Different dialects of Cantonese are spoken depending on area. The most prestigious is the Guangzhou dialect, also referred to simply as "Cantonese". The Guangzhou dialect is the lingua franca of not just Guangdong province, but also the overseas Cantonese diaspora, spoken by about 70 million Cantonese worldwide. The Guangzhou dialect is also spoken in Hong Kong, a financial and cultural capital of southern China. In addition to the Guangzhou dialect, the Taishan dialect, one of the sei yap or siyi (四邑) dialects that come from Guangdong counties where a majority of Exclusion-era Cantonese-Chinese immigrants emigrated, continues to be spoken both by recent immigrants from Southern China and even by third-generation Chinese Americans of Cantonese ancestry alike.
The dialectical situation is now changing in the United States; recent Chinese emigrants originate from many different areas including mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South-east Asia. Those from mainland China and Taiwan all speak Standard Mandarin (putonghua/guoyu) and their native local dialects, which will include dialects of Min (Hokkien and other Fujianese dialects), dialects of Wu, dialects of Mandarin, and dialects of Cantonese. As a result Standard Mandarin is increasingly becoming more common as the Chinese lingua franca amongst the overseas Chinese.
- See Standard Cantonese for a discussion of the sounds of Standard Cantonese and pages on individual dialects for their phonologies.
Cantonese and Mandarin
Although Standard Mandarin (Putonghua/guoyu) is the standard and official language in mainland China and Taiwan and is spoken by nearly everyone in addition to their native local dialects (which will include Cantonese in Guangdong), Cantonese is one of the main languages in many overseas Chinese communities including Hong Kong, South-east Asia, North America, and Europe. This is because many of the emmigrants and/or their ancestors originated from Guangdong, before the widespread use of Mandarin, or from Hong Kong, where Mandarin is not used.
In some ways, Cantonese is a more conservative language than Mandarin, and in other ways it is not. For example many southern dialects including Cantonese have retained consonant endings from older varieties of Chinese that have been lost in Mandarin. On the other hand Cantonese have split tones and merged other sounds.
The words for "I/me" (我) and "hunger" (餓) are written using very similar characters, but in Mandarin the pronunciation of the two words is quite different to each other ("wǒ" vs. "è"), whereas in Cantonese they are pronounced similarly (ngo5 vs ngo6 respectively, a difference in tones). Since the written form of the two words suggest a similar pronunciation to each other, it can be assumed that their ancient pronunciation was indeed similar, but in Mandarin the two syllables have diverged in pronunciations over time, whereas in Cantonese the two have remained similar to each other, on this basis some say that "ngo5" and "ngo6" are closer to the older sounds than Mandarin "wǒ" and "è", even though the ancient pronunciation has also not been maintained in Cantonese.
The Taishan dialect, which in the US nowadays is heard mostly spoken by Chinese actors in old American TV shows and movies (e.g. Hop Sing on Bonanza), is even more conservative than Cantonese. It has preserved the initial /n/ sound of words, whereas Hong Kong Cantonese has changed it to an /l/ sound in many cases ("ngàuh lām" instead of "ngàuh nām" for "stewed beef," but keeping "nàahm" for "south"); this seems to have arisen from some kind of street affectation as opposed to systematic phonological change. The common word for "who" in Taishan is "sŭe," which is almost the same as in Mandarin, whereas Cantonese has changed it to "bīn go."
Cantonese sounds quite different from Mandarin, mainly because it has a different set of syllables. The rules for syllable formation are different; for example, there are syllables ending in non-nasal consonants (e.g. "lak"). It also has a different set of tones. Cantonese is generally considered to have 6 or 7 tones, the choice depending on whether a traditional distinction between a high-level and a high-falling tone is observed; the two tones in question have largely merged into a single, high-level tone, especially in Hong Kong Cantonese. Many (especially older) descriptions of the Cantonese sound system give a somewhat higher number of tones, e.g. 10. This is chiefly because, in these accounts, a separate tone category is assigned to syllables ending in p, t, or k for each of the three pitch levels in which such syllables occur. Most linguists today consider this an unnecessary complication.
Mandarin has 4 tones plus a "neutral" tone.
Cantonese preserves many syllable-final sounds that Mandarin has lost or merged. For example, the characters, (裔,屹,藝,艾,憶,譯,懿,誼,肄,翳,邑,佚) are all pronounced yi4 in Mandarin, but they are all different in Cantonese (jeoi6, ngat6, ngai6, ngaai6, yik1, yik6, yi3, yi4, si3, ai3, yap1, and yat6, respectively). Mandarin also lacks the syllable-final sound "m"; the final "m" and final "n" from older varieties of Chinese have merged into "n" in Mandarin, eg Cantonese "taam6" (譚) and "taan4" (壇) versus Mandarin tán, "yim4" (鹽) and "yin4" (言) versus Mandarn yán, "tim1" (添) and "tin1" (天) versus Mandarin tiān, "ham4" (含) and "hon4" (寒) versus Mandarin hán. The examples are too numerous to list. Furthermore, nasals can be independent syllables in Cantonese words, eg "ng5" (五) "five," and "m4" (唔) "not".
However, Mandarin's vowel system is somewhat more conservative than Cantonese's, in that many diphthongs preserved in Mandarin have merged or been lost in Cantonese. Also, Mandarin makes a three-way distinction among alveolar, alveopalatal, and retroflex fricatives, distinctions that are not made by Cantonese. Eg jiang (將) and zhang (張) are two distinct syllables in Mandarin, but in Cantonese they have the same sound.
There are clear sound correspondences in, for instance, the tones. For example, a fourth-tone (low falling tone) word in Cantonese is usually second tone (rising tone) in Mandarin.
This can be partly explained by their common descent from Middle Chinese (spoken), still with its different dialects. One way of counting tones gives Cantonese 9 tones, Mandarin 4 and Middle Chinese 8. Within this system, Mandarin merged the so-called "yin" and "yang" sounds, while Cantonese not only preserved these, but split one of them into 2 over time. Also, within this system, Cantonese is the only Chinese dialect known to have split its tones rather than merge them since the time of Middle Chinese.
Most universities in the US do not teach and have not historically taught Cantonese. Most only offer Chinese classes in Standard Mandarin because it is the official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China. In addition, Mandarin serves as the lingua franca used between people who do not speak the same dialect, and is spoken and understood by virtually everyone in mainland China and Taiwan. In addition, Mandarin was the court dialect formerly used in Imperial China. However, Cantonese courses can be found at some US universities. The University of Hawaii, Brigham Young University, San Jose State University and Cornell University are some examples. In Canada, where Cantonese is one of the most commonly spoken languages among immigrants, Cantonese courses can be taken in connection with various universities such as the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia. The language is also commonly taught in 'heritage language' programs in the public schools in areas where many children have parents who speak the language.
Written Cantonese
- Main article: Written Cantonese
Standard written Chinese is, in essence, written Standard Mandarin. When reading aloud, Chinese people who do not speak Standard Mandarin usually use their local language's sound values for the characters. However, this written language sounds stilted and unnatural in some cases. Written Cantonese is the Cantonese language written as it is actually spoken. Unusual for a regional (i.e., non-Mandarin) Chinese language, Cantonese has a written form, developed over the last few decades in Hong Kong, and includes many unique characters that are not found in standard written Chinese. Readers who do not know Cantonese often find written Cantonese odd, and even unintelligible in parts, as it is different from standard written Chinese in grammar and vocabulary. However, written Cantonese is commonly used informally among Cantonese speakers. Circumstances where written Cantonese is used include conversations through instant messaging services, entertainment magazines and entertainment sections of newspapers, and sometimes subtitles in Hong Kong movies, and advertisements. It rarely finds its way into the subtitles of Western movies or TV shows, though The Simpsons is a notable exception. To Cantonese speakers, their own language is more expressive, and is better received among speakers of Cantonese.
Records of legal documents in Hong Kong also use written Cantonese sometimes, in order to record exactly what a witness has said.
Colloquial Cantonese is rarely used in formal forms of writing; formal written communication is almost always in standardized Mandarin or hanyu, albeit still pronounced in Cantonese. However, written colloquial Cantonese does exist; it is used mostly for transcription of speech in tabloids, in some broadsheets, for some subtitles, for personal diary, and in other informal forms of communication such as BBS on internet or e-mails. It is not uncommon to see the front page of a Cantonese paper written in hanyu, while the entertainment sections are, at least partly, in Cantonese. The vernacular writing system has evolved over time from a process of modifying characters to express lexical and syntactic elements found in Cantonese but not the standard written language. In spite of their vernacular origin and informal use, these characters have become so important in the Canton region for communication that the Hong Kong Government has incorporated them into a special Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS), as the same as special characters used for proper nouns.
A problem for the student of Cantonese is the lack of a widely accepted, standardized transcription system. Another problem is with Chinese characters: Cantonese uses the same system of characters as Mandarin, but it often uses different words, which have to be written with different characters. At least this is the case in Hong Kong, but in the Canton area of mainland China, Cantonese is written with the exact same characters as Mandarin, though the characters stand for words not actually used in Cantonese. An example may help to clarify this:
The written word for "to be" is 是 in spoken Mandarin (pronounced shì) but is 係 in spoken Cantonese (pronounced hai6 in Cantonese, xì in Mandarin). In formal written Chinese 是 is normally used, though 係 can be found in classical literature. In Hong Kong, 係 is often used in colloquial written Cantonese and therefore actively avoided and discouraged in formal writing; on the other hand, the use of 係 is relatively widespread in both mainland China and in Taiwan, in government publications and product descriptions for example.
Many characters used in colloquial Cantonese writings are made up by putting a mouth radical (口) on the left hand side of another more well known character to indicate that the character is read like the right hand side, but it is only used phonetically in the Cantonese context. The characters [2] 㗎, 叻, 吓, 吔, 呃, 咁, 咗, 咩, 哂, 哋, 唔, 唥, 唧, 啱, 啲, 喐, 喥, 喺, 嗰, 嘅, 嘜, 嘞, 嘢, 嘥, 嚟, 嚡, 嚿, 囖 etc. are commonly used in Cantonese writing. As not all Cantonese words can be found in current encoding system, or the users simply don't know how to enter such characters on the computer, in very informal speech, Cantonese tends to use extremely simple romanization (e.g. use D as 啲), symbols (add an English letter "o" in front of another Chinese character; e.g. 㗎 is defined in Unicode, but will not display in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, hence the proxy o架 is often used), homophones (e.g. use 果 as 嗰), and Chinese characters of different Mandarin meaning (e.g. 乜, 係, 俾 etc.) to compose a message. For example, "你喺嗰喥好喇, 千祈咪搞佢啲嘢。" is often written in easier form as "你o係果度好喇, 千祈咪搞佢D野。" (character-by-character, approximately 'you, be, there (two characters), good, (final particle), thousand, pray, don't, mess, he/she, genitive particle, thing', translation 'You'd better stay there, and please don't mess with his/her stuff.')
Other common characters are unique to Cantonese or deviated from their Mandarin usage, they include: 乜, 冇, 仔, 佢, 佬, 係, 俾, 靚 etc.
The words represented by these characters are sometimes cognates with pre-existing Chinese words. However, their colloquial Cantonese pronunciations have diverged from formal Cantonese pronunciations. For example, in formal written Chinese, 無 (mou4) is the character used for "without". In spoken Cantonese, 冇 (mou5) has the same usage, meaning, and pronunciation as 無, differing only by tone. 冇 represents the spoken Cantonese form of the word "without", while 無 represents the word used in Mandarin (pinyin: wú) and formal Chinese writing. However, 無 is still used in some instances in spoken Chinese in both dialects, like 無論 ("no matter what"). A Cantonese-specific example is the doublet 來/嚟, which means "to come". 來(loi4) is used in formal writing; 嚟 (lei4) is the spoken Cantonese form.
History of Cantonese
Qin and Han Dynasties (秦漢時期)
In ancient China, Guangdong was called Nanyue (南越), and very few Han people (漢人) lived there. Therefore, the Chinese language was not widely spoken there at that time. However, in the Qin Dynasty Chinese troops moved south and conquered the Baiyue (百越) territories, and thousands of Han people began settling in the Lingnan (嶺南) area. This migration led to the Chinese language being spoken in the Lingnan area. After Zhào Tuō (趙佗) was made the Duke of Nanyue (南越王) by the Han Dynasty (漢高祖), given authority over the Nanyue region, many Han people entered the area and lived together with the Nanyue population, consequently affecting the livelihood of the Nanyue people as well as the stimulation of the spread of the Chinese language. Although thousands of Han people settled in the south they were a minority compared with the indigenous Nanyue population. Therefore, early Cantonese was a mixture of local Nanyue language and Chinese language.
Sui Dynasty (魏晉南北朝時期)
In the Sui Dynasty, Central China (中原地區) was in a period of war and discontent, and many people moved southwards to avoid war, forming the first mass migration of Han people into the South. As the population in the Lingnan area dramatically rose, the Chinese language in the south developed significantly. Thus, the Cantonese language began to develop more significant differences with central Chinese.
Tang Dynasty (唐朝時期)
As the Han population in the Guangdong area continued to rise during the Tang Dynasty, some indigenous people living in the south had been annexed culturally by the Han population, while others moved to other regions (such as Guangxi), developing their own dialects. At the time, Cantonese had been affected by central Chinese and became more standardized, further developed a more independent language structure, vocabulary, and grammar. In the Tang Dynasty, Cantonese became a mature language.
Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasty (宋元明清時期)
In the Song Dynasty, the differences between central Chinese and Cantonese became more significant, and the languages became more independent of one another. During the Yuan and Ming dynasties, Cantonese developed still further, developing its own unique characteristics.
Mid-late Qing Dynasty (清朝中後期)
In the late Qing, the dynasty had gone through a period of autarky (閉關自守), and Guangdong remained the only city that allowed trading with foreign countries. Therefore, a significant number of foreigners had only learned Cantonese, but not Mandarin[citation needed]. Moreover, for the sake trading with other countries, many Imperial government officials learned Cantonese, making the language very popular during the late Qing period[citation needed].
Modern
After the Revolution of 1911 (辛亥革命)(the Chinese bourgeois democratic revolution led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, which overthrew the Qing Dynasty, the Republic of China (中華民國) was established. At the moment when the parliament wanted to set up an official language, significant numbers of MPs demanded the adoption of Cantonese as the official language /dialect of China[citation needed]. As Cantonese MPs had already gained more than half of the votes it was relatively easy for Cantonese becoming an official language[citation needed]. However, Dr. Sun Yat-sen (also a Cantonese) considered the difficulty faced should Cantonese be universalized, therefore he persuaded MPs to vote in favour of mandarin as the official language.[citation needed] Finally Cantonese was lost by 1 vote (somebody suggested that it was 3), Mandarin became the official language of China[citation needed].
After 1949, Cantonese lost its prestige and diminished in popularity due to its reduced status as simply a Chinese dialect[citation needed]. Its popularity was also negatively affected by the Mandarin Movement (推廣普通話運動). Nowadays, Cantonese begun to Mandarinized and many youngsters do not know how to pronounce specific vocabularies in Cantonese.
See also
External links
Dictionaries
Cantonese Dictionaries or Databases with Spoken Cantonese Entries
Character-Only Cantonese Pronunciation Dictionaries
Other links