Chinese languages have dominated Macau’s linguistic ecology, especially in termsof the number of speakers of these languages and the social prestige encoded by them. The dominant Chinese variety in Macau, like its neighbours of Hong Kong and Canton (a.k.a.Guangzhou), is Cantonese. In many ways, the contemporary linguistic ecology of Macau closely resembles Hong Kong’s ecology, but similarities might mask more fundamentaldifferences between the two Special Administrative Regions (SARs). In particular, there is a strong tradition of Hokkien use in Macau and good evidence that the earliest Chinese residentsof territory were Hokkien fishers. In the years before the 1999 handover of Macau to Chinese administration, Cantonese, a standardising language, enjoyed greater degrees of codificationto became a recognised lingua franca within the region. Although Putonghua (a.k.a. Mandarin) was not widely spoken in Macau before the 1999 handover, it has enjoyed significanceinfluence on the teaching and learning of its related written standard language, Standard Written Chinese (SWC), and increasing numbers of speakers claim knowledge of Putonghua sincethe 1999 handover.