Mandarin vs. Cantonese: What’s the Difference?

At first glance, the Cantonese version (粤语 Yuèyǔ or Cantonese Guǎngdōnghuà) and Mandarin (Mandarin ǔ通花) may look almost identical. After all, they are both Chinese. But fundamentally, they are two distinct dialects and have many important differences.

Mandarin and Cantonese each have different tones, use different romanization systems, and vary widely in the number of speakers.

The text used in Cantonese is more tonal than formal Chinese, and many people need a Cantonese translation service to learn more

Another fundamental difference between Mandarin and Cantonese is the number of native speakers.

About 92 billion people speak Mandarin as their first language, and another 20 billion people speak it as their second language. On the other hand, there are about 840,000 native Cantonese speakers and about 400,000 people who speak Cantonese as a second language.

Although the majority of Cantonese speakers live in and around Hong Kong, it is worth noting that mainland China also has a large number of Cantonese speakers, especially in Guangdong Province. Therefore, Cantonese is sometimes called Cantonese (Guǎngdōnghuà) in mainland China.

Traditional and Simplified Chinese
As mentioned earlier, Mandarin and Cantonese use the same writing system, made up of Chinese characters (汉字). man).

Just like Mandarin, Cantonese uses both simplified and traditional characters depending on the region. In mainland China, locals and officials write Cantonese in simplified characters. In Hong Kong, people use traditional characters almost exclusively.