trevelyan on October 21, 2011 | reply

Why not try both and see which one you prefer?

If you have to choose I think mandarin will get you further career-wise at this point, simply because it opens up the job market for companies that are doing heavy business with the mainland, and you're more likely to run into mandarin speakers doing business in other parts of Asia than Cantonese speakers. Admittedly, many of the companies that do business with China in Hong Kong are import/export based businesses now and can't necessarily pay a lot outside sales, but the service sector is growing and that's where people really need bilingual help.

That said, knowing Cantonese makes life in Hong Kong a lot easier, and once you know ONE dialect it isn't too difficult to pick up the other. And you can always try to learn cantonese from our sister product Popup Cantonese to pick up the basics and see how it goes.

sue.kisiel on October 25, 2011 | reply

I like the idea of learning Cantonese, as it's most pertinent to my current work, and trying to switch latter.

I've never been good at languages, though. I started out just trying to learn please and thank you in Cantonese, but am having fun with it and thought if I were to continue, I should get startegic about it.

I guess I need to check out both and try to get a feel for how different they are to see if it feels like I could make a switch latter.

Xiao Hu on October 27, 2011 | reply

@sue.kisiel,

I would advise, if you're living and working in Hong Kong, to learn Cantonese with all deliberate speed. You'll find lots of doors will open up to you when you can speak the local language, and, I can attest from personal experience, that most local Hong Kongers can't speak very good Mandarin Chinese.

I went down there on holiday and began every conversation with Mandarin and got back mainly English replies. I went into a shop and began speaking Mandarin, the shopowner was doing his best to try and speak with me in broken Mandarin, after a minute or two he asked which country I was from, I replied the US. He then blurted out in English, "I thought you were from a non-English speaking country! Why don't you just speak English? My Enlish is SO much better than my Mandarin."

Now, whenever I travel to HK, I don't even bother with Mandarin.

Besides, learning things that are related to your needs is one of the best ways to stay motivated.

sue.kisiel on October 27, 2011 | reply

Xiao,

Thank you for your thoughts on this. You're entirely right about the motivation. I'm nervous about first trips and they're to Cantonese areas. This will be a huge motivator to learn as much as I can over the next couple of months. Learning to speak Mandorin would be nice, but it won't be as urgent and so might not happen.

Cantonese it is!

Thanks again, I really appreciate your input and am very excited to get going!

Sue

brocon007 on October 27, 2011 | reply

I would say study both too! I am doing the very same thing and can say that there are many similarities and yet at the same time a lot of differences。 加油！