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.
Quora User, fluent speaker of Mandarin and Cantonese. Knowing Cantonese alone does not make you understand Mandarin due to the large differences in the language/dialect. However, I believe the majority of Cantonese speakers can understand Mandarin, but only because they have separately studied Mandarin (either formally in school, or self-taught).
In Singapore, Mandarin is the official variety of the Chinese language used by the government, which has a Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC) seeking to actively promote the use of Mandarin over other Chinese varieties. Cantonese is spoken by a little over 15% of Chinese households in Singapore.