[AlvinofDiaspar]

Written Chinese is the same (though there are two scripts for it; Traditional is used by Hong Kong and Taiwan; Simplified by Mainland China); there are multiple dialects (which may use different words in writing, but it's fairly minor)

As to Chicago - it was never a centre of Cantonese-speaking immigrants from Hong Kong like Vancouver/Toronto was.

AoD

 

[the lemur]

That depends on who you speak to because by default most Chinese are bilingual. A Cantonese speaking person will speak Mandarin to me but Cantonese with another Cantonese person. A friend of mine speaks Cantonese but is from somewhere near Shanghai. Many people speak Cantonese and Mandarin equally well. How to define who speak Cantonese and who Mandarin? This is why I think this question doesn't have a good answer.

That's usually defined as the first language learned or the one used most of the time in the home. I think there's still a large proportion of the Chinese population here that either originated from pre-handover HK rather than from the mainland or has been here long enough that Mandarin is really not in the picture for them beyond understanding and speaking a little. That rules it out as their first language. You would expect more Cantonese/Mandarin bilingualism from people coming here from Guangdong, but Cantonese would still have the upper hand.

 

[wild goose chase]

Written Chinese is the same (though there are two scripts for it; Traditional is used by Hong Kong and Taiwan; Simplified by Mainland China); there are multiple dialects (which may use different words in writing, but it's fairly minor)

As to Chicago - it was never a centre of Cantonese-speaking immigrants from Hong Kong like Vancouver/Toronto was.

AoD

That's usually defined as the first language learned or the one used most of the time in the home. I think there's still a large proportion of the Chinese population here that either originated from pre-handover HK rather than from the mainland or has been here long enough that Mandarin is really not in the picture for them beyond understanding and speaking a little. That rules it out as their first language. You would expect more Cantonese/Mandarin bilingualism from people coming here from Guangdong, but Cantonese would still have the upper hand.

Is it generally the case that the older the Chinese community in a city, the more likely non-Mandarin languages or dialects would be spoken? On the one hand, earlier immigrants in general spoke local languages rather than the "standardized" one of the country they came from. On the other hand, the older the wave of immigrant, the more assimilated, and less likely any heritage language is spoken. I hear that almost all of the mainland Chinese immigrants speak Mandarin now. That would explain why so many American towns whose people of Chinese descent are very recent or temporary workers/students have Mandarin-speakers but not Cantonese.

Or is there a significant wave of non-Mandarin speaking people of Chinese descent still arriving?

 

[the lemur]

The difference between "dialect" and "language" is loaded with all sorts of political and social implications, which is why you'll find cases where what are considered different "languages" have only minor variations in grammar, pronunciation, and spelling, while in other cases you'll have very different "dialects" which are not mutually comprehensible at all, but considered the same "language". Chinese and Arabic are examples which effectively aren't one specific language, but a language family: groups of languages descended from the same original classical language and considered "dialects", but in practice are very different from each other. To give it a European context: Portuguese and Romanian both originated from Latin, but we wouldn't think of them as dialects of the same language. But you will find differences as great as between those two languages or more in the various Chinese "dialects".

One thing which helps Chinese stay a bit more unified is the written language, but even then, there are differences between dialects, plus the fact that some regions (Taiwan and Hong Kong, for example) still use "traditional" characters, while the mainland and Singapore switched to a "simplified" system developed in the 20th century.

In the case of Arabic, though, you do have a kind of lingua franca: Modern Standard Arabic, which has no native speakers of its own but it is taught, used and understood and has official status in some two dozen countries, in contrast to Classical Arabic, which is used for religious purposes and is in turn the source of over two dozen local/national varieties of Arabic.

The difference between varieties of "Chinese" can be like the differences between two different groups within a single language family. In your example of Portuguese and Romanian, they're pretty far apart, not mutually intelligible but still both Romance languages descended from Latin. Two languages both described as "Chinese" could still be as different as French and German (different branches of the same Indo-European family).

 

[the lemur]

Is it generally the case that the older the Chinese community in a city, the more likely non-Mandarin languages or dialects would be spoken? On the one hand, earlier immigrants in general spoke local languages rather than the "standardized" one of the country they came from. On the other hand, the older the wave of immigrant, the more assimilated, and less likely any heritage language is spoken. I hear that almost all of the mainland Chinese immigrants speak Mandarin now. That would explain why so many American towns whose people of Chinese descent are very recent or temporary workers/students have Mandarin-speakers but not Cantonese.

Or is there a significant wave of non-Mandarin speaking people of Chinese descent still arriving?

To address your last question first: anecdotally, I doubt it. A friend of mine is from Shanghai, speaks Mandarin and says virtually no one uses Shanghainese as a first language now; she has to use English to talk to Cantonese shop staff.

Singapore's nominally Mandarin-speaking population is actually mostly speakers of other dialects, such as Teochew, a few generations removed from their mainland origins, but the government is adamant that people learn and use 'proper' Mandarin.

Recent arrivals from European countries are likely to speak standard German, Italian, etc., having been educated in it, but may be bidialectal in the standard and a regional dialect. Earlier generations of immigrants would have brought their own dialects over and perhaps not used or been familiar with the standard (if one existed at the time). You can see this in Mennonite communities as well.

 

[TrickyRicky]

I think it's worth repeating in this discussion that I believe 90 percent of the original Chinese immigrants to Canada including the Chinese part of my ancestry came from Taishan, a small county of Guangdong Province in Southern China. It's about as significant in China as Corner Brook Newfoundland is to Canada. This matters because this poor irrelevant corner of China has had an outsized influence not only on the patterns of immigration of later Chinese but also on our entire understanding and perception of China and the Chinese people in North America.

 

[to_l]

One reason Cantonese seems more common is the widespread popularity of Hong Kong popular culture in the 80s and 90s which meant a lot of overseas Chinese "knew" the language even if they weren't Cantonese. On the flip side, Chinese in SE Asian countries, such as Malaysia, will officially learn Mandarin in school, if they attend a Chinese language school, usually in addition to whatever other dialect they speak at home. So, in this instance, you get people who are exposed to both Cantonese and Manadarin, who might actually identify another dialect as their mother tounge.

 

[Johnny Au]

I view Mandarin and Cantonese as distinct languages for the same reason as French and Spanish being distinct from each other (and Catalan is distinct from both French and Spanish).

Statistics Canada also views Mandarin and Cantonese as distinct languages (though it does include a category for an unspecified Chinese language, which can include Wu, Min-nan, and Hakka as well).

 

[avonord]

Mandarin speakers are outnumbering the Cantonese speakers in Toronto now. And some are filthy rich.

 

[Hairball]

Even then a lot of immigrants are still Cantonese, though obviously other dialects are spoken far more now, such as Mandarin.

I was born here and I'm fluent in Cantonese, can speak some Mandarin but not too good at it. I wouldn't say they are separate languages though.

 

[wild goose chase]

I view Mandarin and Cantonese as distinct languages for the same reason as French and Spanish being distinct from each other (and Catalan is distinct from both French and Spanish).

Statistics Canada also views Mandarin and Cantonese as distinct languages (though it does include a category for an unspecified Chinese language, which can include Wu, Min-nan, and Hakka as well).

It seems like the US stats don't partition out Mandarin and Cantonese as separate languages and uses "Chinese", but Australia, like Canada does.

 

[Mr.Tang]

Mandarin and Cantonese are not very similar - besides being able to handle the basics of ordering at a restaurant - I would not say MOST Chinese in Toronto can speak both (and that is certainly not a default - written language aside).

There are maybe 8 million people in Hong Kong who primary speak Cantonese, 100 million people in Guangdong and most speak both Cantonese and Mandarin, there are another 1 billion people in the rest of China would would not be likely to speak any Cantonese. As immigration to Canada gets spread more equally across greater China, Mandarin speakers will make up a larger proportion just based on math. Lastly, there are rich and poor immigrants from almost every country.

 

[wild goose chase]

What about people of Chinese descent that in terms of Chinese language(s) only speak a form of Chinese that is neither Mandarin nor Cantonese? Are they at all common?

 

[Johnny Au]

Wu (primarily spoken in the Yangtze Delta region, which includes Shanghai) is one of the most spoken Chinese languages, excluding Mandarin and Cantonese.

 

[wild goose chase]

Wu (primarily spoken in the Yangtze Delta region, which includes Shanghai) is one of the most spoken Chinese languages, excluding Mandarin and Cantonese.

You rarely hear about these other Chinese languages in Canada or the US it seems. I don't think I've ever heard the Wu language or would know what it sounds like, though I can tell that Mandarin sounds very different from Cantonese. The only Chinese-origin languages I've really heard about and heard spoken in real life are Mandarin, Cantonese and Taiwanese.

I also hear that non-Mandarin languages in China are on the decline, as Mandarin replaces all the other tongues as a unifying language the way English did with Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh etc. or the way Parisian French replaced languages like Occitan, Alsatian, Breton etc. Linguistic diversity on a whole worldwide seems on the decline. But perhaps there are a lot of people still speaking the diverse Chinese languages because they are large populations in their home areas, even if they don't emigrate overseas to places like Toronto.

Do people speaking these local Chinese languages feel strongly about keeping them, or are they more eager to switch to Mandarin or English? I've heard that in some parts of India such as the southern parts, people strongly resent Hindi being imposed and would rather speak languages like Tamil or Bengali, or even just English plus their local language.