Differences in reading difficulty between Taiwan and Hong Kong newspapers? I have read both 星岛日报 (published in Hong Kong) and 世界日报 (published in the US, but with an apparent focus on Taiwan) in print and online. Both papers are written in Traditional Chinese, but I notice that the Hong Kong paper is significantly more difficult to read. I notice a few Cantonese expressions scattered throughout, but this isn't enough to explain the increased difficulty. My impression is that 世界日报 uses more colloquial Mandarin expressions whereas 星岛日报 uses more conservative language harking back to Classical Chinese. Has anyone else noticed any pattern of differences in word choice or turns of phrase that would explain why Taiwanese newspapers are easier to read for Mandarin speakers than Hong Kong papers?
A historical reason,maybe.
There's a lot of immigrants from the Chinese mainland in Taiwan, those immigrants speak Mandarin.
Hong Kong people speak Cantonese,same as Guangdong,which is different from Mandarin.