Cantonese and Mandarin, Common Points of Different Language Variations

China is a country of many different dialects, yet there is one common language to link everywhere and everyone, which is mandarin. Mandarin is very simple, and any educated people can speak. Mandarin helps people understand each other in an enlarged social network, as if a bridge connecting strangers.

Of cause, Mandarin can do far more than that. Only those who are in a foreign country can understand what stir hometown can bring. Mandarin is not the largest language yet, but suffice to say, more and more people are learning it for communication in a broader world.

Contrary to universality of Mandarin, dialects are more confined to their own places. For instance, Cantonese is only spoken by residence around Guangdong, an ancient Chinese that is hard for outsiders to understand, which by some jokes can be used as ciphers to ward against people who don’t know it.

Cantonese originates from elegant language of central China, which includes 9 sounds and 6 tones with complete ancient Chinese inheritance and characteristics. Therefore it is treated as source for Chinese language research. Cantonese is usually distributed in the Zhujiang River Delta, with great vitality of nearly 40 million speakers.

People from mainland China are more familiar with Hong Kong people instead of Guangdong people as far as Cantonese is concerned. Because of popular Hong Kong movies and TV soap operas, Cantonese is thought to be the language of Hong Kong, while many people don’t know that ancestors of Hong Kong people used to live around the Zhujiang Delta and fled to Hong Kong because of war, hunger and poverty, hence the situation today.

Though hard to understand, Cantonese is also an art. Guangdong opera, for example, has singing, dialog, performance and acrobatics with unique styles and glamor, a direct showcase of the charm of Cantonese. As to the understanding issue, we can only say that we don’t know Cantonese and Guangdong opera, which are not problem if we think inside the box.

Easier to understand than Cantonese, Mandarin can express the sentiment and attachment. People say fellow-townsmen burst in tears when they meet in a foreign place. Familiar accents of hometown drew people nearer, not the standard Mandarin. People, no matter how far they travel, will always return to their hometown with fluent native dialect. It’s not that they don’t know Mandarin, they just think Cantonese is the most familiar and relative way to express their feelings.

When they are away from hometown, Mandarin is the language. But some people just can’t pick it up. Are they not smart enough, or just reluctant to learn? Maybe both. In any case, Cantonese is their root. For them, mandarin is not necessary, but the cipher-like hometown dialect can never be forgotten.

Everyone thinks the best of hometown dialect, because it represents the good memories of relativity and childhood. Mandarin may sound beautiful, but it belongs to the masses of all Chinese, while Cantonese, though just a dialect of a small place, is from hometown and the most familiar. In a world full of Mandarin that may please us sometimes, only the hometown accent makes us excited as only those who have such experience could understand.
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