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Non-Mandarin Chinese - more monosyllabic? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 25 of 27 13 January 2011 at 8:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, let's clear some things out:
The "six-tones" (or seven, in the case of many Cantonese dialects) argument and the "nine-tones" argument stem from different definitions of "tones", not from different impressions of what the language actually sounds like. The "nine-tone" definition seems more useful from a (historical) linguistic viewpoint, whilst the "six-tone" definition is more useful from a learner's perspective. This is quite similar to the way the word "heat" works, in which it has one technical definition in physics and another, different definition in everyday language use. It's nothing strange. The "linguist" side can claim that theirs is the "true" definition, but the fact is that many learners of languages use the word "tone" to describe "pitch". The Jytuping romanization system, developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, uses "tone numbers" which are six in total. In my experience, people who use this system generally refer to this as the six tones. The problem only arises in situations like this, where linguists and non-linguists come together to communicate. My view is that the "linguist" side should concede the two different definitions and that both are valid, but that we can all use "pitch" to denote the layman's definition of "tone" in this discussion, in order to avoid confusion. Okay, that's that. Now to the discussion of tones, which is more complicated than certainly the "linguist" side of the debate has implied. If we accept that the three traditional "入" tones are separate, we get nine tones, right? Well, I'm not so sure. Let's ignore the discussion on whether or not the high falling and the high level tones are the same or separate. I'd like to discuss the tone of the character "碟", when it's used to mean "movie disc" (as in DVD, VCD or Blue-ray). What tone does it have? Most dictionaries will possibly tell you it's the a low "入" tone, but that's not how it's actually pronounced. In the meaning "movie disc", the pronunciation is, in jyutping, "dip2". The number "2" in jyutping is used to describe a high rising pitch. The traditional nine-tone system has only three "入" tones and all of them are level. There is no rising "入" tone in the traditional system, yet this is clearly what is being used in this case. The jyutping system has no problem dealing with this, as it fits perfectly into the six-pitch order, but the traditional system cannot cope. We'll have to invent a tenth tone for that. So there you go, now Cantonese has ten tones. If we go to conservative Cantonese as spoken in some parts of Guangdong, we get the difference between the high level and high falling tones. Suddenly we're up to eleven. Some have also argued that the fourth pitch of jyutping, often described as "low falling", has in fact transformed into an "extra low level" pitch in modern HK Cantonese. If you agree with this, it doesn't change the number of tones, but it's another nail in the coffin of the specific "yin-yang" tonal system of 1500 years ago. In light of all this, the traditional nine-tone system is of value for historical linguistics, but if you claim it's an accurate depiction of modern HK Cantonese, you're guilty of conservatism or prescriptivism at best, and bad science at worst. Nor surprisingly, the fact that a system is 1500 years old is not a good sign in science and it can certainly not be called upon to defend its accuracy. 6 persons have 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 26 of 27 17 January 2011 at 1:08am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not going to engage in the real number of tones of Cantonese as I am not familiar with Cantonese.
Anyways, onto the topic, I should ask this: how close is Cantonese phonologically to the ancient Chinese? How about other Chinese languages like Taiwanese? Edited by chucknorrisman on 17 January 2011 at 1:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jsun Groupie Joined 5086 days ago 62 posts - 129 votes | Message 27 of 27 19 January 2011 at 2:31am | IP Logged | ||
I'm reading this book about Old Chinese and now trying to make a summary from it. The following is about suffix and prefix of Old Chinese. 
-In Old Chinese," words that imply "keeping mouth shut" tend to end in a final m.... "keeping closed" extends to "hidden, dark, black",,,, "dark, black, covered, blind, stupid" - tend to start with initial m. " For example, 揞 (to cover with hand). Cantonese : am Hakka: em 暗(dark) Cantonese: am Hakka: am Min(Taiwanese):am -Words that imply "hallow" are typically aspirated. 
Since the book just gives Mandarin and LH readings, I type some Chinese readings in here. LH = Later han. 1. 穹 (k'ung) Mandarin: qiong Cantonese: kung Hakka: giung Min(Taiwanese): kiong (Hakka and Min both have K' consonant.) 2. 坎 (k'əm) Mandarin: kan Cantonese: ham Hakka: kam Min: kham (Hakka and Min both have k' consonants) 3. 殼 (k'ɔk) Mandarin: que Cantonese: hok Hakka: hok Min: k'ok (vernacular), k'ak (literary) You can get the Old Chinese pronunciation dictionary from: http://bit.ly/gEWVCs Cantonese pronunciation dictionary (it is NOT a Cantonese dictionary. It is just a dictionary that provides Cantonese reading to Chinese character. Due to political reason, there is no official Cantonese dictionary that gives definition to Cantonese vocabulary online. Cantodict is the only non-official online Cantonese dictionary. And I have to create an offline Cantonese dictionary myself. http://bit.ly/gtbKdI) http://arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-can/ Hakka pronunciation dictionary (It's a small dictionary and it doesn't give definition but it does give pronunciation) http://www.hkilang.org/NEW_WEB/page/dict_hantzu If the dict fails to give a result, you can try a homophone that has simpler structure. It shows 3 results. The 1st line is urban Cantonese, the 2nd line is a Cantonese dialect that is spoken in rural area and its history can be traced back to Sung dynasty. From what I saw on TV (I found this dictionary because there was a documentary discussed about this dialect), this Cantonese dialect is just barely intelligible with urban Cantonese. The 3 rd line is Hong Kong Hakka. Taiwanese Min dictionary http://twblg.dict.edu.tw/holodict/index.htm Teochew (Cantonese Min) Dictionary http://www.mogher.com/?langue=en Wu dictionary http://wu-chinese.com/minidict2/ Added Cantonese to a literary Chinese book that only has Mandarin. You will see Mandarin, Japanese (kanban), Korean and Cantonese. (Japanese and Korean come with the book) I will add Hakka soon. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_72cc22ab0100owio.html Edited by jsun on 19 January 2011 at 10:19am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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