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Non-Mandarin Chinese - more monosyllabic? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Cowlegend999 Groupie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5145 days ago 72 posts - 94 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 9 of 27 12 January 2011 at 2:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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So there are only 9 tones if you look at it from a linguistic point of view, but there are actually 6 with 3
variants? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| indiana83 Groupie United States ipracticecanto.wordp Joined 5491 days ago 92 posts - 121 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Cantonese, Italian | Message 10 of 27 12 January 2011 at 2:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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You can't say "actually" until you've agreed on the definition of the word "tone".
I'm not a linguist, so I also prefer to think of Cantonese as a 6-tone system. To me tone is more or less synonymous with pitch. But I can understand that if linguists have a special linguistic definition for tone to include some other characteristics of how the mouth and tongue and what-not is positioned, then they can come up with more tones. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6851 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 11 of 27 12 January 2011 at 5:38am | IP Logged | |||||
No, there are "actually" 9 distinct tones. Like I said, many textbooks seem to claim that Cantonese has only 6 tones, but I believe that this does a disservice to students serious about learning the language. I suppose 9 may sound scarier to a new student than 6, but it doesn't change the difficulty of the language whatsoever. So I don't really see the point of claiming the language has only 6 tones. Understand, the tone system is descended from Middle Chinese, and has been in place for nearly 1500 years at least. You can't simply throw that out for the sake of trying to make the language seem less "intimidating." There are 陰 yin and 陽 yang splits for each of 平 ping, 上 shang, and 去 qu tones, and 陰 yin, 中 zhong, and 陽 yang splits for the 入 tone. That's 9 tones. Disagree all you want, but again, there is a 1500 year scholarly tradition there to refute. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| karaipyhare Tetraglot Groupie Paraguay Joined 5586 days ago 74 posts - 150 votes Speaks: Portuguese, Spanish*, English, Guarani Studies: German, Italian, French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 12 of 27 12 January 2011 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
didn't get that 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5449 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 13 of 27 12 January 2011 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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How monosyllabic would you say Cantonese is, compared to Classical Chinese which is almost always monosyllabic? I. e. if someone were to read a piece of Classical Chinese poetry with Cantonese pronunciations, would the meanings be clear to those who hear the poetry for the first time? Or with the infamous "shi shi shi shi" poem, if the characters are read in Cantonese, is that intelligible? Edited by chucknorrisman on 12 January 2011 at 3:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5299 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 14 of 27 12 January 2011 at 3:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
I can't comment on the number of tones in Cantonese, but the assumption that a language did not change during 1500 years is a daring one. Sometimes traditionalists just refuse to accept what is obvious for everybody else ... Edited by lingoleng on 12 January 2011 at 3:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6851 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 15 of 27 12 January 2011 at 4:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
Read again. I never said the language hadn't changed in 1500 years. I said the tone system has been in place for nearly 1500 years, since Middle Chinese. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5309 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 16 of 27 12 January 2011 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
The ShiShiShi poem is perfectly intelligible in Cantonese as it goes Saai-See Say See Say-Sup-Say; the words aren't identical in spelling as it is in Mandarin, the words are common, and so is the expression / wording. It's modern colloquial Chinese. As for classical poetry, that's something else. Myself I find even contemporary poetry hard to decifer because of the broken grammar (incomplete sentences), rare words, lack of relationship between sentences, etc. So let's look at classical essays / paragraphs instead of poetry. These, depending on how ancient they are, use words that are different from what we use today. You might not even understand them written. I think, nouns would be easy to hear, adjectives next, and function words would be hard to hear. But then that has nothing to do with them being monosyllabic or not. Generally, monosyllabic-ity doesn't make things harder to understand. Many English words are monosyllabic. As long as that's what you NORMALLY say and hear then it's easy. Eg. in English you can say both "website" and "(the) site". Without context, "website" is better, but once you have context, "the site" makes perfect sense. And, at home you don't have to say, "Mum, please turn on the ELECTRIC lights" or "Can I borrow your MOTOR car?". 1 person has voted this message useful |
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