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This article is on all of the Cantonese (Yue) dialects. For the dialect of Guangzhou and Hong Kong, see Standard Cantonese.

Cantonese (, Jyutping: Yuet6yue5; Mandarin pinyin: Yuèyǔ, lit. "Yue (Guangdong) language") is one of the major dialect groups or languages of the Chinese language or language family. It is mainly spoken in parts of southern Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, by Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia and by many overseas Chinese of Guangdong and Hong Kong origin worldwide. The name is derived from Canton, a former romanized Western name for Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province.

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.

Like other major varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is often considered a dialect of a single Chinese language for cultural or nationalistic reasons. See Identification of the varieties of Chinese.

Dialects of Cantonese

There are at least four major dialect groups of Cantonese: Yuehai, which includes the dialect spoken in Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau as well as the dialects of Zhongshan, and Dongguan; Sìyì (四邑, sei yap), exemplified by Taishan dialect, which used to be ubiquitous in American Chinatowns before 1970; Gaoyang, as spoken in Yangjiang; and Guinan 桂南(Nanning dialect) spoken widely in Guangxi. However, Cantonese generally refers to the Yuehai dialect.

For the last 150 years, Guangdong Province has been the place of origin of most of the Chinese emigrants in western countries; one county near its center, Taishan (or Tóisàn, where the Sìyì or sei yap dialect of Cantonese is spoken), alone may have been the home to more than 60% of Chinese immigrants to the US before 1965, and as a result, Guangdong dialects such as sei yap (the dialects of Taishan, Enping, Kaiping, Xinhui; Counties) and what we understand to be mainstream Cantonese (with a heavy Hong Kong influence) have been the major spoken dialects abroad, particularly in western countries. The dialect of Zhongsan in Pearl River Delta is spoken by many Chinese immigrants in Hawaii, and some in San Francisco and in the Sacramento River Delta (see Locke, California); it is much closer to Cantonese than the Taishan dialect, but has "flatter" tones in pronunciation than Cantonese.

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.

In addition, there are at least three other major Chinese languages spoken in Guangdong Province— Standard Mandarin, which is used for formal occasions, education, the media, and as a national lingua franca; Min-nan (Southern Min) spoken in the eastern regions bordering Fujian, such as those from Chaozhou and Shantou; and Hakka, the language of the Hakka people. Standard Mandarin is mandatory through the state education system, but in Cantonese speaking households, the popularization of Cantonese-language media (Hong Kong films, television serials, and Cantopop, most notably), isolation from the other regions of China, local identity, and the existence of the non-Mandarin speaking Cantonese diaspora (including Hong Kong) ensure that the language has a life of its own. Most wuxia films from Canton are filmed originally in Cantonese and then dubbed or subtitled in Standard Mandarin or English or both.

Phonology

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 may 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 their pronunciation is quite different ("wǒ" vs. "è"), whereas in Cantonese they are pronounced identically except for their tones (ngo5 vs ngo6 respectively). Since the characters hint at a similar pronunciation, it can be assumed that their ancient pronunciation was indeed similar, but in Mandarin the two syllables acquired different pronunciations in the course of time, whereas in Cantonese the two have remained similar to each other even though the ancient pronunciation has also not been maintained in Cantonese, on this basis some say that "ngo5" and "ngo6" are closer to the older sounds than Mandarin "wǒ" and "è".

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 syllabes 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). 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.

There is another obvious difference between Cantonese and Mandarin. Mandarin lacks the syllable-final sound "m"; original final "m" and final "n" in Cantonese have merged into "n" in Mandarin, as in Cantonese "taam6" (譚) and "taan4" (壇) versus Mandarin tán, Cnt. "yim4" (鹽) and "yin4" (言) versus Mnd. yán, Cnt. "tim1" (添) and "tin1" (天) versus Mnd. tiān, Cnt. "ham4" (含) and "hon4" (寒) versus Mnd. hán. The examples are too numerous to list. Furthermore, nasals can be independent syllables in Cantonese words, like "ng5" (五) "five," and "m4" (唔) "not."

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 messenger 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 * 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 character 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, being, there (two characters), good, (final particle), thousand, pray, don't, mess with, him/her, (genitive particle), things', 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.

See also

External links

Dictionaries

Cantonese Dictionaries or Databases with Spoken Cantonese Entries

Character-Only Cantonese Pronunciation Dictionaries

Other links

| Cantonese (linguistics) | Chinese language | Languages of Hong Kong | Languages of Malaysia | Languages of Singapore | Languages of Macau

Kńg-tang-oē | Kantoneg | Кантонски език | Kantonesische Sprache | Idioma cantonés | Kantona lingvo | کانتونی | Cantonais | 광둥어 | Bahasa Kantonis | Kantónska | Lingua cantonese | Bahasa Kantonis | Kantonees | 広東語 | Kantonesisk språk | Język kantoński | Cantonês | Кантонский диалект | Kantoninkiina | Kantonesiska | Tiếng Quảng Đông | 粵語 | 粤语

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Cantonese (linguistics)".

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