As someone who speaks Chinese, there is one question that has always slightly peeved me: “Do you mean you speak Mandarin or Cantonese?” I am here to tell you why you should stop asking people this.
Do you know the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese?
One of the reasons this question bugs me is that most people who ask it don’t know anything about Mandarin or Cantonese. In my experience, many people don’t ask because they actually care, but because they want to subtly signal how they are well-educated and cultured because they know that both Mandarin and Cantonese exist. To someone who speaks Chinese, however, the question doesn’t really make sense.
Chinese is not simply divided into Mandarin and Cantonese
Chinese is not simply divided into Mandarin and Cantonese. There are other widely-spoken Chinese languages such as Wu, Min Nan, Hakka, and Jin, to name a few. Asking someone if they speak Mandarin or Cantonese is kind of like if someone said they were from Europe and you asked them if they speak French or Italian. It doesn’t make sense to break things down into an “either/or question” when there are more than two options available.
“But aren’t Mandarin and Cantonese just dialects of the same language?”
No, Mandarin and Cantonese are completely different languages. Although Cantonese and Mandarin have many similarities, they are not mutually intelligible. This means that, presuming one has no significant exposure or training, a speaker of Mandarin will understand little to nothing of Cantonese and vice-versa. To give an analogy, Cantonese and Mandarin are just as different (or moreso) as French and Spanish are from one another.
So what is the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese?
Mandarin is an official language in China, Taiwan, and Singapore, while Cantonese only has official status in Hong Kong and Macau. While there are notable exceptions, most Chinese speakers can speak Mandarin at least to a certain degree. They may speak another Chinese language (like Cantonese or Min Nan) as their mother tongue, but probably speak Mandarin as well, given its widespread status as a lingua franca. Mandarin is also the most widely-spoken native language in both China and Taiwan, and there is a continuing trend of Mandarin replacing local languages and dialects.
Cantonese, on the other hand, is a language which is spoken by a considerably smaller group of people, concentrated in a much smaller geographical area. If we are to believe the statistics, there are roughly ten times as many Mandarin speakers in the world than Cantonese. That is not to say that Cantonese is any less rich or important, but Mandarin certainly dominates when it comes to relative distribution of each language.
Cantonese has retained many more of the complexities of Middle Chinese — the ancient ancestor of many modern Chinese languages. This makes Cantonese more complex, and it’s often seen as much more difficult to learn than Mandarin, even by speakers of other Chinese languages. Speakers of Cantonese are known to have a fervent pride for their language, which is considered a crucial part of their cultural identity.
So where did we get the impression everyone speaks one or the other?
While this is a loaded question which has potentially many more complexities than I will offer here, I believe there are two principal reasons people got confused into thinking that there is a binary distinction in Chinese languages.
Firstly, a significant factor is that expatriate Chinese communities worldwide were often founded by Cantonese speakers. Consequently, the Chinese one typically heard in “China Towns” across the Western world was often Cantonese. This exposure might have led people to the erroneous conclusion that everyone either speaks Cantonese (as seemingly everyone in China Town does) or Mandarin (the official language of China).
Secondly, the renown of Hong Kong in the Western world plays a part. There are numerous factors contributing to Hong Kong’s heightened international recognition, including its reputation as an international business hub, and the global appeal of Hong Kong cinema superstars like Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee. Given the prevalence of Cantonese in films and as the primary language of Hong Kong, this might have cultivated the impression that Cantonese is the most commonly spoken form of Chinese.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t be interested
When I tell people that they shouldn’t ask whether people speak Mandarin or Cantonese, they are often offended and ask why I should discourage people from asking a completely innocent question. I certainly don’t mean to discourage anyone from learning more about their neighbors, and it really is an innocent question. The problem is that it’s the wrong question.
You may have very legitimate reasons for asking someone what variety of Chinese they speak. This does not change the fact that Chinese is not split into a binary distinction. Imagine if you said you have a car, and someone asked you, “Is it a Toyota or a Volkswagen?” It just doesn’t make sense. Mandarin and Cantonese may be the two most prominent Chinese languages, but there are still hundreds of millions of speakers of Chinese languages who speak neither of these as their first language.
So if you’re genuinely interested in someone’s linguistic background, what should you ask them? “What variety of Chinese do you speak?” or “Do you speak Mandarin?” might be two good places to start.
