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Cantonese and Written Chinese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4255 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 1 of 6 30 April 2013 at 4:20pm | IP Logged |
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So I'm primarily interested in spoken Cantonese, and after reading a lot of things here about written Chinese not matching up with spoken Cantonese, and spoken Mandarin with Cantonese pronunciation, I initially decided to focus on just learning spoken Cantonese from sources I knew were speaking real Cantonese.
However, I was also familiarizing myself with several characters in written Chinese, just so it wouldn't but such a huge task if I decided to learn written Chinese later. And I found as I ran into more and more homonyms with different tones, knowing the written Chinese character helped my ability to memorize and differentiate vocabulary much better. So I've decided I want to learn written Chinese as well, but I don't really have any intentions of studying Mandarin in the near future. So in light of that I have the following questions... -As a beginner, is there a way to tell the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin pronounced like Cantonese? Or is this just something that will become clearer the more Cantonese I know? -When people talk about mandarin pronounced like Cantonese, does that mean it's just a non-Cantonese speaker reading written Chinese with the Cantonese pronunciation? Or is it something worse like using the mandarin pronunciation and just giving it some kind of Cantonese sound? -Is the difference between reading written Chinese out loud with Cantonese pronunciation and spoken Cantonese purely an issue of different grammars, or are there more problems? -If I learn a Chinese character with the jyutping, is that definitely the way to say that character in Cantonese? Sorry if the above makes no sense, I'm just trying to figure out the differences between spoken Cantonese and written Chinese in more specific details since so far I've only been able to find words of warning that they're different. At the moment my sort of cautious strategy is to only learn spoken Cantonese from spoken Cantonese sources, and to study Chinese characters independently and not assume anything about spoken Cantonese from what I read without audio. But any useful tips anyone has with do's and don'ts of learning Cantonese and written Chinese at the same time would be much appreciated. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Victor Berrjod Diglot Groupie Norway no.vvb.no/ Joined 5110 days ago 62 posts - 110 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese, Korean, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 2 of 6 30 April 2013 at 11:37pm | IP Logged |
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Mandarin is the basis for the written language, so when Cantonese people read, they will necessarily be reading Mandarin, but they may opt to use the Cantonese pronunciation of the characters. That's what we're talking about here. The more you learn, the easier it will be to distinguish, but you can be on the lookout for common giveaways like using 的 dik¹ (Mando) instead of 嘅 ge³ (Canto). Unless someone is reading out loud, you're unlikely to hear a lot of it, though. If you hear words like 咁 gam³, 乜 mat¹, 咩 me¹ - then it's almost definitely colloquial Cantonese.
The grammar is slightly different, but the most noticeable difference is word choice. Although most words are cognates, there are many common words that are not, like the ones I mentioned above. EDIT: I should also mention that the great majority of characters only have one pronunciation, but there are some that have more. Other characters have interchangeable variant pronunciations. Edited by Victor Berrjod on 30 April 2013 at 11:55pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 3 of 6 01 May 2013 at 4:00am | IP Logged |
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The characters specific to Cantonese are the dead giveaway, even for someone like me who
doesn't know any Cantonese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 4 of 6 01 May 2013 at 9:11pm | IP Logged |
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Written Cantonese:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Cantonese Edited by Medulin on 01 May 2013 at 9:13pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4445 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 5 of 6 08 May 2013 at 9:43pm | IP Logged |
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Cantonese writing can be expressed in 2 ways: using standard Mandarin set of characters
pronounced the Cantonese way. Over the years, places like Hong Kong have added a set of Chinese characters that are specific for Cantonese expressions and recognized by the local government. At the same time people recognize their ancestral ties to Mainland China so in school people study literature and poetry written in standard Chinese. The older generation of Cantonese speakers tend to favor using Mandarin style expressions or something people considered as standard Chinese when writing letters & correspondences. If you go online and visit a number of discussion blogs from places like Hong Kong or Macao, the younger generation are using far more Cantonese expressions online. You read the content and you can tell right away the expressions are not in standard (Mandarin) Chinese. In the news media on TV and the radio Cantonese speakers use Cantonese expressions. In newspapers & magazines use mostly standard Mandarin expressions. Chinese in general is a language full of characters that sound the same or similar. The confusing part is the same sounding ones in 1 dialect isn't always the same in another. For instance: 慢 màn (slow) and 萬 wàn (10 thousand) would sound exactly the same (maan) in Cantonese. In Mandarin they are slightly different. 貴 guì (expensive) and 季 jì (season) have different pronounciations. But in Cantonese both sound the same (guai). In the beginning a learner may have trouble sorting out which characters sound the same in different dialects. The online dictionary I'm relying on is www.mdbg.net started in Holland. The dictionary allows for word input in English and Pinyin. There is a Cantonese section with the added characters. Edited by shk00design on 13 May 2013 at 11:20pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4255 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 6 of 6 08 June 2013 at 7:27pm | IP Logged |
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Okay, so here's a more specific variant on this question.
I'm considering doing L-R with the Bible and Cantonese audio for a study tool. Is there a chance that the recording might just be someone reading written Mandarin with Cantonese pronunciations? And as someone just beginning in Cantonese with no knowledge of mandarin, is there any way I could easily tell the difference between the two? If it was written Mandarin with Cantonese pronunciation, would it still have any value for learning Cantonese, as long as I keep using my other Cantonese resources? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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