What are the Surprising Reasons for Learning Cantonese

Easy Chan
3 min readJun 13, 2023

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Why learn Cantonese?

To effectively communicate with people in a region and understand their culture, there is nothing better than learning their language. Cantonese is actually spoken by approximately 70–100 million people in Hong Kong, Macau, the southern provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, and other 13 countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Australia, Canada, USA, and the UK.

If you are a person who likes to live in other countries and explore new cultures or maybe you are a travel lover, learning Cantonese will offer you many amazing experiences. Whether it’s a slang term commonly used by locals, or even a harmless swear word during happy hours, you can break through the barriers between people and build up your friendships.

Where Cantonese speakers are.

In San Francisco, you may use it almost every day to communicate with Chinese immigrants — especially among the elderly population. If you take the local bus or go to the parks, you may find over 90% of the Chinese communicate in Cantonese.

In Australia, many China-related job listings ask for language abilities in Mandarin or Cantonese, with some even asking for both. Cantonese abilities can therefore be an asset when job hunting. For instance, a quick search for jobs in Australia on LinkedIn with the keywords “Mandarin” and “Cantonese” returns 475 results for the former and 139 for the latter.

In Malaysia, there are about 7.2 million Chinese, accounting for 22.4% of the national population, and almost all of them speak Cantonese.

Once upon a time, when foreigners learn Chinese, they first think of Cantonese rather than Mandarin.

What are the benefits of speaking Cantonese?

Learning Cantonese is more suited to those planning to work or study in areas where Cantonese is widely spoken or those planning to work for a company that does business in such areas.

For business owners who want to expand into Southeast China and Southeast Asia, you need to learn Cantonese so you will have better access to several businesses in these areas.

If you travel around the Southern part of China, Hong Kong, and Macau, Cantonese will definitely come in handy.

Cantonese is a fun language to speak and listen to. It has a song-like quality thanks to its many tones and sentence-final particles. It is also known for its colorful slang, which makes learning it a very interesting experience.

Of course, the benefits of speaking Cantonese are much more pronounced in locales such as Hong Kong or Macau where Cantonese enjoys much more currency.

Being able to understand Cantonese means that you can watch Hong Kong classics without subtitles or dubbing. Stephen Chow’s movies really take on another dimension when you can understand his humor in its original form.

The Cantonese opera, which originated in the Yuan Dynasty, has been included in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and has become a world-class intangible cultural heritage project.

Also, don’t forget the delicacies of Hong Kong and other Cantonese-speaking regions. Hong Kong is known as a food paradise. Hong Kong’s tea restaurants and street food are world-renowned and cheap but delicious.

We are always focusing on how to make learning Cantonese more easy and funny. We talk about Cantonese food, Chinese Culture, the beautiful landscape of the Cantonese region, and funny Cantonese slang that we can learn Cantonese in a relaxed atmosphere. If you like our Channel and think it is helpful, please subscribe, press the small bell, like, and share. You also may follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. If you are interested in reading the article, you may also visit our blog to find more helpful information.

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Easy Chan

As a native Cantonese speaker, I possess a unique perspective on the power and beauty of this language, I love such an elegant and wise language.