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In the past, the most common form of Chinese spoken outside of China was Cantonese. However, this is undergoing change with the immigration of new Chinese speakers from non-Cantonese areas of China.
When two Chinese people who do not speak the same dialect meet, they most commonly rely upon Mandarin, China’s principal dialect.
In the United States, the majority of people with Chinese background has historically been Cantonese and has spoken that dialect. However, times have changed.
New dialects have appeared, such as Hakka and Fuzhou.
Although speakers of different Chinese dialects use a standard and shared system for writing, they cannot understand one another’s speech.
In their written form, certain Chinese words demonstrate no fundamental difference from one dialect to another. However, the pronunciation of individual words can vary widely among different dialects.
Regardless of dialectical differences, all Chinese can read the same text, whether on the Internet, in a book, magazine, newspaper, etc. Problems sometimes arise, however, when people of two different dialect groups try to speak to each other.
For this reason, an increasing number of Chinese are making use of Mandarin, which has become a kind of default spoken Chinese when there is a difference in native dialects.
The growing use of Mandarin in certain large United States cities is similar to what has been taking place in China, where there are a large variety of dialectical variations between regions, departments, cities and even small towns.
Owing to the large number of people migrating internally within China, the use of Mandarin has become increasingly necessary. This trend is being reinforced by the government’s newest measures to strengthen Mandarin’s position as the nation’s official dialect for communication in a wide variety of contexts, such as commerce, business, government and schools.
However, in the United States, there are no measures being taken to promote Mandarin over Cantonese. Even though Mandarin is commonly employed for necessary public communication, people of Cantonese origin tend to have a natural preference for their own language in more intimate settings.
Even though more than 70 million people speak Cantonese throughout the world, few less speak it on the street than only a few decades ago.
