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).
Do note that this number also includes speakers of Mandarin dialects, like Sichuanese, which are extremely challenging for people who only speak Standard Mandarin to understand. Yue language native speakers number only 60 million. This includes Cantonese, which is the Guangzhou dialect of Yue.