Hey guys, let me clarify what I mean by this:

I understand that there is Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. This question is soley about Traditional Chinese.

I am thinking about purchasing a manga from a website that is in Chinese. However, I am learning Mandarin and I can read a bit of Traditional. The verison of the book is Hong Kong, and the HK region speaks Cantonese. So with that, would I be able to understand the HK verison of the book or would I need the Taiwan one?

I also understand that Cantonese is a dialect and speaking it is entirely different. But is it written the same (i.e 你好) and spoken differently (Mandarin - Ni hao | Cantonese Nei hou) or is it spoken and written differently?

I hope my point got across and thanks in advance!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2011 02:16AM by Fai0607.

It's a lot more different than one would expect and wish it to be.
Some days ago I came across a book for learning Cantonese and I got totally disappointed. I also thought that it'd be only the pronunciation that would be different, but in order to describe the same ideas in Chinese they also use different characters. For example:


谢谢 - 唔該 - thank you (in simplified characters it would be 唔该 (wugai))
xiexie mhgoi

对不起 - 對唔住 - sorry (in simplified characters it would be 对唔住 (duiwuzhu)
duibuqi deuimhjyuh

这 - 呢 - this (in mandarim 呢 is an eliptical question particle)
zhe ni

Anyway, what I feel is that unless u know an extremely huge amount of characters u won't be able to read and/or guess the cantonese meaning. When I looked at the book I felt I'd have to start from 0 almost if I wanted to learn Cantonese... =(

Hey guys,

No matter where you are in China, you can just speak Mandarin, and I am sure that everyone will understand you. When it comes to characters, there are Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese as you know. But if you learn as much as Chinese, you will find it easy to differ them.

I don;t think so

It depends on the manga,as in Hong Kong people are educated in formal way for written Chinese (They could still write most of the words in the way of Cantonese, but people just tend not to).

In formal books or articles such as textbooks,academic research or autobiographies, they are usually written in formal Chinese (what I mean in here is the way Mandarin speakers speak and got written on), but for some informal publications such as local magazines, they are written in "Cantonese" more in these few years.

By the way, those publications are criticized for educating the people "informal or improper Chinese" ,so if you are okay with spoken Mandarin,that should not be a problem for reading "formal Chinese".

If it is possible you can quote some of the sentences of the manga, and I will let you know it is "formal" or "informal". hope it helps.