Which Chinese ?

delanest

Hi

I wish to learn chinese as a second language.

Which type should I learn? How many types are there. I would wish to use the one that has the highest number of people speaking and which would be used comercially.

Which type for example is the legislation written in? sign posts etc?

Finally since there seems to be a large chinese community now living here in Ireland, does anybody know which type the majority of these people speek?

Thanks

DAEDULUS

well the 2 main languages are mandrin and cantonese

grimsbymatt

All written Chinese is the same, it's the pronunciation that is different from region to region. The official national language is Mandarin, which is pretty much universally spoken around China (I believe the first language in Hong Kong, however, is Cantonese - though they will still speak Mandarin there). HTH.

grimsbymatt

In response to your final point, when I was a student in Bradford, where there was a large Chinese community, they mostly spoke Cantonese as their first language, but were all able to speak Mandarin also.

WUSBDesign

For commercial purposes, use Mandarin. If you are able to speak Cantonese, use it in a chinese restaurant.

BigEejit

Many mandarin speakers have some difficulty understanding cantonese speakers (not a great deal, but some) ... a mandarin speaker will find it quite hard to understand a foreigner speaking cantonese ....

Cantonese speakers dont seem to have much trouble with mandarin in my experience ...

Rule of thumb .... most cantonese speakers are from Hong Kong

Oh and make bloody sure you remember that Peoples Republic of China is China ..... the Republic of China is Taiwan .... DO NOT mix that up ... hehehe

Pighead

Theres only one answer to this question and thats Wong’s Chinese Restaurant, The Crescent, Monkstown, Co. Dublin. Tel +353 1 2301212. Quite simply the finest Chinese restaurant in Dublin, serving fantastic, authentic cuisine with superb service.
Below is the renowned dish that goes by the name deaddoggy a la mandarin.Pighead highly recommends this succulent delight
http://www.destroy-all-monsters.com/images/deaddooggy.jpg

BigEejit

I've eaten dog in China (mischevous future wife ordered it) ... very fine dark meat ... dunno what it tasted like, it was smothered in garlic

kasintahan

grimsbymatt wrote:

All written Chinese is the same, it's the pronunciation that is different from region to region. The official national language is Mandarin, which is pretty much universally spoken around China (I believe the first language in Hong Kong, however, is Cantonese - though they will still speak Mandarin there). HTH.

All Chinese is not written the same. The two main types would be Simplified Chinese used by Beijing and most of the country except where they use Traditional Chinese. Simplified Chinese was to be abandoned in favour of the Romanised Pinyin system but they scrapped that idea after the revolution.

Mandarin is spoken in most of the mainland but not in the west (Tibet) or south (Hong Kong, Guangzhou) or in the Uighur regions.
They really do not speak Mandarin much in Hong Kong unless it's in communication with Beijing, English is a first language though.

Learn Mandarin. While most Chinese here (up to recently) have been Cantonese it is mainland Mandarin speaking China that has the 1.x billion people.

mad m

BigEejit wrote:

I've eaten dog in China (mischevous future wife ordered it) ... very fine dark meat ... dunno what it tasted like, it was smothered in garlic

Eeeeew,you ate garlic!...

Mimikyu

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corkqq

Take a look at this site: http://www.localizationch.com/
There will be Chinese free lessons uploaded onto it soon.

tman

Solitaryman666 wrote:

This post has been deleted.

that's some delicious irony right there:p