Is Mandarin or Cantonese more common?

Is Mandarin or Cantonese more common?

Worldwide, there are about 66 million Cantonese speakers. Compare this with Mandarin, which is spoken by about 1 billion people worldwide. Of all languages, Mandarin is the most widely-spoken.

What percentage of China speak Cantonese and Mandarin?

Mandarin dialects are spoken by 71.5 percent of the population, followed by Wu (8.5 percent), Yue (also called Cantonese; 5 percent), Xiang (4.8 percent), Min (4.1 percent), Hakka (3.7 percent) and Gan (2.4 percent).

What percentage of people speak Cantonese?

88.9%
Cantonese has actually experienced a slight growth in the proportion of speakers since the handover. According to the 2016 Hong Kong by-census, 88.9% of the population claim to speak Cantonese as their usual language, compared with 88.7% in 1996.

What is the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese?

Mandarin utilizes four tones, whereas Cantonese has at least six and sometimes as many as nine. And different tones have different meanings, even when used for the same word.

How many different tones are there in Cantonese?

The Tones Mandarin has five tones, while Cantonese has nine different tones. These tones are vital when trying to convey your meaning, making Cantonese harder to learn than Mandarin. In Hong Kong Cantonese, three of the nine tones have merged, and so in reality there are only six tones at the moment.

How many Cantonese speakers are there in China?

There are an estimated 63 million Cantonese speakers in China (5% of China’s population) compared with 933 million Mandarin first-language speakers (67% of people in China). Mandarin and Cantonese are spoken throughout different parts of China, and where in China you go will dictate which one you will encounter.

How to greet someone in China in Cantonese?

Another way of greeting someone in China is to ask whether they have eaten yet. In Mandarin you would say, “Chīfànle ma?” But in Cantonese you would ask, “Lei sik dzo fan mei a?” (tones excluded). You can see how someone who speaks Mandarin would not understand the Cantonese, and vice versa.