Learning And Speaking Mandarin Or Cantonese For Hong Kong Residents

By Author: Acosta West
Total Articles: 1
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Chinese is a very ancient language which is made up of many different dialects. A Mandarin is in fact a bureaucrat or official and the Ancient Chinese were in fact the first to invent a bureaucracy. And what a bureaucracy it was! Stretching over the vastness of China they administered an entire country in the name of a largely closeted Emperor. They also developed a standardized language that became the standard across the entire bureaucracy and consequently across the nation. The scribes too developed a symbology and writing with what eventually amounted to 14,000 pictograms in use although an educated Chinese person will normally be perfectly conversant with about 4,000. However these need memorization.

The Japanese way back sent their bureaucrats to China to study and brought the Chinese writing back with them. In typical Japanese fashion they adapted and simplified much of this writing to suit their language so invented a script of syllables with which to write the grammar, another to isolate imported words, and then cut down the number of pictograms to 1,945. However they strengthened the bureaucracy and so it remains ...
... to this day with the Ministries entrenched and able to stand up to the elected government.

In Britain the full time officials who manage the government departments are known as the Whitehall Mandarins. Similar to Japan they are pretty entrenched and administer the wishes of their elected officials but can stand up to and resist on occasion.

Anyway the bureaucratic language became known as Mandarin. There are numerous local dialects across the vast land of China but modern day Mandarin is the language spoken in Beijing. It is a high level language having a large vocabulary and relatively strict grammar butr it is the one language that must be spoken if one wants to get by in China.

Cantonese as spoken in Southern China and places like Hong Kong is in fact of secondary importance although there are a great many Cantonese speakers Mandarin is likely to be of most use should you wish to deal with Chinese officials.

Learning Mandarin is not going to be a 5 minute study. In fact to achieve a matriculation proficiency including reading and writing the pictograms a good few years of dedicated study. But this should not put you off. If you are likely to be staying in China for some time it will stand you in good stead to be able to start speaking and you will be awarded a great deal of kudos for making the effort.

There are mandarin courses in Hong Kong for expats for beginners right through to high level Mandarin and business speech. There are a range of schedules allowing you to study for 4 hours a day on a full time basis or for the business person who wishes to learn there is weekly or bi weekly mandarin class in Hong Kong that is held in the evening but covers the same syllabus.

The objective of each course and who should be eligible to attend is laid out in the website.

In order to speak Chinese one would have to attendmandarin courses in Hong Kong. There is mandarin class in Hong Kong for all levels of proficiency