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Mandarin or Cantonese? 普通话还是广东话 Pǔtōnghuà háishì Guǎngdōnghuà
Mandarin or Cantonese in Australia is not the question it was twenty years ago. Mandarin passed Cantonese somewhere between the 2006 and 2011 Census and has not stopped climbing since, which makes the numbers easy and the decision harder — because the right answer still depends on whose kitchen table you are hoping to sit at.
The short answer
Most Australians should learn Mandarin. Some genuinely should not.
Mandarin or Cantonese in Australia comes down to one question, and it is not which language is bigger. I teach Mandarin for a living, so take the first half of that heading with the salt it deserves — and the second half seriously, because it costs me work to say it.
Mandarin
普通话Learn it if
- You want to talk to more Chinese Australians rather than a particular few. Mandarin is spoken at home by 685,274 people here; Cantonese by 295,281.
- Your reason points outward — work, study, trade, travel, a transfer to Shanghai, an HSK certificate on a CV.
- You are starting from nothing. The textbooks, the apps, the podcasts and the teachers all exist in quantity, which matters more in year one than anything else on this page.
- Your family is from the mainland outside Guangdong, from Taiwan, or from Singapore — or you simply do not know, which is common and fine.
Cantonese
广东话Learn it if
- There is a specific person you are learning for, and they speak Cantonese. A grandmother in Hurstville is a better reason than six hundred thousand strangers.
- Your family came through Hong Kong, Macau or Guangdong — which covers most Chinese Australian families whose roots here go back more than two generations.
- You want the films, the Canto-pop and the yum cha trolley in their own language. Nothing about Mandarin gets you those.
We do not teach Cantonese, so this column sends you somewhere else. That is the honest answer and I would rather give it than a useful one.
What changed
Cantonese was the Chinese language of Australia for 150 years
From the goldfields of the 1850s until some point in the late 2000s, if you heard Chinese in an Australian street it was most likely Cantonese. The families who built Chinatown came from the villages of the Pearl River Delta, and they brought their own language with them. Then the Census caught the moment it changed.
Mandarin spoken at home Cantonese spoken at home
The crossing happened between the 2006 and the 2011 Census. The Census is a snapshot taken every five years, so that is as precisely as anyone can honestly date it — one night in 2006 Cantonese was still ahead by 23,952 people, and by the next count Mandarin led by 72,737.
Cantonese is not disappearing, and anyone who tells you otherwise has not looked. It has grown at every single Census: 225,307 speakers in 2001, 295,281 in 2021. That is a 31% increase over twenty years, and it has held a steady 1.2% of the Australian population the whole way through. What happened is not a decline. Mandarin arrived in volume and tripled, and a share of a growing pie fell while the pie grew.
Where
The answer is different in Sydney than it is in Hobart
National figures flatten the thing that actually matters to you, which is your own city. Here is Mandarin or Cantonese in Australia state by state, from the 2021 Census.
| State or territory | Mandarin | Cantonese | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | 270,540 | 148,894 | 1.8 : 1 |
| Western Australia | 51,716 | 19,680 | 2.6 : 1 |
| Victoria | 221,694 | 82,401 | 2.7 : 1 |
| Queensland | 83,488 | 27,407 | 3.0 : 1 |
| Northern Territory | 2,520 | 802 | 3.1 : 1 |
| South Australia | 32,120 | 10,148 | 3.2 : 1 |
| Australian Capital Territory | 14,393 | 4,225 | 3.4 : 1 |
| Tasmania | 8,123 | 1,526 | 5.3 : 1 |
Sydney is where the gold rush arrivals landed and where the Hong Kong families came in the 1980s and 90s, and a century and a half later that history is still sitting in the Census. New South Wales holds half of all the Cantonese spoken in Australia while holding well under half of the Mandarin. Go the other way and you get Tasmania at 5.3 to 1, where the Chinese community is recent, largely student and academic, and almost entirely Mandarin-speaking.
One detail worth stating rather than rounding off: Mandarin is the most common language used at home after English in every state and territory except the Northern Territory, where the languages ahead of it are Kriol and Djambarrpuyngu.
Suburb by suburb the spread is wider still — from Clayton in Melbourne at 5.8 Mandarin speakers to every Cantonese one, down to East Killara in Sydney at 1.4 to 1. We mapped twenty-nine of them, with the Census figures for each, in the Chinese suburbs of Australia.
Hear it
Mandarin or Cantonese: not accents of each other
This is the part that surprises people. Mandarin and Cantonese are written with much the same characters, and a literate speaker of one can read the other on a page. Out loud they are about as close as English is to Dutch. Press both buttons on the first row and the argument is over in four seconds.
The red line under each phrase is its romanisation. Mandarin is in pinyin and Cantonese in Yale, and both carry the tone the same way, in the marks above the vowels. Cantonese has a second common system, Jyutping, which writes the tone as a number instead — néih hóu becomes nei5 hou2 — and that is the one most dictionaries and apps will show you, so it is worth recognising. Neither tells you much until you have heard it, so every row also carries a rough English respelling to get you started, with the audio there to correct you.
Hello
Mandarin
你好nǐ hǎo say it: nee HOW
Cantonese
你好néih hóu say it: nay HOH
Identical characters. Not a related sound between them — which is the whole point of this page.
Thank you — for something small, or to get someone’s attention
Mandarin
谢谢xièxie say it: SYEH-syeh
Does the work of both Cantonese phrases.
Cantonese
唔該m̀h gōi say it: mm GOY
No Mandarin equivalent at all. Used for a small favour, for “excuse me”, and as “please”.
Thank you — for a gift, or something that cost someone
Mandarin
谢谢xièxie say it: SYEH-syeh
Same phrase again. Mandarin does not make the split.
Cantonese
多謝dō jeh say it: daw DZEH
Using 唔該 here, for a real gift, can land as ungrateful. The distinction matters at a family dinner.
How much is it?
Mandarin
多少钱duōshao qián say it: dwor-SHAOW chyen
Cantonese
幾錢géi chín say it: gay TSEEN
Different words, not a different accent on the same words.
The Cantonese audio here is a Hong Kong voice reading Cantonese wording, not a Mandarin sentence with a Cantonese accent painted on. If you are weighing up Mandarin or Cantonese, it is worth hearing them properly before you choose.
Your situation
Nine reasons people actually give me, and what I tell them
Nobody emails me asking which language has more speakers. They tell me about a person, a job or a trip, and Mandarin or Cantonese in Australia turns out to be a different question for each of them. So here are the real ones.
“My partner’s parents were born in Hong Kong and their English is limited.”
Cantonese
“My partner’s parents are from Shanghai, Beijing or Taipei.”
Mandarin
“I want to be able to chat to people at the shops in Box Hill or Sunnybank.”
Mandarin
“Same thing, but the shops are in Hurstville or on the Chatswood mall.”
Either — you will hear both
“It is for work. We deal with suppliers and clients in China.”
Mandarin
“My grandmother is 88 and I have never had a proper conversation with her.”
Whichever she speaks
“I want my kids to have the language I lost.”
The one your parents use
“I am going to China for three weeks and want to be useful.”
Mandarin
“Honestly, I just find the language interesting.”
Mandarin — more to learn with
The pattern behind Mandarin or Cantonese in Australia is simple enough once you see it. If you are learning for a person, the answer is whatever that person speaks and no statistic overrules it. If you are learning for a situation — a job, a city, a country, a future you cannot specify yet — Mandarin is the percentage play, and the Census is the reason.
Questions
Questions people ask me about this
Is Mandarin or Cantonese more useful in Australia?
Mandarin or Cantonese in Australia is not a close contest on the numbers, and the margin is widening: 685,274 people used Mandarin at home at the 2021 Census against 295,281 for Cantonese, and it is the most common language after English in every state and territory bar the Northern Territory. But usefulness is not only arithmetic. If the people you want to talk to are a Cantonese-speaking family, Mandarin is close to useless for that purpose, however many speakers it has.
When did Mandarin overtake Cantonese in Australia?
Between the 2006 and the 2011 Census. In 2006 Cantonese was still ahead, 244,553 to 220,601. By 2011 Mandarin led, 336,410 to 263,673. Because the Census is taken every five years nobody can date the crossing more precisely than that window, and anyone quoting an exact year is guessing.
Is Cantonese dying out in Australia?
No, and the Census says so plainly. Cantonese speakers rose from 225,307 in 2001 to 295,281 in 2021, and Cantonese has held 1.2% of the Australian population at every Census across those twenty years. It has not shrunk; Mandarin has grown around it, roughly tripling over the same period.
If I learn Mandarin, will I understand Cantonese?
Spoken, no. Not a sentence of it. They share a writing system, so you will often read a Cantonese sign or menu without trouble, and the grammar is close enough that the second language is easier than the first was. Out loud, though, they are separate languages, not accents, and knowing one does not let you follow the other.
Which one do Chinese schools in Australia teach?
Mandarin, almost universally — it is Mandarin that appears in the Australian Curriculum as a language subject, and Mandarin that the community weekend schools have largely moved to. Cantonese is mostly kept alive at home, in a handful of community schools, and in Chinatown. That is a real part of why the generation gap at a family dinner table so often runs Cantonese grandparents, English grandchildren, and nobody in the middle.
Sources. Every figure on this page is from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The national series is read from the 2021 Census QuickStats for Australia and from the equivalent page for each earlier Census, each of which also carries the previous count as a comparison column — so every figure above appears on two separately published pages. The 2021 national counts are confirmed again in the ABS article Cultural diversity of Australia.
QuickStats lists only the five most common languages per state, and Cantonese falls outside that five in Victoria, South Australia, the ACT and the Northern Territory. The state table is therefore built from the ABS Data API Census table of language used at home by remoteness area, summed within each state. That method reproduces every state figure QuickStats does publish to within 0.15%, and the national total to 0.002%.
Suburb figures are from each suburb’s own QuickStats record and are set out on the suburbs page. Cantonese romanisation is Jyutping, checked headword by headword rather than written from memory.
Keep reading
More on Chinese Australia
Chinese Australians
The hub: history, language, communities and the people.
CommunitiesChinese suburbs of Australia
Twenty-nine suburbs mapped, and what is spoken in each.
The languagesMandarin vs Cantonese
How Mandarin and Cantonese differ in tones, script and speaker numbers, worldwide.
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