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Working in Hong Kong without speaking Mandarin or Cantonese?

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  1. #21

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    Quote Originally Posted by syleena38:
    I read that it makes more sense to learn Mandarin if one intends to do business with the mainland and cantonese for the rest of APAC.
    Would you say it's a correct assumption? I'm really confused here.
    Been trying to work out APAC. Asia Pacific....

  2. #22

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    Just AsiaPACific.


  3. #23

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gruntfuttock:
    Just AsiaPACific.
    ah thanks.

  4. #24

    Yeah sorry for the abbreviation. Use it all the time at work so....


  5. #25

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    As Grunt said, unless you have family or cultural ties to the language, learning cantonese is pretty useless. Not only is it restricted to such a small geographical area, but that area is shrinking everyday. Combine that with the fact that cantonese is one of the most difficult languages to learn and most Cantonese speakers are learning english anyway...it just doesn't make a lot of sense to learn.

    kimwy66 likes this.

  6. #26

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    Although not exactly the same situation, I would still like to chip in.

    I am Pakistani working in an IT company and the only non Chinese in my entire firm (which has about 30 people). Other than 2-3 people, almost every one knows english but they are not very fluent and at times find it difficult to understand what I am saying. So social contact is a bit difficult at times.

    Interestingly though, when ever work related stuff comes up, there are rarely any issues. They can understand what I am saying and I can understand what they are saying.

    Therefore, I assume that depending on the type of work you are doing, learning Cantonese and/or Mandarin is not important. But socially it can get hard at times.

    Last edited by ecy5maa; 11-03-2014 at 02:29 PM.
    bffallo and syleena38 like this.

  7. #27

    I wanted to second the suggestion of CUHK! (Chinese University of HK) I'm doing the beginners Mandarin course which is is great for a taste of HK life while also learning a new language! It's intensive at 3hrs per day plus homework and the course is taught in English, but well worth it IMO. Fees are about $25k a term.

    Good luck!

    Quote Originally Posted by bffallo:

    If all else fails you can still do an intensive Mandarin or Cantonese course for 2-3 months e.g. at CUHK. It isn't cheap but you would have s.th. to fill the gap in your CV.

  8. #28

    You don't need to learn and spend money ...coz many ppl here in hk speak English...I think u can learn more here In actual


    Sent from my iPhone using GeoClicks


  9. #29

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    Working in HK without speaking Mandarin/Cantonese is possible as most of your related colleagues may understand English, and it would not be a problem for communication.

    But it would be better to study some Mandarin when u are in HK, as Chinese people including HK people can speak/ understand Mandarin and it would help communicate if u know some Mandarin. Cantonese is much more difficult to study, and cannot be understood by people in Mainland China or Taiwan.


  10. #30

    As a local, I feel sick when you guys said "learning Cantonese is not important, or no need to learn cantonese in Hong Kong. Yea, it is true, we are always being friendly to people from the rest of the world. It doesn't matter if you just speak English, because we would try to listen and help the foreigners all the time. Please do not over-use our kindnesses!

    However, you guys are not even trying to learn a few words in Cantonese to show your respects(for me, I always try to learn a few local words when I am traveling to some places to show my respect.). However, sometimes foreigners got it in a wrong way, they learnt a few phrases of Mandarin or even take a Mandarin course to show their interests and to show how friendly they are...! Well, I want to say Mandarin is not our language, for us it is just like a language from the other country, we understand mandarin but it is just like English to us, it doesn't make any different to show your respects to the local culture. We would just think "oh this foreigner might be working or living in the mainland China instead"!

    I know it is hard to ask you guys to learn Cantonese, it always comes up with some excuses like "too hard to learn", "Cantonese is only useful in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Macau and the china town in Europe and U.S... Some Singaporean and Malaysian... Etc... (actually a lot of people speak cantonese).

    Oh yeah, what you guys want is "the big market" "Mainland China". So just learn Mandarin then, but please don't say it like "learning Mandarin to respect and to get adapted to the locals' culture".

    Fact: most of us can understand Mandarin(not all), but we don't really speak well, we try to change some tones from Cantonese, and thought it could become Mandarin, lol! The words and terms in Cantonese have a big difference from Mandarin.

    For those people who take Mandarin course to show their wrong respect to Hong Kong people can do some researches on weibo (the mainland China version of Facebook)! you can see how many people mentioned "they don't understand when Hong Kong people speak Mandarin". Fair enough, that's not our local language in HK

    Anyway... English is fine in Hong Kong, if you want to show ur respects, just learn a few word like "thanks you", "how are you", "delicious" etc... in Cantonese.

    tacharel, Nep, hongkong7 and 2 others like this.

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