Movie:Three (mandarin x cantonese)

[cintiaghimel]

I just watched this movie entitled "Three". It's a collection of three stories about life after death superstition and how differently the asian culture deal with it. The first story was korean, the second one thai (really nice one although the production was not very good), and the third one was chinese. It didn't mention which part of China it was, but probably Hong Kong. The funny fact is that I could understand what one of the characters said, but not the other one...Is it because there are similar words in mandarin and cantonese? I would like some enlightment please.

[simonlaing]

Hi there are similarities between Mandarin and Cantonese,

that is why people usually call cantonese a dialect rather than a language. (It also has the same writing system.) Also about Cantonese is that the Cantonese in Guangdonng (Canton) is somewhat different from the Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong, which can also be somewhat differrent from overseas Cantonese speakers in the US and Malaysia etc...

I find that listening for the verbs you can often pick up the meanings of Cantonese from time to time. Though I would advise seriously studying by itself aswell to learn it properly.

Have fun,

Simon:)