It depends on what you are planning to do with your language after you've learned it. If you plan to do business in China or with a Chinese-speaking company, then Mandarin is definitely the way to go. If, however, you plan to settle in Hong Kong, then it would be worth it to pick up Cantonese.
With 1,299 million speakers, Mandarin claims the top spot as the world's most common language — and one that often requires professional translation services. One of the five major dialects of Chinese, Mandarin is the official language of China and Taiwan, as well as one of the four official dialects of Singapore.
The varieties are typically classified into several groups: Mandarin, Wu, Min, Xiang, Gan, Hakka and Yue, though some varieties remain unclassified. These groups are neither clades nor individual languages defined by mutual intelligibility, but reflect common phonological developments from Middle Chinese.
Cantonese is seen to be more difficult because it has from 6 to 9 tones, each of which signify different things (while Mandarin only has 4 tones). In addition, because of its greater prevalence, it is easier to find Mandarin study materials than Cantonese study materials.
If you decide it makes sense to learn both Mandarin and Cantonese, most people recommend learning Mandarin first before conquering another Chinese dialect. It's interesting that both dialects use pretty much the same characters for writing though. This is because the characters share the same roots.
With 66 million speakers, Cantonese cannot be considered an impractical language to learn. If your main objective, however, is to do business or travel in Mainland China, you would be better off learning Mandarin.
Mandarin is the lingua franca and the sole official language of China, so if you plan on doing business in China or traveling around the country, Mandarin is the language to learn.
Despite both being tonal languages, they are not mutually intelligible. This means that while Cantonese speakers would be able to decipher Mandarin writing, they would not be able to understand the spoken language, and vice versa.
Given its long history and the isolation of the region in which it is spoken, Wenzhounese is so unusual in its phonology that it has the reputation of being the least comprehensible dialect for an average Mandarin speaker.
But it's always good to equip yourself with some of these greetings: Hello – Nei hou (你好) Thank you – Mm goy / Doh jeh (唔該/ 多謝)
Mandarin is considered somewhat easier to learn since it has fewer tones, and is also the most widely spoken. But both have their benefits and are widely-spoken global languages.
Due to the linguistic history of Hong Kong and Macau, and the use of Cantonese in many established overseas Chinese communities, the use of Cantonese is quite widespread compared to the presence of its speakers residing in China. Cantonese is the predominant Chinese variety spoken in Hong Kong and Macau.
As we know, you should answer "bu keqi 不客气" (you're welcome) when someone said "xiè xie" to you. However, many Chinese answered "bu yong xie" instead. "bu yong xie" means "you don't need to say thank you to me".
It is a great bridging language to learn Asian languages from. Cantonese has much more in common with Asian languages compared to Mandarin. This is because it retains many antiquated pronunciations and words from earlier Chinese, from which many Asian languages developed.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
According to the government's 2021 population census, Cantonese remains the dominant spoken language in Hong Kong, with 88.2% of residents age 5 and over speaking it at home. But the percentage of people who are capable of speaking Mandarin has surged, going from 25% in 1996 to 54.2% in 2021.
With 81.8 million speakers, Wu is the second most widely spoken dialect of Chinese after Mandarin.
The two best-known and most-spoken variants of Chinese are Mandarin and Cantonese. These two languages are not mutually intelligible, so they cannot be called dialects. They have a significant number of differences in both their written and spoken forms, including: Number of tones: Chinese dialects are tonal languages.
Some believe that they are a Mandarin dialect group that assimilated to local Chinese variants in southern China. Junhua began as a lingua franca in the army, being spoken between soldiers dispatched to various parts of China during the Ming dynasty.
Whether you're looking for a new academic pursuit, new career skills or a new perspective on life, learning Mandarin Chinese is one of the absolute best investments you can make with your free time.
It's a good idea to get children aged 14 or 15 interested in learning Chinese as a foreign language. As we said, they can learn about Chinese language and culture which has many benefits for children of this age as: They can gain an interest in foreign languages for work and in daily life.