning Mandarin. The phonetic and pronunciation are similar to English.

[maddogmerrick]

I disagree that Cantonese is a dying language. There are almost 70 million Cantonese speakers worldwide! Approximately the population of the U.K.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese_(linguistics)

Most Cantonese people do not like speaking in Mandarin and can not speak it.

There is a Chinese saying:

"Tian bu pa, di bu pa, zui pa guangdong ren shuo putonghua" (something like that)

which roughly translates as:

"Not scared of heaven, not scared of earth, most scared of Cantonese people speaking Mandarin"