LOL cantonese are part of guangdong x) the people who say cantonese isn't real chinese just lack in knowledge x)
i heard similar comments like that before and it is really annoying, think there's a long history between cantonese and mandarin (north and south) dealing with many issue, I'm sure many of you people had heard it from your parents, other people or TV. It goes both ways, back and foward, Kinda hope people would just cut the crap because it's not doing anyone any good.
I've never heard of anyone say "Cantonese is not Chinese" before, but Cantonese and Mandarin are the two accepted languages of China or Chinese people.
when i tell someone that i can't speak in mandarin, ppl will look at me like, 'u r chinese but u dunno mandarin', like wth.. come on, cantonese is also considered a part of chinese, u dun expect every chinese people to know mandarin, cantonese and every single dialects..
lol, I kind of understand where you're coming from. Arguably, mandarin is the most common language for Chinese people .. Talking about most of China (Compared to other dialects); I know a lot of people who speak both mandarin and cantonese well/fluently.
It seems that 99% of the respondents in this thread are just plain wrong with regards to understanding the total breadth of the Chinese language. Everyone should read this and get themselves an education http://www.omniglot.com/writing/chinese_spoken.htm
I can relate to the language barrier and can't speak mandarin yet but always feel restricted when mates bring their mandarin friends over. I do feel that speaking only cantonese does restrict things as the number of people that speaks mandarin does supercedes cant.
A first time I'm reading that Cantonese isn't part Chinese. The person that said that just proved his ignorance!!!
This is not the case anymore .. more and more ppl are speaking mando ... you need to know the language in order to break into their huge market.
I've also never come across this problem. I don't even know how people can come to such a conclusion that Cantonese is not Chinese... it's spoken by a lot of Chinese ppl outside of Hong Kong - like Guangzhou!
mandarin = language but cantonese = dialect. regardless of whichever you speak, you are still chinese.
I speak Cantonese dialect. To be fair, the only true language of Chinese is the written form which happens to be Mandarin. Everything else, such as cantonese, fujianese, shanghainese ... etc or all different dialects of the language Mandarin. Because cantonese has somany idioms, you cant really write in cantonese and expect someone who speaks fujian or toysan to understand fully what one means. So one has to write in the form of mandarin in order for all different dialects to understand.
this never happened to me but if Cantonese isn't real Chinese than why does most of Hong Kong speak it?? yeah that makes not sense that they say its not real chinese Chinese is the language and Cantonese is a dialog. Those people are dumb.
-imwithstu-bowroflarms-rotfl OMG... No offense, but this shit is really freaking funny beyond belief... It is simply amazing that there are some many Chinese that know so little about Chinese... <_< Please, educate yourselves about Chinese (it's only one click away): http://www.omniglot.com/writing/chinese_spoken.htm