Itâs good to remind ourselves of its many different uses, especially on those days when getting students to participate feels like pulling hensâ teeth. 1  Participation adds interest âItâs hard to maintain studentsâ focus and attention when all they hear is the professor talking.
Best Answer: Unless they are bi-lingual, they can barely understand each other. I frequent Hong Kong almost every month, the locals who have lived in Hong Kong all their life and mainly spoke cantonese cannot speak / understand mandarin. And for Mainlanders who goes to Hong Kong, they usually have a hard time understanding the cantonese. Some neighboring cities of Hong Kong like Guangzhou and Shenzhen, where cantonese are spoken a lot, the locals can sometimes be bi-lingual in mandarin and cantonese.
Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, which means that different tones can change the meaning of a word, even if the pronunciation and spelling are otherwise the same. It is essential to learn the different tones if you wish to speak Mandarin Chinese correctly.