Chinglish

[paulsherwin]

Being able to speak Cantonese doesn't help much in mainland China. It's a bit like Dutch and English, and certainly more different than Glaswegian Scots and English. (I'm sure you're well aware of this Fred, I'm just making the point for others).

The CIA figures will be for mainland China using Mandarin / Standard Chinese, not HK.

[Cobaltblue]

I hate to state the obvious

There are far more people in China who have a decent grasp of English then there people in the UK who speak any of the Chinese languages.

We can take the mick all we like.

But they are the second largest economy in the world.

I spent 12 years working in mainland China for a large international company and know all about translation problems.

Please bear in mind they find our equally inept translations equally funny.

For those who know, ask the waitress for a pen, good luck getting the correct tone.

Who knows you might get lucky!

Cheers

Mike T

[paulsherwin]

There are large numbers of Cantonese speakers in the UK as a result of immigration from HK over the years, but that doesn't help with Standard Chinese translation.

[Cobaltblue]

English is taught as a foreign language to all Chinese students to high school level.

In the city's in the service industries English is a pre-requisite.

If I had to guess 10% of the Chinese population have a good working knowledge of English.

About 0.1% have a technically better understanding than most of us.

I have more than 10 Chinese friends who all speak excellent technical English.

Most are of course from the lost generation, but not all.

Cheers

Mike T

[Scimitar]

I find that foreigners tend not to make the appalling errors of grammar like natives. I have never seen the grocer's apostrophe in secondary language speakers' texts for example.

[dodgy-dxer]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

Being able to speak Cantonese doesn't help much in mainland China. It's a bit like Dutch and English, and certainly more different than Glaswegian Scots and English. (I'm sure you're well aware of this Fred, I'm just making the point for others).

The CIA figures will be for mainland China using Mandarin / Standard Chinese, not HK.

The CIA fact book has a separate entry for Hong Kong SAR which is what I quoted

Mainland China has 8 main languages including Cantonese (eg Canton province) plus many "minority" ones.

[Cobaltblue]

When I was working in the Guangzhou area (Canton), my Beijing based team were not even able to talk to the Waitresses in the restaurants.

They were quite incensed because it was a requirement in China that everyone spoke pǔ tōng huà (standard Mandarin)

However Guanggzhou and HK consider Madarin and simplified Chinese characters as a second class language.

Of the two Cantonese is harder as it has an extra tone.

Most outside of GuangDong spoke Mandarin in the cities anyway.

I suppose its only been in the last 30 years that we took much notice of the Bulk of China before that it was all about Canton

There is much rivalry between various areas in China and the Special Economic regions which have a great deal of autonomy from central government.

I spent most of my time in Beijing, Shenyang, Dalian and Changchun which are all in the North East But I also spent months in Xian, Shanghai Nanjing, Shantou, Dongguan, Chengdu and Kunming to name but a few!

Cheers

Mike T

[Wendymott]

Wow you certainly got around Mike T.... I only got to Shenzhen... and that was for 5 days..

[Cobaltblue]

The written languages are the same.

Its only the pronunciation and tones.

Most well educated Chinese are able to read and write in "standard" Hanzi.

However to assist with the education of the masses The PRC introduced simplified characters for the masses.

Pretty much everyone in both HK and Mainland China can read them.

As the PRC started to become more powerful we started to use Mandarin pronunciation and PinYin.

That's why we suddenly stopped Calling the PRC capital city Peking (Cantonese) and started calling it Beijing (Mandarin) 北京

Yes I loved my time in 中国 (simplified) 中國 (traditional).

If things were different I would still be there

Cheers

Mike T