Shaolin Soccer [Buena Vista]

I speak Mandarin, but I understand a little Cantonese.

You? :)

Huh? How can one dialect be more or less cool than another one? They're all used for the same purpose (to communicate), with Mandarin having the added utility of being the "national" dialect of China and Taiwan (and I think even Singapore).

Mandarin is taught widely BECAUSE it is the official dialect of China. Therefore, it has more utility than Cantonese. This doesn't make Mandarin more or less cool than any other Chinese dialect.

There is no evidence any where that Cantonese is more difficult to learn than any other Chinese dialect, regardless of a person's ethnic background.

Um, the people whom you listed speak Cantonese because they were BORN in Cantonese-speaking places. Also, as China was mostly closed off to the rest of the world for the past five decades, there's a very good reason why we haven't seen much of Mandarin-speaking actors. (On the international stage, Taiwan's melodramas weren't as popular as Hong Kong's action movies, but that's a matter of movie-viewing preference rather than dialect.)

However, Zhang Ziyi is one of the brightest stars in Asia right now, and she's from Beijing. Moreover, Cantonese-speaking actors like Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, and Andy Lau now appear in Mandarin productions. Even Jackie Chan speaks more Mandarin than Cantonese in public these days.

Again, it's not more or less difficult to learn Cantonese when compared to other dialects. People study Mandarin because among the 1-billion-plus Chinese in the world, Mandarin is the one that is commonly understood.

Your ethnocentrism and complete lack of understanding of how geopolitical environments created certain business conditions are awful. I'm through with talking about anything with you.

By the way, egg rolls aren't really Chinese food.

im on eddies side here. you can't say one dialect is better than another. it just doesn't make sense. sure, spanish sounds different than english, but its not any "cooler".

Actually, some dialects (not necessarily languages, however) do sound cooler to me than others. Like I could listen to Richard Burton or Sir Ralph Richardson or Ronald Coleman speak English in their special, upper-class British dialects all day as opposed to what I hear from most Americans.

Dialects (that is, variations of the same language) are like music; some people like the sound of one, while other people like the sound of something else.

John

John,

Of course there is the sound component of language, but dvd_magic was talking about "difficulty" being a component of his preference. However, like I wrote, Cantonese is not any easier or harder than Mandarin or any other Chinese dialect. Therefore, on that false premise, his conceptualization of "coolness" fails.

Eddie

dvd_magic,

So where are the facts to back up your Linguistic Learning Gradient of Dialects theory?*

Personally, I think Cantonese sounds very uncouth. So in my book, that's negative cool points. Maybe if you spoke Mayan you'd be "special".

I've got to give it to you to get Eddie involved in such a pointless debate though.








*That was a rhetorical question, so don't bother.

That's amazing. That's the first that I've heard that being "uncouth" (i.e. uncivilized and dirty) can be "cool".