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.
Pinyin is the most widely-used system of writing Mandarin Chinese that uses the Latin alphabet. It is a great tool to help you learn the accurate pronunciation of Mandarin words. First, you need to learn how to read pinyin, as Mandarin contains some sounds which do not exist in English. Have a look at our guide, listen to the voices in Real Chinese and our tone and character games to hear how native speakers pronounce the sounds. Donât worry if you donât get it right first time, learning pinyin needs a fair bit of practice.