The name of this forum

Yoda

I don't think that the "(Cantonese / Mandarin)" rubric in the forum name is necessary or correct. Chinese is a collection of languages which use the same writing system, but differ as considerably as to Romanian and Portuguese. Statistics from Ramsey's Languages of China:

71.5% are Putonghua (Mandarin) speakers (Beijing and all the North and Southwest)
8.5% are Wu speakers (around Shanghai and Zhejiang)
5.0% are Yue (Cantonese) speakers (Guangdong, Guangxi, and overseas)
4.8% are Xiang speakers (Hunan)
4.1% are Min speakers (Fujian and southern coastal areas)
3.7% are Hakka speakers (widely scattered from Sichuan to Taiwan)
2.4% are Gan speakers (Jiangxi)

Giblet

It's alphabethical at least.

Grand_Izer

Well to be fair, the majority of Chinese language users in Ireland will be fluent in either Cantonese or Mandarin (or even both).

Yoda

Why?

Cloud

Removed superfluous limitations.

Grand_Izer

Originally posted by Yoda
Why?

This issue is sorta defunct now but ah well

The ratio of Cantonese to Mandarin speakers is a lot higher in western countries than one might expect. A sizeable majority of early Chinese immigrants to England/Ireland will have originated from Cantonese speaking areas (notably Hong Kong).
For people interested in learning a Chinese language, the 2 most common choices would be Cantonese (due to the large number of speakers overseas) and Mandarin. Also for business purposes, Mandarin is also perceived as an attractive language - the unlikely phrase "China's billion customers" springs to mind.

DEmeant0r

I think we should leave it as Chinese, I think it's fine.

DEmeant0r

The name of the boards is set and not changing, so I think there's no point in this topic. locked.