@Elsa Shawcross: That's really interesting! I had no idea that most Chinese people in the Philippines speak Fookien.

It seems like a lot of schools favor Mandarin when it comes to formal education, no matter what dialect the people nearby usually speak. My Australian friend was forced to go to Chinese school on the weekends by her parents to study Mandarin, but she would just spend that time speaking Cantonese with her friends since the Chinese people in her community (including her parents) spoke Cantonese.

We've traveled together to various South East Asian countries and I've seen how she struggles when people speak Mandarin to her but she's perfectly fluent with Cantonese. (I can only get an impression though since I don't speak either dialect.) She says she can't read or write Chinese very well either. That said, she's fairly fluent in Japanese, totally bilingual in English/Cantonese, and is learning Polish since her boyfriend is from Poland.

And here I struggle with learning just one new language.