Hong Kong

[Guest mark]

Apologies if this has been addressed before, but to what extent do people in HK understand Mandarin? My guess would be young people understand and speak it quite well, but less so for older folks. How about in Guangdong? (I am just starting to learn Mandarin, but may be visiting HK and Guandong next April and was wondering what chance I am going to have to "get my feet wet" in Mandarin.)

Thanks.

-- Mark

[Guest Anonymous]

I have personally never been to Hong Kong but I've visited Hong Kong's neighbor city Shenzhen and Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province. I got around perfectly fine in both Shenzhen and Guangzhou. However, most locals, generally older folks, prefer to speak Cantonese to each other because they feel more comfortable. But if you approach them with Mandarin, they will respond in Mandarin. Although everyone I encountered were friendly, but when I threw out a few Cantonese words and phrases that I knew, they were especially friendly to me :-)

[Tsunku]

Same experience as Kulong in Shenzhen as well as HK. Older people might not speak Mandarin as fluently, but they can get by with it for the most pary, and as for younger people, they are taught it in schools and grow up basically bilingual.

[smithsgj]

In mainland China education is in in Mandarin, but I don't think in HK. What's your info, Tsunku? Is Mandarin taught as a subject rather than a medium of education? The medium used to often be English, I think, but I'm sure that's changed now.

My experience in HK is that in touristy places people speak English; cab drivers and people out in the sticks are better at Mandarin. Of course the touristy people may know good Mandarin, but wouldn't expect to speak it to me because I'm white.

If all else fails, you can get some mileage out of writing things down.

To be honest, I doubt that a newcomer to Mandarin would have much opportunity to practise it in HK, if that's what Mark's thinking. It would be like going to Spain to practise your beginner's Italian!

[Tsunku]

One of my friends went to school in HK, although it was probably about 7 or 8 years ago (this is the same guy who went to school with Edison Chen the pop star ), and they were taught in English and required to learn Mandarin as a second language. I guess it depends who you're going to be associating with. These were wealthy HKers who sent their kids to private schools.

I believe that nowadays public schools teach students in Mandarin, although I'm not positive. I know Mandarin is still taught as a second language in the English speaking schools. I'd assume that the better educated HK people can get by in Mandarin.

I was mainly referring to Shenzhen in my post though. SZ is a pretty good mix of Cantonese and Mandarin, but Mandarin is definitly taught in schools there.

[skylee]

More and more people in Hong Kong understand Mandarin, especially those in the service industry (shop keepers etc) as they need to earn the money of the big spenders from the Mainland. They don't necessarily speak it well though. Usually they speak it with a very obvious Cantonese accent and I always wonder how the Mainlanders can manage to understand them.

Putonghua/Mandarin is one of the subjects taught in schools in HK. Only a few schools (yeah some are international schools for weathy kids) use it as the teaching language.

If you can't make youself understood in Mandarin, remember writing is the proven way of communication among Chinese people speaking different dialects.

[pazu]

My German friend came to Hong Kong last week, i talked to him in English although he could speak Mandarin, not very well though.

But then my uncle talked to him in Mandarin, my uncle could understand 100% of my friend's talking, but not the vice versa, it was more difficult for a non-native Mandarin speaker to understand the funny accents in Hong Kong, just admit this, many people in Hong Kong speak Mandarin with a funny accent.

I once heard a strange phrase like this, guess what it is:

"ni bu yao BANG YE a!"

(你不要扮野啊!)

Can you believe it?

[Quest]

To Pazu:

all mandarin people speak cantonese with a funny accent. can u believe it?

[Guest Anonymous]

all mandarin people speak cantonese with a funny accent.

I know I do

[skylee]

Oh but Cantonese is relatively difficult to learn. I doubt if I can clearly distinguish the nine tones myself. Non-native speakers would find words with -t, -k, -p endings difficult to pronounce. And there is not an effective system like Hanyu Pinyin to help the learning.

And the world will be less fun if nobody speaks with a funny accent.

[pazu]

To Pazu:

all mandarin people speak cantonese with a funny accent. can u believe it?

I believe it, but you're not very true. At least some of my Mandarin-speaking friends speak perfect Cantonese, and I was indeed quite surprised that they learnt it as a second language! (but they came to Hong Kong at around 10 - 15 years old, maybe it makes a difference??)

Anyway, I think I won't be surprised if Mandarin-speaking ppl can't speak perfect Cantonese, but it's not the same for Hong Kong ppl. Well, of course I can understand the strange twist of the sounds/tones, but how can a Hong Kong guy make up a strange sentence like what I quoted before?

I didn't need to learn spoken Mandarin when I was in school (okay, I'm a native HKer), but I have to learn written Mandarin Chinese, so it's really strange if you make a sentence peppered with so much Cantonese slangs, which aren't permitted in the school tests and public examination. I know it may take some times to change a written form of a language to a spoken form, but at least there're some guidelines for HKers to speak Mandarin.

Oh, probably that's why many HKers just twist their tongues and THINK they speak Mandarin!

[Quest]

but how can a Hong Kong guy make up a strange sentence like what I quoted before?

why not? written cantonese are all "make up" words from mandarin, why can it be that way and not the other way around? it's strange for us to read/write what we do not say, too.

[Quest]

skylee, cantonese really has 6 major tones, the other 3 need a linguist to distinguish! the 6 tones are 私，史，试，时，市，事

[Quest]

i think some people stress the other 3 minor tones more than the others. so some people speak cantonese with a "special" style but are still considered perfect cantonese. When I listened to my childhood recordings(i was reading poems), I found out I stressed the other 3 tones (presumably since I can't seem to find out what's different but it was different) a lot more than I do now, or maybe it was due to the poem reading style that I was trying to imitate, so it was kinda funny hehe,

but i could be wrong.

[skylee]

No Quest. The other three tones are "入聲", which ends with "-t", "-p" or "-k" and does not exist in Mandarin and many other dialects. They are very very common in Cantonese.

To quote your example -

詩(高平)，史(高上)，試(高去)，時(低平)，市(低上)，事(低去)，x(高入)，屑(中入)，蝕(低入)

My dictionary has several good examples to illustrate the 9 tones. Here are two -

天總再時老內竹尺雜

風統次常母地屋索木

Read these words in Cantonese and you know how the 9 tones sound.

[Quest]

yea i would have to agree with you. I've been to sites that told me about the 6 tones, and they said the existence of the other three would depend on how you categorize the tones. I haven't done any analysis myself, so i wasn't really sure and i said i could be wrong. but from your example i can tell where the other three come from now haha, they kinda start out from one of the other six tones and then end slightly different, I agree that the t p k endings prevented them from taking the previous tones like you said.

so i think i mixed up the poem reading "style" with the tonal differences

[pazu]

but how can a Hong Kong guy make up a strange sentence (PS: I meant when he spoke Mandarin) like what I quoted before?

why not? written cantonese are all "make up" words from mandarin, why can it be that way and not the other way around? it's strange for us to read/write what we do not say, too.

Cantonese is indeed an older form of Chinese and has a longer history than Mandarin. So it doesn't make any sense to say that ALL written Cantonese made up words from Mandarin.

For example, 飲 (yin3) is an old word for "drinking" in Mandarin and exist only in slangs/idioms/poems/ancient proses, while it's still in use in Cantonese.

Besides, Cantonese has invented their own vocabularies, which aren't understood by people who couldn't speak this language. 靚 (beautiful) in Mandarin is actually an import from Cantonese, and this is a rare example; while the example I quoted before (扮o野), is another Cantonese-invention. which most non-Cantonese won't understand. And then how about the following examples?

我點知咁Q多, 你問o下你條女啦! (how on earth can I know about it, you go and ask your girlfriend!)

okay, then are you going to say, you'll say something like this in Mandarin and still hope a Beijing guy get your meaning?

Wo dian zhi "gan" Q duo, ni wen xia ni tiao nu la!

Nobody can understand, even for a Cantonese-speaker!

I understand what you meant, even Bai Xianyong (白先勇) said he wanted to see some novels written in Cantonese in the future, and indeed I wrote a lot using the Cantonese Chinese myself, but it doesn't mean the same for a spoken language. (by the way, I was always talking about the spoken form of Mandarin in this thread, while I think you mis-quoted some of my words and mis-understood what I wanted to say.)

[pazu]

skylee, there's another example of Cantonese tones.

三碗細牛腩麵 (the first 6 tones)

and 執隻襪 (the last 3 tones)

It's easy to remember. hahah.

[skylee]

Pazu, I like your examples.

I personally dislike things written in Cantonese (unless it is written in such a way to reflect how people actually talk), especially when it is mixed up unintentionally with the standard written language (I don't know what the standard is but it is what I was taught at school when I was young).

Some writers use a style called "三及弟" by mixing in Cantonese to create a comic effect. This is OK with me. But the instruction on buses "請勿企近車門" is not OK. I would think that it is more correct in present-day written Chinese to replace "企" with "站" (I do know that "企" is an older way of saying "站", same as "飲" and "食" as verbs are older ways of saying "喝" and "吃").

[Guest Yang Guizi]

I always thought that cantonese were fairly proficient with mandarin until a mainland chinese girl joined a class of mine previously only with hk girls. It's funny to watch her correcting the other's mandarin, and them writing things down to communicate—i was only surprised when she held up five fingers and said "wu?"

Also, the cantonese at my school all take mandarin classes

"天不怕，地不怕，只怕广东人说普通话！"