| Quote: | |  | |
| No they don't. Older people in HK don't speak Mandarin, neither do many overseas Chinese who left HK prior to around 1987, or who left mainland China a generation or so ago. There are quite a few Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia who can speak Hokkien but not Mandarin, for example.
But yes, when someone says "I'm from China and will teach you Chinese" it's going to be Mandarin. | |
| | |
Actually Adrian, all Chinese in Singapore (not sure about Malaysia) can speak Mandarin, and all Chinese Singaporeans can speak or at least understand one dialect (be it Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew etc etc).
Its a pre requisite for them to learn Mandarin at school as their second language - the Malay population will learn Bahasa and the Indians will learn Tamil. How well they speak it, is a whole kettle of fish altogether - so you're partly right in that sense.
