Chinese Language Now

13 Responses to “what’s the difference between CANTONESE and MANDARIN chinese in language?”

1. Eric V Says:
   October 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

   Chinese is a family of closely-related but mutually unintelligible languages. These languages are known variously as fāngyán (regional languages), dialects of Chinese or varieties of Chinese. In all over 1.2 billion people speak one or more varieties of Chinese.

   All varieties of Chinese belong to the Sino-Tibetan family of languages and each one has its own dialects and sub-dialects, which are more or less mutually intelligible.

   All varieties of Chinese are tonal. This means that each syllable can have a number of different meanings depending on the intonation with which it is pronounced. For example Mandarin has 4 tones, Cantonese has between 6 and 9 (it depends who you ask).

   Most people in China and Taiwan who don’t speak Mandarin as their first language, can speak or at least understand it a bit. However in Hong Kong and Macau few people speak Mandarin, so they tend to use English to communicate with people from other parts of China or Taiwan.

   Cantonese is spoken by about 66 million people in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces and Hainan island in China, and also in Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia and many other countries.

2. terror king 65 Says:
   October 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

   different sounds i guess

3. JustMe Says:
   October 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

   Probably the same as the difference between English and French in Canadian Language.

4. SF_Tom Says:
   October 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

   The tones of letter combinations are pronounced differently, to such an extent that the same word would have different meanings depending on how it is pronounced in Mandarin and how it is pronounced in Cantonese.

5. Jedimaster Says:
   October 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

   hot peppers and oranges…

6. dyeers_128 Says:
   October 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

   As a CANTONESE speaker, i will clearly state that the two are simply different because of the tones in which we say those words. Also, some words are different from another and maybe even word choice for when we make a sentence may be different. Overall, they are two seperate languages even though they are both chinese…

   For the chinese language, tone means everything… different tones make different words…

7. vaane Says:
   October 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

   about the same as the difference between Russian and Spanish.
   Besides a couple of characters, they have absolutely nothing in common.

8. rainydaydreamr Says:
   October 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

   i am not certain, but I think that Mandarin is supposed to be the more cultured dialect of chinese, but i wouldn’t tell a cantonese speaking person that. good question. it seems like i read somewhere that that was the dialect spoken by upper classes or royalty…somebody verify this?

9. cocoateaflower Says:
   October 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

   I KNOW the answer.
   I speak both. first of all, they are both sub-languages of chinese.
   Mandarin is more common though. But techniqually, they’re too seperate languages. They both use simalir traits but are different.
   It’s like italian and spanish. Simalir, but different.

   sai chae!! {Goodbye in MANDARIN}

10. norman7774 Says:
    October 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    First of all.. they both are dialects:The term "dialect" can be misleading. Generally, the idea of dialects differs from that of related languages in that dialects of the same language are mutually intelligible while separate languages are not. Chinese dialects are an exception. Part of the reason Chinese languages are referred to as dialects is that they share a common written language. Another reason is that there exists a continuum of intelligibility within Chinese: some dialects are more closely related than others

    Mandarin is clearly the most influential Chinese dialect and Cantonese is arguably the second most influential. They are also dialects on opposite sides of the Chinese language spectrum. While some speakers of Cantonese who have grown up in close contact with Mandarin speakers often learn to understand spoken Mandarin and vice versa, many others do not develop this ability and those who do not have the advantage of hearing the other language on a regular basis generally understand nothing of the other dialect. Those cases where speakers of one dialect comprehend the other can easily be understood as second language acquisition

    There are so many more differences and it would take a book to explain. Oh yes, one other point. Mandarin is considered the dialect of the more elite (though not necessarily true), Cantonese (which I speak some) is common to southern China… Taiwan… Hong Kong.

11. kool2bkid Says:
    October 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    The tone, the gramma, the vocabulary and the way to express it. Cantonese have more pitch and closer to the ancient Chinese and tend to be more spiky sounded. Kind of like American English and British English just more differences.

12. ticoguana Says:
    October 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    mandarin has 4 tones to speak,cantonese has like 8 or 10 tones,mandarin is the gov. official language,cantonese is more of farm with the exception of hong kong.

13. littleturtleboy Says:
    October 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    Cantonese and Mandarin are dialects of Chinese. The main difference between the two is in the way certain sounds are pronounced. There are also a couple of sounds that are in Mandarin that are not in Cantonese.

    The written language of Chinese is the same regardless of the specific dialect. However, depending on the geographic location, there are different dialects. For example, Shanghainese would sound somewhat different than Cantonese or Fujianese or Taiwanese or Mandarin. Cantonese, Fujianese and Taiwanese may sound closer to each other due to there geographical proximity to each other. However, they can all read and write the same characters in Chinese assuming they are literate.

    You can think of it sort of like how someone in Brooklyn sounds different than someone from Boston or Texas or even England. The difference between this and the Chinese dialects though is that while English is a phonetic/alphabet-based system, Chinese is a character based system.

    Mandarin is also the official dialect of China (or the two China’s depending on your political views – ie, People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China which is also known as Taiwan). It is the one that is officially taught in schools.