Chinese is one of the most spoken languages in the world with 1.2 billion native speakers. It is also one of the most preferred languages to learn.
The reason behind its popularity lies in the fact that China is connected to the world due to its business ventures.
In this post, we shall talk about China’s two popular dialects — Mandarin and Cantonese.
Mandarin and Cantonese are two popular Chinese languages but a person speaking Mandarin will not be able to understand Cantonese, nor will a Cantonese speaker understand Mandarin.
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The two can only understand each other through written words.
This post will shed light on their origin, differences, grammar, pronunciation, and more.
Without any further ado, let’s get started:
Mandarin And Cantonese
Mandarin and Cantonese have many differences, however, both have been gaining popularity worldwide with tons of people taking Chinese courses to get an inside view of the nation and its culture.
Mandarin
Mandarin is one of the official languages of the United Nations, and also of Mainland China and Taiwan.
It is also used in schools, films, newspapers, and music.
For the unversed, Mandarin uses logographic characters where each character represents a word.
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It has four tones with 23 initials. Mandarin Chinese also has regional dialects like the Wu, Cantonese, and Min.
The official state language of China is widely spoken in Mainland China, Beijing, Shanghai Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Xinjiang, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and more.
Cantonese
Cantonese is the second most spoken language in China and has six tones sometimes nine tones per sound.
They use traditional characters and also incorporate English and other language loanwords.
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It is Yue Chinese and primarily used in the Guangdong province including Guangzhou, Guangxi, and Southern China.
It was the primary language of Hong Kong earlier and was also spoken in Macau.
The Chinese communities living in Australia, Europe, and North America, use Cantonese as their primary language.
Main Differences Between Mandarin & Cantonese
Pronunciation
Mandarin and Cantonese use tonal language but do not sound the same.
Mandarin uses four tones to differentiate words on the other hand Cantonese uses six and sometimes nine tones.
Notably, Tonal language is a word with different meanings based on its pronunciations. Out of 9 tones, 6 are known as open syllables while 3 are known as checked syllables.
It is difficult for a person who speaks Mandarin to easily understand what a Cantonese speaker saying.
But will understand it if it is in the written form.
The Characters
The characters used for Mandarin and Cantonese are similar. Mandarin uses simple characters, while Cantonese uses traditional characters.
Therefore, it is easy for a person who has learned traditional characters to read simplified characters, but it is not easy for those who use simplified characters to understand traditional characters.
Eg: The capital of Guangdong Province – Guangzhou, is written in Mandarin as 广州 and in Cantonese as 廣州.
The Romanization Systems
Mandarin uses the Pinyin romanization system for its words. Pinyin is usually a Chinese word that is spelled in English for easy translations.
Eg: 我喜歡學中文 (wǒ xǐ huān xué zhōng wén) — I like studying Chinese, here (wǒ xǐ huān xué zhōng wén) is the Pinyin.
Jyutping
Cantonese has a romanization system called Jyutping a system of marks and numbers.
There are three types of Jyutping:
Yale Jyutping — Most common and uses glyph to mark tones. – 你叫做乜野名呀？(néih giu jouh mātyéh méng a?) — What’s your name?
Sidney Lau Jyutping — It uses numbers. (eg. neih2 hou2) 你叫做乜野名呀？(neih2 giu jouh ma1tyeh2 meng2 a?) — What’s your name?
LSHK Jyutping — This is similar to Sidney Lau.
Vocabulary
Mandarin and Cantonese words are written with the same characters which is why Mandarin speakers can understand what is written in Cantonese and it is the same for Cantonese speakers.
Grammar
The grammar of Mandarin and Cantonese is similar.
Basic Mandarin sentence structure:
Subject + Verb + Object (SVO structure)
Basic Cantonese sentence structure:
Subject + Verb + Object (SVO structure)
However, there are some differences between the two. In Mandarin, adverbs are usually placed before the verb (Subject, adverb, verb (SAV) formation).
The indirect object is placed before the direct object in Mandarin (Subject, verb, indirect object, and then direct object).
Whereas in Cantonese the adverb is placed after the verb (Subject, verb, adverb – SVA) formation, and the direct object is placed before the indirect object (Subject, verb, direct object, and then indirect object).
Conclusion
Chinese language is tough to master and to decide between Mandarin or Cantonese depends on your personal choice and criteria for learning the language.
For those who are doing business in mainland China, Mandarin is the language for you.
Those who are doing business in Hong Kong or Macau then learning Cantonese will be the best for you.
