I've heard roughly equal amounts of Cantonese and Mandarin in London. (In Toronto it's almost exclusively Cantonese.)
I reckon the main benefit of learning Mandarin rather than any other dialect is that you don't have to learn 2 different sets of vocabulary, since spoken Mandarin is actually vaguely similar to written Chinese. :P
(P.S. It's more like "yuk", and I can't think of a rhyme in English... maybe "ugh" with a really clipped u?)
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Date: 2010-04-27 10:22 am (UTC)I reckon the main benefit of learning Mandarin rather than any other dialect is that you don't have to learn 2 different sets of vocabulary, since spoken Mandarin is actually vaguely similar to written Chinese. :P
(P.S. It's more like "yuk", and I can't think of a rhyme in English... maybe "ugh" with a really clipped u?)