Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: Can people who speak Cantonese understand Mandarin?
Although Cantonese shares a lot of vocabulary with Mandarin, the two varieties are mutually unintelligible because of differences in pronunciation, grammar and lexicon. Sentence structure, in particular the placement of verbs, sometimes differs between the two varieties. A notable difference between Cantonese and Mandarin is how the spoken word is written; both can be recorded verbatim, but very few Cantonese speakers are knowledgeable in the full Cantonese written vocabulary, so a non-verbatim formalized written form is adopted, which is more akin to the Mandarin written form.[4][5] This results in the situation in which a Cantonese and a Mandarin text may look similar but are pronounced differently.
The standardisation and adoption of written Mandarin pre-empted the development and standardisation of vernaculars based on other varieties of Chinese. No matter which dialect one spoke, one still wrote in standardised Mandarin for everyday writing. However, Cantonese is unique amongst the non-Mandarin varieties in having a widely used written form. Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong was a British colony isolated from mainland China, so most HK citizens do not speak Mandarin. Written Cantonese was developed as a means of informal communication. Still, Cantonese speakers must use standard written Chinese, or even literary Chinese, in most formal written communications, since written Cantonese may be unintelligible to speakers of other varieties of Chinese.
Under the Basic Law of Hong Kong, Mandarin was made an official language along with Cantonese and English. On paper, the three languages were given equal status, in reality Mandarin is increasingly given more importance. In recent years, Mandarin has been increasingly used in Hong Kong, this has led to fears of Cantonese being replaced. In May 2018, The Education Bureau of Hong Kong stated that Cantonese is a dialect, thus cannot be considered a mother tongue language. This caused an uproar in Hong Kong, as it was seen as downgrading Cantonese in favour of Mandarin, as the majority of Hong Kong people speak Cantonese as their first language. 
Mandarin, also known as the Northern dialects, is the largest of the Chinese languages. Native speakers, even in regions where non-Mandarin speakers historically dominated, Mandarin is being brought in as a lingua franca. The Mandarin-speaking groups are the largest group in mainland China, but in the diaspora the Min, Hakka and Cantonese dialects are more numerous. The Dungan people of Central Asia are native Central Plains Mandarin speaking Hui peoples. Other notable Mandarin-speaking peoples include the Sichuanese people and Jianghuai people.
Despite the Fuzhou population being large, the Cantonese population are still large on the Lower East Side, especially with the large Cantonese community established a long time ago in the western/historic (Chinatown's original size) portion of Chinatown also still being the main Chinese commercial business district for all of Manhattan's Chinatown and with the Chinatown Chinese businesses still mostly Cantonese owned along with Cantonese residing in more affluent areas also being important customers of Manhattan's Chinatown, the Cantonese language still remains important even though Mandarin is becoming the lingua franca of Chinatown allowing Cantonese to influence the cultural standards and economic resources of Chinatown. This influenced many Fuzhou people in Manhattan's Chinatown to learn the Cantonese language to maintain jobs and as advantages to bring Cantonese customers to additionally contribute to their businesses, especially the large businesses like the dim sum restaurants on East Broadway. Due to the Fuzhou immigrants having the most interaction with Cantonese people than other groups of Chinese, the Fuzhou immigrants that can speak Cantonese constitute the vast majority of Non-Cantonese Chinese people that can speak Cantonese in NYC. Although the eastern portion of Chinatown is now predominantly Fuzhou populated, there are still some long time Cantonese residents and businesses that remained behind and got caught in the Fuzhou enclave that emerged in addition to the fact that the western portion of Chinatown is still dominantly Cantonese populated. 
While Lam speaks English as his first language, he can speak also Chinese languages, though not fluently. He remarked "I was born over here but as soon as they see I am Chinese, they think I can speak fluently. It’s a shock." “I can speak Chinese, but not fluently. I am still trying to learn a lot. I have got quite a strong Leeds accent, a deep voice, so when I talk in China, they can’t understand the accent." Although his parents speak English, Mandarin and Cantonese, he mainly speaks English.
The language of the Gin people is a Yue dialect. Standard Cantonese is also spoken by many in the community as well as Mandarin Chinese. A survey in 1980 indicated that one third of Gin people had lost their native language and can only speak Cantonese or Mandarin, and another third who are bilingual in the Gin and Han Chinese languages. The survey suggested a decline in the use of the Gin language, but in the 2000s, there appeared to be a revival in the use of the language.
Starting in the 1970s and especially throughout the 1980s-90s, Mandarin-speaking Taiwanese immigrants and then later on many other Non-Cantonese Chinese immigrants also were arriving into New York City. However, due to the traditional dominance of Cantonese-speaking residents, which were largely working class in Manhattan's Chinatown and the neighborhood's poor housing conditions, they were unable to relate to Manhattan's Chinatown and mainly settled in Flushing and created a more middle class Mandarin-Speaking Chinatown or Mandarin Town (國語埠) and even smaller one in Elmhurst, since most of the newer upcoming generations of ethnic Chinese were already using Mandarin although still their regional dialects in everyday conversations, whereas Cantonese speaking populations largely don't speak Mandarin or only speak it with other Non-Cantonese Chinese speakers. As a result, Manhattan's Chinatown and Brooklyn's emerging Chinatown were able to continue retaining its traditional almost exclusive Cantonese society and were nearly successful at permanently keeping its Cantonese dominance. However, there was already a small and slow growing Fuzhou immigrant population in Manhattan's Chinatown since the 1970s-80s in the eastern section of Chinatown east of the Bowery, which was still underdeveloped as being part of Chinatown. In the 1990s, though, Chinese people began to move into some parts of the western Lower East Side, which 50 years earlier was populated by Eastern European Jews and 20 years earlier was occupied by Hispanics.
Chen speaks Mandarin, English, Taiwanese, and understands conversational Cantonese. He also understands basic Korean and Japanese due to his work as a host.
Literate Chinese speakers can read and write in the Mandarin-based standard written language. However, because the graphemes in Chinese's logographic writing system are not directly linked to pronunciation (though there are quasi-phonetic hints), Cantonese speakers who do not speak Mandarin will read aloud the characters in Cantonese pronunciation only. The resulting speech is Mandarin-based grammar and vocabulary pronounced word-by-word in Cantonese. If the same sentence were to be spoken using regular colloquial Cantonese, it might be quite different. Here is an example:
Soler is also currently the only band from Macau producing Cantonese songs in Hong Kong. The brothers can speak several languages, including English; Cantonese, the official language of Macau; Mandarin; Italian; Portuguese; and Spanish. Dino can also speak a little bit of French. They mainly perform in English, Cantonese and Mandarin but also include Italian and Portuguese in their repertoire.
Although large numbers of non-Cantonese Chinese immigrants, often speaking Mandarin arrived into New York City, they could not relate to the Cantonese populations, which largely do not speak Mandarin or use it only to communicate with other non-Cantonese Chinese people. As a result, the non-Cantonese Chinese populations created their own Mandarin-speaking Chinatown, or "Mandarin Town" (國語埠) in Flushing, and a smaller one in Elmhurst as well. This allowed Manhattan's and Brooklyn's Chinatowns to continue retaining its almost exclusive Cantonese-speaking society and nearly were successful at keeping its Cantonese dominance.
As a result, it has influenced many Fuzhou people to learn the Cantonese language as well to maintain a job and to be able to bring more Cantonese customers as additional contributions to their businesses, especially large businesses like the Dim Sum restaurants on what is known as Little Fuzhou on East Broadway (小福州), the center of Fuzhou culture. Due to many Fuzhou immigrants having the most interaction with Cantonese people out all of the other Non-Cantonese Chinese people, the Fuzhou immigrants that mastered the Cantonese language constitute the vast majority of Chinese people who are not native Cantonese speakers, but learned to speak Cantonese in NYC. Linguistically, however, in the past few years, the Cantonese dialect that has dominated Chinatown for decades is being swiftly uprooted by Mandarin Chinese, the national language of China and the lingua franca of most of the latest Chinese immigrants.
Language differences also play a major role in separating Hong Kong identity from mainland Chinese identity. While Mandarin is the official variety of Chinese in Mainland China, the regionally traditional Cantonese variant has long been used in Hong Kong. The increasing presence of Mandarin-speakers in the territory since 1997, and expectations of mainland Chinese for Hong Kong residents to speak Mandarin, has caused conflicts and defensive measures by citizens to protect Cantonese against the encroachment of Mandarin. Such actions include stigmatizing Mandarin as a language of communism, while Cantonese is perceived as a language of democracy; reflecting the political differences between Hong Kong and China. This political linguistic view has also spread among Overseas Chinese communities, the majority of which are historically Cantonese-speaking.
Due to the large number of people that emigrated out of the Guangdong province, many overseas Chinese communities have their origins in Guangdong. In particular, the Cantonese and Teochew dialects have proportionately more speakers among overseas Chinese people than Mandarin-speaking Chinese. Additionally, many Cantonese-speaking Chinese emigrated to Western countries, with the results that many Western versions of Chinese words were derived from the Cantonese dialects rather than through the main stream Mandarin language, such as "dim sum". Some Mandarin Chinese words originally of foreign origin also came from the original foreign language by way of Cantonese. For example, the Mandarin word níngméng (simplified Chinese:柠檬; traditional Chinese:檸檬), meaning "Lemon", came from Cantonese, in which the characters are pronounced as lìng mung.[16] In the United States, there is a large number of Chinese who are descendants of immigrants from the county-level city of Taishan (Toisan in Cantonese), who speak a distinctive dialect related to Cantonese called Taishanese (or Toishanese).
In the past few years, there have been a number of newspaper reports about students in Guangzhou being punished for speaking Cantonese in school and even outside the classroom. One elementary school in Yuexiu, Guangzhou reportedly requires students to speak Mandarin not only in classes but also during their spare time, and threatens to deduct points from their records if they fail to comply. This has caused some children to become reluctant to learn and use Cantonese or unable to understand or communicate in Cantonese at times.
In addition, in collaboration with Speak Mandarin Campaign, Golden Village started to show more Chinese movies especially of local production to increase the awareness of speaking Mandarin. The Singaporean state did not prioritize the suppression of the dialects However, suppression of dialects was never a major part of the campaign, since the government was tolerant of old peoples' use of dialect, and assumed that young people would have no use for dialects. In fact, the government promoted Cantonese opera as a traditional ethnic performance and sponsored night classes in Cantonese music in government-run community centers.
A great majority of people in Taiwan can speak both Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese although the degree of fluency varies widely. There are however small but significant numbers of people in Taiwan, mainly but not exclusively Hakka and Mainlanders, who cannot speak Taiwanese fluently. A shrinking percentage of the population, mainly people born before the 1950s, cannot speak Mandarin at all, or learned to speak Mandarin later in life, though some of these speak Japanese fluently. Urban, working-class Hakkas as well as younger, southern-Taiwan Mainlanders tend to have better, even native-like fluency. Approximately half of the Hakka in Taiwan do speak Taiwanese. There are many families of mixed Hakka, Hoklo, and Aboriginal bloodlines. There is, however, a large percentage of people in Taiwan, regardless of their background, whose ability to understand and read written Taiwanese is greater than their ability to speak it. This is the case with some singers who can sing Taiwanese songs with native-like proficiency, but can neither speak nor understand the language.
After the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, Mandarin became more important and the influence of Cantonese became vulnerable. Nevertheless, in addition to the 7 million people of Hong Kong and Macau, the genre continues to enjoy popularity among a Cantonese-speaking audience of in excess of 100 million in southern China, plus 10 million Cantonese-speaking diaspora in Canada, Australia and the United States. In 2010, a proposal that Guangzhou Television station should increase its broadcast in Mandarin led to protests in Guangzhou. While the authorities relented, this event reflects attempts at marginalising Cantonese and the ascendency of Mandopop.
Within Japanese-managed companies, local Chinese employees sensed a definite power differential between Japanese managers and local managers of the same rank. Though many Japanese women came to Hong Kong intending to learn to speak Chinese (either Cantonese or Mandarin), upon arrival they found that communicating in English was not only sufficient for everyday life, but placed them in a privileged position vis-a-vis the local population. Among respondents to the 2011 Census who self-identified as Japanese, 77.4% stated that they spoke Japanese as their usual language, 17.2% English, 3.9% Cantonese, and 1.0% Mandarin. With regards to additional spoken languages other than their usual language, 64.3% stated that they spoke English, 18.7% Cantonese, 18.7% Mandarin, and 19.5% Japanese. (Multiple responses were permitted to the latter question, hence the responses are non-exclusive and the sum is greater than 100%.) 4.1% did not speak Japanese as either their usual language nor an additional language, while the respective figures for English, Cantonese, and Mandarin were 18.4%, 77.4%, and 81.3%.
Beginning with the post-1974 independence of other Portuguese colonies and hastened by Macau's return to China, the Macanese community began to lose its Portuguese heritage. Many Portuguese, Eurasians and Chinese who were loyal to the Portuguese left after its return to China. Of those that remained, many children - including those of pure Chinese descent - switched from Portuguese- to English-medium high school education, particularly as many of parents recognised the diminishing value of Portuguese schooling. Many Macanese people of mixed ancestry since Portuguese time never speak Portuguese and speak only Cantonese as first language; if other Macanese people of mixed ancestry speak Portuguese, they speak it as second language, thus affected by Cantonese accent. At the same time, Macanese of pure Portuguese descent are also learning Cantonese and Mandarin to be able to communicate to non-Portuguese-speaking Chinese. Today, most Macanese - if they are still young enough - would go back to study to read and write Chinese. Many see a niche role for fluent speakers of Portuguese, Cantonese and Mandarin. Code-switching between Portuguese, Cantonese, and Mandarin among native speakers is common. In the 1980s Macanese or Portuguese women began to marry men who identified themselves as Chinese.
Nevertheless, the place of local Cantonese language and culture remains contentious. A 2010 proposal to switch some programming on Guangzhou television from Cantonese to Mandarin was abandoned following massive public protests, the largest since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. As a major economic center of China, there have been recent concerns that the use of Cantonese in Guangzhou is diminishing in favour of Mandarin, both through the continual influx of Mandarin-speaking migrants from impoverished areas and strict government policies. As a result, Cantonese is being given a more important status by the natives than ever before as a common identity of the local people.[17]
From the late 1980s through the 1990s, when a large influx of Fuzhou immigrants, who also largely speak Mandarin along with their Fuzhou dialect started to arrive into New York City, they were the only exceptional Non-Cantonese Chinese group to largely settle in Manhattan's Chinatown and eventually Brooklyn's Chinatown, which was also originally Cantonese dominated. This is due to many of them having no legal status and being forced into the lowest paying jobs, Manhattan's Chinatown was the only place they can receive affordable housing and be around other Chinese people despite the heavy Cantonese dominance until the 1990s since the more Mandarin-speaking enclaves in Flushing and Elmhurst would be too expensive to rent a vacancy.
The Fuzhou immigrants could often speak Mandarin in addition to their native Fuzhounese language (also known as Fuzhou dialect). While all of the other Mandarin speakers were settling in and creating a more Mandarin-speaking Chinatown or Mandarin Town (國語埠) in Flushing's Chinatown and Elmhurst, Queens because they could not relate to the traditional Cantonese dominance in Manhattan's Chinatown, the Fuzhou immigrants were the only exceptional non-Cantonese Chinese group to largely settle in Manhattan's Chinatown. This is due to the Mandarin speaking enclaves being too middle class and expensive and since many Fuzhou immigrants came without immigration paperwork and forced into low paying jobs, Manhattan's Chinatown was the only place for them to be around other Chinese people and receive affordable housing despite Manhattan's Chinatown's traditional Cantonese dominance that lasted until the 1990s
The Fuzhou immigrants often speak Mandarin along with their Fuzhou dialect and while all of the other Mandarin speakers were settling in and creating a more Mandarin-Speaking Chinatown or Mandarin Town (國語埠) in Flushing's Chinatown, and an even smaller one in Elmhurst all in Queens because they could not relate to the traditional Cantonese dominance in Manhattan's Chinatown, the Fuzhou immigrants were the only exceptional Non-Cantonese Chinese group to largely settle in Manhattan's Chinatown. This is due to the Mandarin speaking enclaves being too middle class and expensive and since many Fuzhou immigrants came without immigration paperwork and forced into low paying jobs, Manhattan's Chinatown was the only place for them to be around other Chinese people and receive affordable housing despite Manhattan's Chinatown's traditional Cantonese dominance that lasted until the 1990s