I am so fascinated with Hong Kong! I also believe that if one is going to live in another country, then he or she should at least make an effort to learn their language. I read somewhere that to be able to carry on a good conversation with one in "Mandarin Chinese" one should know about 3,000 characters, and about 7,000 characters to read technical books. So, how many characters of "Cantonese" should I learn to be more than comfortable living in Hong Kong? Thank You in advance!

Hi Lonestar:

Cantonese is a dialect rather than something that can be written. If you decide to stay focused only on Hong Kong rather than the whole of China, then only learning Cantonese is not a bad choice.

However, Cantonese is actually difficult, much more difficult to learn than Mandarin. Another advantage of Mandarin is that you will have better access to mainland China as that is their main language.

Something else you will have to consider is what kind of Chinese you wish to learn - simplified (which is the mainland norm) or traditional (used in HK and Taiwan). Again, this depends on your ultimate decision of whether you want to focus on HK or China as a whole.

Regarding traditional Chinese, although it is much more complex to write, everyone will be able to read it, as mainlanders can read traditional characters. Simplied Chinese however, is so much more easier to learn, but HK people may not know how to read it.

The average Hongkongers speak pretty good English so you would not have a problem if you are thinking of moving there to stay. To me if you can master 3000 Chinese characters in Mandarin then you can even go to mainland China without any worry whatsoever. However, in mainland China there are several "dialect" mandarin even I as a mandarin speaking Chinese find it hard to understand.

If I am not mistaken all Chinese characters are same regardless of dialect

There is a Cantonese language, but no Cantonese characters. Cantonese use the Chinese characters (Mandarin), so you need approximately 3,000 characters, not to have a good conversation (for this you don't need any character) but to read a newspaper. However, if you only need to read signs on the street, 500 to 1000 could be enough.
Spoken language : more and more, Mandarin is understood in South China. I recommend you learn Mandarin rather than Cantonese, since it is closer to the written language, and it can be used in Northern and Western China as well.

3,000 is about what you need to read a newspaper. That should be enough to get by.

First of all both Mandarin and Cantonese use characters that are similar. What is more important is that in Hong Kong (as well as in Taiwan) you will have to use the old Chinese characters. Mainland China uses the simplified Chinese characters. For many words, the two (the old and simplified characters) could be rather different.
If you are relatively experienced with simplified Chinese characters, then you may be able to recognize many of the old style (fan ti zi) characters.
This difference aside, you will need to know a minimum of 3000 characters to be proficient.
Now, keep in mind that you do not necessarily need to know to write all these characters. In a way you can think of it as follows:
* You will need to be able to speak and understand in the range of 5000-7000 characters
* You can afford to be able to read much fewer than those
* and finally know how to write even fewer
and you should be OK.