Re: Half of all Chinese people can't speak Mandarin!

Lee Sau Dan wrote:

No. Many Mandarin speakers cannot speak proper PTH, although they believe they do.

António> But I'd assume they can make themselves understood António> without resorting to writing?

Not necessarily. A common scene is to use hand signs to distinguish between 4 and 10. 

But do they communicate reasonably in PTH? The issue is not whether
they speak 'native', but whether they are able to use the language for
social interaction. I bet their PTH is better than mine, which is
inexistent.
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