Do most people at chinese restaurants speak cantonese mostly?

[Sydney Matt]

Ah, makes sense. I was thinking along the lines of it being a simple choice between sprinkling some msg on the dish or not. Anyway, sorry for going a bit off topic.

[Garethw87]

Yes, most people outside of China in Chinatowns speak Cantonese. These threads ALWAYS turn into Mandarin v Canto arguments, no matter what website you are on, and it's pointless.

 

Read the history of which Chinese people left China to go work overseas and set up the original Chinatowns. As mentioned most of them actually speak their own local languages but when they speak with each other (who are probably from another town with another language) they use Cantonese.

 

I am in England but 95% of Chinatowns are Cantonese, with Vietnamese adding to a lot of them these days, as well as some Koreans and Thais too. The majority of Mandarin speakers in the UK are students, who obviously will speak Mandarin in Chinatown because they are here for a short period of time so why bother learning a new language just to go to the restaurant. There is a person I know who can' get a job in Chinatown because she is a Mandarin speaker and thus can't communicate with the majority of guests who live here.

 

As for saying most younger Chinese will learn Mandarin - not always true either. If a Canto family living abroad has a family the majority of the time they will speak Canto to the baby, then let him/her learn English/whatever countries language at school.

 

I know the USA might be a little different but a quick read on Wiki will tell you where the Chinese people in Chinatowns come from. Mandarin is useful in Taiwan and mainland China - for sure - not usually in Chinatowns if you already know Cantonese. Plus we all know the best movies are old Hong Kong ones!

 

There are people here in England that have lived here for 30 years or more and never learnt English or Mandarin and only speak in Cantonese! 

[liuzhou]

 

Yes, most people outside of China in Chinatowns speak Cantonese.

 

A situation which is rapidly changing, if it hasn't already. The last time I was in London (six years ago) , many restaurant staff spoke 普通话 rather than Cantonese. I could hear them chatting amongst themselves.

 

 

There are people here in England that have lived here for 30 years or more and never learnt English or Mandarin and only speak in Cantonese!

 

But they are, by their very definition, of an older generation.  The new generation and new immigrants are 普通话 or other non-Cantonese speakers.

The Times They are A'Changin'.

[Lu]

In the Chinese restaurants in Holland that cater to Dutch people, the owners usually speak Wenzhounese or Cantonese and the waitstaff Dutch (and perhaps some Wenzhounese/Cantonese). In the restaurants that cater to Chinese people, the managers usually speak at least some Mandarin even if they prefer Cantonese, and very often the waitstaff speaks native Mandarin. Keep in mind that Mandarin has been the lingua franca in China for decades now, pretty much everyone who immigrated from the mainland in the last 50 years or so speaks it.

[DongLian]

I would say it's a good mix, as someone who has actually worked at 2 different chinese owned and operated restaurants.

 

The owners were always Cantonese or Taiwanese, but the employees were mostly newer immigrants and thus spoke Mandarin.. Immigrants who've come awhile ago or 2nd or 3rd gen Chinese tend to be Cantonese speaking only.

 

I've noticed 9/10 times that people at the places I worked knew Mandarin.. actually only 1 person of all the people didn't but he knew English and he was the boss.. like a rich Hong Kong kid (he is my age roughly, 24-27 years old).

 

All the shifus (chefs) were from Sichuan, Beijing, or Shanghai regions usually.  Some other people like the old a yis (aunties) or sous chefs were from other regions like Dalian or Kunming.  Never canton region.. I think if someone is from Hong Kong, they're rich enough to not be a sous chef but rather own the restaurant.  Gross generalization but Hong Kong isn't a cheap place.

[Takeshi]

You could always learn both. XD

 

See, thing is. While all the Mandarin supporters in this thread are somewhat right in that there are probably a total higher amount of people who are communicative in Mandarin over Cantonese, even if there are actually more Cantonese people in your community. (It really depends on the community though, but if it's anything like the GTA, you'd have slightly more Cantonese people than Mandarin speakers, but both groups would be fairly large.)

 

However, the catch is, if you have a Chinese face and you are obviously a northerner, you can probably get away with speaking to everyone in Mandarin. Overseas communities are not mainland China, not everyone is forced to learn Mandarin and not everyone will be able to speak it, but most should be able to try, and if they have got an old northerner lady who obviously only speaks Mandarin, they will still want business from her as a customer. But these people would all still much prefer speaking English over Mandarin, so if you have a non-Chinese face and you try to speak to them in Mandarin, it will either be awkward and annoying, or they may humour you simply for the amusement of speaking to a non-Chinese person in Mandarin. (Of course there is again the odd chance you bump into a comfortable trilingual.) If you speak to them in Cantonese however, there would be no problem because that is their preferred language (along with English). I personally don't feel comfortable trying to speak Mandarin in such a situation because I find it strange.

 

As for the Mandarin speaker/northerner restaurants, yea, you probably have to speak Mandarin as these people would not usually be able to speak Cantonese. But you never know, depending on the community, even in some northerner restaurants, some of the staff/waiters might be trilingual. If you prefer speaking Cantonese and you think there is a chance there are trilingual waiters in a northerner restaurant (like, it depends on the environment/demographics of the restaurant, the best rule is to use your brain), it's okay to test the waters and see if the waiter can speak Cantonese or not; if they can't, or it's clear they aren't comfortable in it, just switch to Mandarin.

Because of the complicated dynamics between Cantonese and Mandarin, I find that Cantonese speakers will be more likely to be annoyed if you use the wrong language on them, while Mandarin speakers really don't care. So I generally default to Cantonese (unless it obviously isn't a Cantonese place) and switch to Mandarin if needed. If you start off in Cantonese, Mandarin speakers will also often assume you can probably speak Mandarin, but if you start off in Mandarin, Cantonese speakers will often assume you probably can't speak Cantonese, and may be offended because they think you think you're speaking to them in their language but you actually aren't etcetc.

[ParkeNYU]

North American Chinese communities began with Taishanese in the mid-nineteenth century during the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, evolved into Cantonese following the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act during WWII, shifted again to Fuzhounese (and other Min varieties) after the mainland economic reforms of the 1980s, and is currently advancing to Mandarin following the democratisation of Taiwan ROC in the 1990s and the recent influx of wealthy (mostly northern) mainland university students.

 

Although my little history lesson is highly condensed, the moral of the story is that Mandarin inevitably and necessarily became the lingua franca amidst this estranged hodgepodge of Chinese tongues.

 

In short, my advice is to learn Mandarin primarily and Cantonese secondarily. There's a dearth of Min learning materials in English, and a glut of mutually unintelligible varieties thereof. Taishanese is a member of the Yue language group–like Cantonese–but is rapidly falling into disuse.

[hedwards]

@Skylee, or perhaps they could just make the sauce out of things that aren't poisonous.

But yes, that is correct, substitutions and removals require the chef to do a lot more work, just because there isn't a set of habits around how to make the dish differently.

[geraldc]

The thing is, there is no scientific evidence that MSG is bad for you. People quite happily eat it in Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese and Western food with no reaction. It's only in Chinese food that they claim to notice it.

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23851-what-if-your-gluten-intolerance-is-all-in-your-head.html?full=true#.VHETa1V1-uZ

[hedwards]

Geraldc, that's not how that works, the burden of proof is on the people claiming that MSG, a substance that's not naturally found in such concentrations, isn't dangerous in those concentrations. MSG does naturally occur, but never at the concentrations that make people sick.

And no, it's not just Chinese food where people claim that, in fact I hadn't heard anybody say that about Chinese food until many years after I'd heard people talking about the MSG content of various pot noodles and other foods.

 

As far as your article goes, that is incredibly dangerous to go screwing around with people's food like that. People do that with peanut allergies and the resulting allergic reaction can be fatal. In the case of MSG, the results aren't typically that severe, but it's extremely dangerous to screw around with people's food in that manner.

Beyond that, it's hardly a scientific study if it's being done outside of a double-blind research study. 

 

As far as poison goes, we can tolerate a certain amount of poison before it overwhelms the body. How much will depend upon the individual and the substance, but even highly toxic metals like mercury can exist in the body for many years without anybody noticing that they've got mercury poison. Same goes for MSG, in this case, because of the lack of scientific rigor, you can't conclude that nobody was made sick by it.

[Demonic_Duck]

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2005/jul/10/foodanddrink.features3

 

^ Interesting and balanced article on the evidence for and against MSG (spoiler: the evidence against it is rather sparse).

 

As for "screwing around with" food, when the product in question has been proven beyond reasonable doubt not to have any major ill effects (and is being eaten by everyone else in the restaurant without a fuss), that's putting it a little strongly.

 

I tend to think of "MSG is bad for you" as one western equivalent of "xyz food will make you 上火" type claims.

[hedwards]

Demonic_Duck, there's a reason why the evidence is rather sparse. For the same reason that the evidence in favor of it is rather sparse. Nobody can legally conduct the sort of research necessary to come to a definitive answer. You could say the same sorts of things about wheat and dairy products. I know I consumed them for many years blissfully unaware of the fact that they were making me sick. Back during the '70s it was really popular to suggest a low fat, low cholesterol diet for health even though the only evidence available suggested that it caused more harm than good.

 

At best you get short term observational studies which have so many possible variations in the results that you have to have an extremely large deviation from the expected values in order to say anything. And even then it tends to be rather difficult to pin the results on any one factor.

 

The point I'm making here, is that regardless of what you believe, people have the right to decide what's going into their body. What happens if there is something that was missed and somebody really does get sick? If you've only consumed a small amount of MSG you're probably not going to notice a difference, but what if you've already built up a substantial amount in the system?

 

Unfortunately, because MSG is so often associated with other unhealthy ingredients it's really hard to say that it's the MSG or it's not the MSG, but the burden of proof has always been on the people wanting to introduce new foodstuffs into the system. Especially in cases where there are substantially larger amounts than would normally be found or where it's lacking the usual dietary components that accompany them.

 

My best guess here is that the reason why so many Asians can handle the extra MSG is because of what the rest of their diet looks like and the fact that they tend to be less obese than their western counterparts. They've also had more time to get accustomed to it being in their diet as well.

 

EDIT: By the way, if you have any mercury fillings I recommend asking your dentist if they're safe. Chances are good that your dentist will lie about it and claim that there's no health risk even though mercury does offgas and it's one of the most toxic substances that people are exposed to. But, organizations like the ADA claim that it's safe when in the mouth, even if it does have to be treated like toxic waste when being placed or removed.

[Johnny20270]

 China town is central London is almost 50 / 50 now Cantonese / Mandarin, whereas is used to be almost exclusively Cantonese. I know this first hand as my long time ex was the main wine supplier for the area. A rift was causing between the two groups!

 

Also, countries like UK would have very few new exclusively Chinese (Cantonese or Mandarin) speakers due to emigration requirements, apart from older generation like already noted. You get people coming on business though. 

 

Another issue might be worth noting is that Chinese language towards dishes seem to be a separate specialization and some names seem meaning less or overly flamboyant (to me anyway)