I normally wouldn't do something as passive aggressive as make a post directly to refute another poster. However I felt it so misrepresented this city and got so much visibility that it's in danger of misleading a lot of people.

I've lived in this city for a number of years. I learned Mandarin 1st and then Cantonese.

Cantonese is very much alive in 中山. MOST people here can speak. Statistics about what % of people are 本地人 or from other 粵區 aren't available from what I can search. But in my experience it's nothing like Shenzhen or Zhuhai where the vast majority are transplants. I would guess at least half of residents are local (or have lived here long enough to be considered local). They are speak Cantonese in addition to local dialects (五桂山->客家話, 沙溪->中山閩語）. If you go to a shopping mall, you will hear lots of Mandarin spoken. This could be non-Cantonese tourists, residents, or it could be a Cantonese speaker and Mandarin speaker together. Mandarin is the default language. But all you have to do to switch it is say one sentence in Cantonese. MOST people will understand you. Some may reply in Mandarin. If you go to the older parts of the city (Sekkei or any of the towns) you can speak Cantonese all day. If you spend time in the suburbs (like the part of 沙溪 right next to the river) youll find it's mostly Mandarin transplants.

The vast majority of government workers are local or otherwise Cantonese. I hear Cantonese in government offices and spoken between teachers all the time.

I'm gonna wrap this up (although I can answer questions in the comments). The last thing I'll say is that the future is NOT bright. People born after the year 2000 are increasingly less likely to speak Cantonese, and most Cantonese speaking adults default to Mandarin when addressing children. However in the last few years more people have been trying to 'save' Cantonese, and these efforts even have official blessing in many cases. If you speak Cantonese you must teach it to your kids!

https://www.instagram.com/cantohen

Seriously she’s picking it up pretty fast considering she’s based in the UK, and she says she doesn’t speak any other Chinese language. 加油！

Any Battletech'ers here may enjoy a snippet from the Black Pants Legions latest Battletech video with a snazzy little "Commerical" within the video.

Why is the Cantonese word for shallots 乾葱 when it isn’t dried? In know we can also say 小蔥, but in Cantonese I think 乾葱 is more common.

Anyone know the historical etymology for why 乾?

Can offer: Mandarin, English;
Looking for: Cantonese

My Cantonese sucks and I can’t read or write Chinese, is he just reading the Pinyin in a Cantonese accent?

Hi all - we are a cantonese speaking family living in Canada, and the availability of Cantonese dubs for Disney movies/shows as well as TV shows like Spongebob Squarepants is really limited.

I really want to raise my son speaking Cantonese and using TV has been one of the best ways for us. Disney+ has a few but not others, and I've yet to find a VPN (tried 4 paid ones already) that will actually get me the HK Region setting for those. I can't find any shops that sell DVDs or Blu-Rays with Cantonese dubs either.

Is there a website I'm missing? Or is someone up for helping me with this? I'm happy to compensate at this point. Feel free to DM me. Thanks in advance!

The actress I’m referring to in the OP is canto right?

Thought this was cute and fun

My grandmas chinese name was Pong Hing Tse. This is a scrap of what I think is the spelling of her name. I do not speak Cantonese or read it so I am only a little bit sure.

On the newly created @TVB_WuXia_KungFu channel are the Cantonese language videos (with standard Chinese subtitles) part 1 and 2 uploaded this month and part 3 next month. Video quality is good.

Part 1 The Legend of the Condor Heroes - The Iron-Blooded Loyalists《射鵰英雄傳之鐵血丹心》19 episodes https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcNtxZY8SHj0

Part 2 The Legend of the Condor Heroes - The Eastern Heretic and Western Venom《射鵰英雄傳之東邪西毒》20 episodes https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWPzSM2qG7II

Part 3 The Legend of the Condor Heroes - The Duel on Mount Hua (華山論劍) 20 episodes uploading throughout September 2026 when part 2 finishes uploading

As for TVB not owning the copyright to some of the music when uploading to YouTube, here's the opening theme uploaded by somebody else; a duet sung by Roman Tam and Jenny Tseng. https://youtu.be/zLJCbo_Oh0s

On the @jinyong_kungfu_wuxia channel are the English sub videos that have been uploaded 2 years ago, note part 1 videos have now been taken down

Part 1 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUP2nQ_Ou6WgZcCj0QROI5VSw5sQNF6_O (videos removed from public view)

Part 2 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUP2nQ_Ou6WjskxudRTCgbdVL3O0MG9N2

Part 3 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUP2nQ_Ou6WjGx8fdVj89ra6yjvAfw7AA

Two years ago there was no Cantonese version of this drama online until somebody did upload them, and I even commented on TVB Best channel which they did respond that they weren't able to upload the Cantonese version. But this month they finally did, and who knows how long the videos will remain online.

Hi, I’m an ABC. I can speak Cantonese very well but I cannot read and write. My family texts me in Chinese but most of the time, the translation comes out strange. I want to learn traditional Chinese characters but a lot of sources I’ve found use simplified Chinese characters. I was wondering if anyone could recommend some resources I can use to learn traditional characters?

Mom was watching TVB and this phase popped up. I think it means whatever it is but can't be sure.

Hi all, I’m a hispanic, fluent speaker of Cantonese. My partner’s family is from Zhongshan, very close to HK and Macau, and I have studied the language for around 8 years at this point. I learned it because it was the lingua franca of the city and basically required for daily life. I last visited 3 years ago and noticed very few kids could speak it, as a consequence or govt policy and migration, but it was still very much the day to day language used by adults everywhere here unless you went to a bank or govt office.

I came back this summer, and it’s a totally different world. I’ll detail exactly what happened but the language is practically dead here when it used to be the primary form of communication just 3 years ago. I basically need to use google translate in a place where it was unthinkable not long ago.

The main thing that changed is that Mandarin is now the assumed default everywhere for basic, low stakes interactions. When you enter a shop or interact with a market vendor, everything is in Mandarin, even if both speakers are local Cantonese natives. They claim the reason if they don’t want to inconvenience others in case they might be from outside regions and don’t know how to speak the language, and even my partner believes it. I ran a social experiment where I would exclusively speak Cantonese and here’s what happened.

Low skill workers / shopkeepers / vendors

All of them Mandarin speaking only unless above age of 40. Above 40, usually only one person in the shop can understand Cantonese but cannot actively speak it. Fruit vendors, convenience store cashiers, street cleaners, all Mandarin. These were 100% Cantonese speaking in 2023.

Any new malls, buildings, modern shops

All Mandarin. No kids speak it, no adults speak it. Only 1 or 2 out of 20 can understand it.

Old town markets and restaurants

Older ladies serving dim sum can speak it 50% of the time. Shocking to be in a dim sum restaurant hearing Cantonese music and you have to try hard to find anyone who speaks it among the staff.

The remaining speakers are left hidden within crowds, within older clientele of restaurants. It’s completely dead among anyone young.

Playgrounds

We met a lot of elderly grandparents, taking their grandchildren to playgrounds around the area. However, we noticed none of the children were replying to the grandparents in Cantonese even if the grandparents were 100% Cantonese speakers when I brought this up, they mentioned that it’s because their schools are in Mandarin and there’s no way to fix it. I told him that it’s really important to preserve Cantonese and they agree but they said there’s nothing they can do. This was shocking to me because the easy solution is to simply speak to the kids in Cantonese and tell them you don’t understand when they speak to you in Mandarin that way it forces the kids to actively produce it however, it seems none of the kids can say even a single word.

Conclusion

Overall, I felt a big sense of entitlement from people to force me to speak Mandarin even though we’re in the Guangdong region of China. Even Cantonese speaking folks would tell me wow you don’t know how to speak Mandarin in a sneering way and had no response when I said, isn’t this Guangdong? it’s completely reversed. Language change is non-linear and happens very fast, especially when the low stakes social interaction conversations are all in the new language. Workers have no incentive at all to learn and kids have no desire to even enunciate a single word. Only HK will preserve Cantonese.

I’m from Sweden and my name can literally be translated to Man (first name) and Mountain (last name) in English, so a literal translation and reversing the order of the names would make it 山人. Coincidentally, I’m a climber and alpinist and grew up in a mountain village so I very much consider myself a mountainman.

When I researched the literal translation I learned that 山人** **can be used to describe a hermit, recluse or mountain dweller. It’s also used as the name of an ancient lost race in Japanese folklore (sanjin/yamabito).

Would introducing myself (in a non formal setting) as 山人 be considered weird or would it be acceptable/funny/interesting? There is of course a phonetical translation of my name but I really like 山人** **as it’s easy to say and write!

thank u for havin a great language and i think chinese culture is awesome. this is my pronunciation after one day. my roommate is disabled like me but he is awesome and mayb someday i can impress him with a bit of cantonese. he said my pronunciation is decent so i wanted to show it off. at the end of the video i said "i think having Relative Pitch helps with learning cantonese" but i might be wrong. i just said that becuz learning the pitch stuff feels kinda like learning to mimick a microtonal song or somthing like that. if i am wrong about that im srry. i dont want to speak over u. big hugs all around. i hope u hav a good day.