 | Zan11 (0)
02/14/2007 | Cantonese has been going more out of use since Hong Kong's reunification with the mainland. Still, I'd have to say it's much more charming than Mandarin. Mandarin has too many "sh" sounds and is pretty irritating to listen to at times. Cantonese is much better sounding. And you gotta love that it's the language of martial arts films like "The Heroic Trio." Even though there are more tones than Mandarin (6 in fact while Mandarin has 4), it'd be nice to learn and know it, especially traveling in the Guangdong province where most of them speak the language.
(4 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | Moosekarloff (17)
06/26/2006 | Although the majority of Chinese in North America speak Cantonese, it's a passe language, as the newcomers to this continent are mostly Mandarin speakers. Most of the Chinese immigrants of the past 10 years, who have come to North America with education and money, have been Mandarin speakers. In time, this will be the prevalent Chinese dialect in North America, as it is the major one spoken in China. Mandarin is a language that is not terribly difficult in terms of grammar or pronounciation, but understanding of characters is daunting and the rising and fallen tones is difficult for native Western speakers.
(6 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | Enkidu (37)
04/17/2004 | Took a class in Chinese once (actually Mandarin, but it's not on this list and Cantonese is close enough to leave this item). Difficult for a lot of westerners because of the tones --actually that wasn't the hard part for me because I'm a musician and they were fairly easy for me to hear --but it was the vocabulary that was hard for me. I've forgotten almost all I learned though. You have to use languages or you lose them.
(3 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
