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Is there really any single Chinese dialect I could hope to learn that would enable me to communicate with a billion Chinese speakers?

• hawkice 12y ago
  Mandarin is the winner on that front. It's the lingua franca everywhere in China sans Hong Kong, although a lot/most people in some areas speak it only as a second/third language.
  • gurkendoktor 12y ago
    Same in Taiwan, and even in Singapore I've had fun speaking Mandarin with random hawkers. Taiwan is a great place to learn Chinese without having to mess with the Great Firewall and all that :)
• UrMomReadsHN 12y ago
  No. They are mostly mutually unintelligible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language
  • rahimnathwani 12y ago
    Yes, but most Chinese people can speak Mandarin, even if it's not their mother tongue. So learning Mandarin will indeed enable you to converse with any of a billion people.
• dengnan 12y ago
  Chinese here. Learn Mandarin. It is based on Northern dialects which are spoken by 80% of Chinese people. And it is the official dialect used in China. People are required to use Mandarin in Universities. People are also required to learn Mandarin in school. Northern part of China is mainly flat field with little mountain, which makes the dialects similar. Some Northern dialects can even communicate without trouble. On the other hand, the Southern part of China has lots of hills and mountains making people move infrequently (in old days, before cars/trains/etc.) That's why most dialects are from Southern part. Cantonese is one of the typical Southern dialect. However, most Southern dialects cannot communicate with each other even if their speakers were live only miles away.