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What Language Do They Speak in Chinatown?
The obvious answer would be Chinese, but some would argue that there's really no such language. When people say "Chinese," they are often referring to mainland China's dominant and official language, Mandarin, spoken by about 850 million people. It's based on the language spoken in and around Beijing. However, the language of Chinatowns throughout the US has actually been Cantonese for a long time now, due to the regional origins of most Chinese immigrants in the US. But more recently, a number of factors, including newer immigration and the rise of the People's Republic of China as an economic power, Mandarin has begun to overtake Cantonese. There's an interesting article in the New York Times about this. You'll hear a lot of people refer to Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Min, and Hakka as dialects or varieties of a language called "Chinese." But most linguists and scholars of Chinese culture and history disagree with this. These are all actually separate languages and they are not mutually intelligible. In other words, a speaker of Cantonese cannot understand a speaker of Mandarin, even though they share a writing system. So just keep in mind that if you're setting out to learn "Chinese," first think about where you want to speak it, or who you want to speak it with, because learning Cantonese before you travel to Beijing, or Mandarin before you order dinner at a Cantonese restaurant in Chinatown, won't get you very far. Tags: Cantonese, Chinese, dialects, Mandarin
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