Originally Posted by
YVR Cockroach
Mandarin will give you access to many of the business elite in SE Asia.
FWIW, the younger Chinese generations in Malaysia are learning Mandarin at school. Not sure how long the other dialects will last.
I think Cantonese is definitely here to stay, but you got me thinking about Shanghainese as an example of Chinese dialects that are no longer widely used. I learned enough to get by when I first came over here in the 90s because a lot of locals (especially older people) still spoke it then. Fast forward two generations, and I rarely hear it, let alone use it.