Mandarin now pushing out Cantonese in Guangdong – Learning Chinese

I constantly see the scenes of Hong Kong people showing dislikes of non-Chinese speakers speaking to them in Mandarin (also known as Putonghua) rather than Cantonese. What Hong Kong people would do is to reply those foreigners in Cantonese, but never Mandarin. Why?

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To put it simply, Mandarin is China’s only official language. It is the language that should be spoken on TV, in school, in professional situations and in the government. However, since this is indeed China we’re talking about, things are never truly that simple. In reality, spoken Chinese is a mish-mash of distinct accents, local slang, dialects and even dialects within dialects.

The simple fact is, mastery of Chinese, no matter how good you are, is NOT a golden ticket to employment in the United States. That is, of course, unless your career goals are purely linguistic in nature (i.e. Chinese teacher, interpreter, or translator).