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Languages in Macau


Languages in Macau

Macau's official languages are Cantonese and Portuguese. Cantonese is the most commonly spoken language of Macau (88%, 2001 census). Mandarin is not widely spoken, though most locals are able to comprehend it to some degree. That being said, the well-educated upper class as well as staff working at major hotels and tourist attractions will usually be reasonably competent in Mandarin. English is spoken, especially by people in the tourism business. Nearly all museums and casinos have some staff with excellent English. So do many hotels, shops and restaurants, especially the up-market ones. However, English is not as widespread as in Hong Kong, and you will encounter plenty of people with little or no English (in fact, according to the 2001 census about half the population don't speak anything but Cantonese). This includes many taxi drivers and bus drivers, so be sure to have your hotel name in Chinese with you if you travel on your own, and have a good bus route map. Speakers of Portuguese won't find it very useful when talking to local residents as it is no longer compulsory in schools, but it helps a lot in understanding place names and signs. As Portuguese continues to be an official language of the SAR, government offices are required by law to have Portuguese-speaking staff on duty. All official signs in Macau are bilingual in traditional Chinese and Portuguese. Note that under the "one country two systems" policy, Macau continues to use traditional Chinese characters and not the simplified Chinese characters used in Mainland China.

The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Macau

Vong or Wong?

One of the oddities of Macau is that some Cantonese names and words that are pronounced with what in English is a "W" sound, and that in Hong Kong are transliterated with a "W", are transliterated with a "V" instead, such as in Cheoc Van (which in Hong Kong would be Cheok Wan). This can also be seen in the surname Vong (in Hong Kong Wong). No doubt Portuguese pronunciation has had an influence on this choice of transliteration. To complicate things further, this has not been done consistently so there are both Vongs and Wongs in Macau - both written with the same Chinese character.


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Macau Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.

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