CantonesePod?

pulosm, I apologise for giving you the wrong idea....wrong choice of words perhaps (maybe learning too many languages has a detrimental effect on my English?).... but I don't mean to say that Cantonese has a lower status than Mandarin, just that their categorisation is different. I speak Cantonese myself, and I agree with you that the spoken dialect is very useful in HK and some other places, but I don't think the romanisation of the spoken form is essential to learn.

pinkjeans,

I'd have to disagree with your characterization of Cantonese as having a lesser status than Mandarin.  Yes, Mandarin is the official language of China, but Cantonese will get you much further in Hong Kong.  If people plan to live and work in Hong Kong, a knowledge of Cantonese is essential to move you up a step.

Actually, on second thoughts, a pdf transcript of the Putonghua equivalent of the Cantonese podcast would be helpful...;)

I think it would be an interesting diversion for CPOD to introduce a fun weekly Cantopod that's just audio. Including written characters would make things complicated due to reasons already discussed, especially for those of us who are struggling to learn the language of Chinese. The presence of characters in the lessons would deflect the emphasis on Chinese as a language, and put Cantonese on almost the same level as Mandarin, when of course it isn't...it is a dialect, pure and simple, and its beauty is in its spoken form, with colloquialisms which, when one is able to use and understand, come with an incomparable sense of belonging. Having these in written form would seem almost obscene in some cases, and sound totally weird for someone trying to read these characters in other dialects or in Mandarin (and they would do this because it wouldn't come with instructions that they had to read it in Cantonese). Formal written Cantonese as exists in newspapers and the like(actually Chinese in traditional characters), have their place and don't need competition from a forcedly written  form of colloquial Cantonese. So bring it on, this audio Cantopodcast, and let's just have some fun! Of course, I have nothing against those who are so inclined, to carry on their learning of "written Cantonese" from the other numerous resources available, just don't get us other poor CPOD users all confused!

changye,

I think you are right about Vietnamese.  I worry whenever I hear people talking about their langauge as inferior.  It's fine to acknowledge that there is a standard for purposes of radio, TV, etc., but it should be treated as nothing more than just a standard.  People shouldn't be conned into believing that their language is slang or wrong.  As long as they understand the choice is arbitrary and has nothing to do with the value of that language.

Part of the problem for Vietnamese people is that it's harder to read and write if you are a southern speaker because the writing doesn't match the way you speak.  It's not just the letter sounds, but even the tones.  Northern dialect has an extra tone which is reflected in the writing.  When southern people go to spell, they often don't know which is the right tone because they pronounce them the same.  FOr example, the word for "milk" and "to repair" sound identical to a southerner, but are distinct in the north.  Southerners (especially those who are not educated) won't know which accnet part to put on which, so you sometimes see signs that say "milk tire shop"!!!

We need Vietpod!

aclchan,

Cantonese is traditionally believed to have 9 tones.  However, there are only 6 tone contours.  This means that 3 of the tones are actually at the same pitch as the others, but are just shorter in length.  In fact, only certain words (i.e., words ending with certain sounds like -k, -t, or -p can even belong to that group at all).

So if you divide your voice into five pitches.  5 being the highest, 3 being the middle, and 1 being the lowest (it's the same as the chart for tones you use for Mandarin).  For example, second tone in Mandarin is a rising ton from 3 to 5 (or some say 2 to 5).

(1)  Cantonese has 3 flat tones.  One that stays at 5, one that stays around 3, and one that stays around 2.

(2)  Using the same pitches, add three more tones that are flat, too, but short and abrupt becuase they end in consonants like -t, -k, -p. 

(3)  Cantonese has 2 rising tones.  One tone rises from 3 to 5, the other rises from 1 to 3.

(4)  Finally, Cantonese has one tone that falls from 2 to 1 (it's almost like the beginning of the third tone in Mandarin, with no rise afterwards).

There are all your tones!  It's not that hard, I don't think.

You can see the difference here:

si  5 to 5 (stays flat)*

si  3 to 5

si  3 to 3 (stays flat)

si  2 to 1

si  1 to 3

si  2 to 2 (stays flat)

sik  5 (high and quick)

sik  3 (medium and quick)

sik  2 (low and quick)

-----------

*some people pronounce the high flat tone as a high falling tone, maybe this is why some say there are 10.  It depends on the word.  For example, the word "poem" can be pronounced by falling from 5 to 3, or just staying high at 5.

I have to admit, I didn't formally learn these tones, but this is what I have seen and the description makes sense to me and corresponds with what I hear!

Hope that wasn't TOO much information...

I think it's great that CPod's gonna have Cantonese lessons soon!

Here in the SF Bay Area where I live, a lot of Chinese people speak Cantonese as opposed to Mandarin, although that is steadily changing as more and more Chinese people from non-Cantonese speaking areas immigrate.

But for now, Cantonese is the language used most often in places such as the Asian markets and Chinese restaurants. so it would be great to learn some words in Cantonese.

I heard that Cantonese has 10 intonations compared to only 4 in Mandarin. Is this true? How do you guys even notice the difference if there are ten of them??

Hi pulosm,

Thanks for the reply. I've got it. I love the song regardless of whether it is "formal" or "slang"!

As for "correct" pronunciation, it is actually a difficult issue. In a sense, the troubles surrounding Cantonese is not so complicated. Like it or not, China already has 普通话, and the remaining problem is how to preserve Cantonese. Fortunately(?), Mandarin and Cantonese are two very different languages (or dialects), so I think it is unlikely that Cantonese would be easily "contaminated"  by Putonghua.

On the other hand, the linguistic situation in Vietnam might be more troubling. Northern and southern dialects are similar to each other, and therefore politically/economically dominant one could easily overcome the other one. Anyway, I think, good or bad, people needs a kind of standard language to help their country further develop. At lease you should have a standard language used in publishing and broadcasting.

edwinlaw:

I agree with you.  This movement is quite unfortunate in many ways.  What is identified as "incorrect" pronunciation is often just regional differences.  This problem arises in the context of Vietnamese as well (and the problem is very similar but even worse!).  The current written version of the language (which is romanized) was developed with the assistance of the French based on the northern dialect of Vietnamese (dialects in Vietnamese are mutually intelligible, it's not like the different language of China which are called "dialects" sometimes).  So, people think that the northern pronunciation is "correct" because it matches the writing.  Talk about circular!  The writing came so much later!

For example, the word for "one" is "mot", some people in the south pronounce it as "moc".  Both are correct and both existed before the current writing system, when the Chinese characters were used, but now people will say "moc" is wrong and "mot" is right!  It's astonishing to me and I pronounce things in the northern dialect!  The "t" and "k" issue is also part of the cantonese issue, as is the "n" and "ng", etc.

changye,

You are right!  This is so-called "formal Cantonese."  Thanks for reminding me of this classic song!  :-)

Hi pulosm,

Thank you for the intriguing story, so the same goes for this song, one of my favorites sung by 邓丽君, am I right? I just thought that she sang in "real Cantonese" before, but actually she sings in so-called "formal" Cantonese that you mentioned above, Mandarin syntax with Cantonese pronunciations!

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=961TF2IE9Fc

Talking about the HK government attempting to promote the 'standardized pronounciation' ... well it is a long story. In brief, there has been a counter-movement to this counter-movement.

For those who are interested in this subject, I have written a short article about it a few months ago:

http://www.cantophilia.com/2007/12/evil-sounds.html

I missed so much!!!  I have something small to add.

Growing up in the States, I went to Cantonese school.  I was taught that Cantonese had a "formal" version and an "informal" or "slang" version.  This, it turns out, was patently wrong.

What we learned as the "formal" version (and what was used in Wang Fei's songs, in our books, and everywhere else) was actually Chinese characters arranged in Mandarin syntax.  Everyone knew the Cantonese pronunciations of the characters, but no one would actually say anything that way in the spoken language.

It was later that Cantonese started developing it's own writing system.  Remember, many many Mandarin characters actually were "made up" too.  They come from old Chinese and were adapted or invented.  Same with Cantonese.

For example (using the one given above):

In school, we'd have:

他们在那里 (他們在那裡)

We would read this as:  Ta mun joy na lei.  It makes complete sense but only because you are accustomed to it.  It's in teh newspapers, the Wang Fei songs, etc.  You never ever speak that way though.  You say (as mentioned above):

佢哋喺嗰度

pronounced:  koei di hai go do (roughly transliterated)

Completely different!  So in order to make the "universal writing" system work, Cantonese speakers had to learn two completely different languages, one of which they were told was "formal"  and the other "slang."  This is part of how the government was able to denigrate the other Chinese languages.  That is, by calling them "slang" and calling any deviation from Mandarin syntax and characters "slang", and convincing Cantonese people that the written version of Mandarin pronounced in Cantonese was "proper Cantonese", Cantonese itself became a secondary language.

Now, there are countermovements (maybe that's too strong).  People know that Cantonese is a real language and not just street slang.  The Hong Kong government even produces videos to help standardize pronunciation.  My favorite is this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2jA5gIz_bU

There is a part where the guy is asking for directions.  He asks for the "Apricot Blossom Garden" or something (if I remember right) and he mispronounces the word apricot by not adding the "g" sound at the end, i.e., he says "han" instead of "hang" (like saying "xin" instead of "xing").  This "mistake" is very common.  But because he does this is sounds like he is saying "Hate Flowers Garden."  This video has Mandarin subtitles.

Oh, that's the other thing.  Cantonese shows are often subtitles in Mandarin.  So people learn that way that 在 is 喺, because the speaker says "hai" but the subtitle says "在".

Sorry, I may have made this more confusing.

Hey, what's going on here? First of all while I'm moving house and sick for a few weeks, they suddenly throw in the to-die-for lesson on knitting. Then I get sick for a couple of weeks again, and find that they're talking about  introducing Cantonese!!! It's a bloody miracle.

So what am I supposed to do, keep getting sick and disappearing now and then so that amazingly good things will happen when I'm not around? No fun being sick though. I don't suppose someone else would like to take a turn, would they? I'm sure I can find a few remaining flu germs somewhere...

Thanks Changye. :)

Hi hitokiri,

Young guy, it IS a good point, again. Korean characters that have two final consonants are really cumbersome for foreign learners. There are rules for them, but I also can’t remember them. Just remembering those words one by one would be much more easier for me. Let me tell you an interesting story about those final consonants.

For example, the character 닭 (chicken) is pronounced “tak” (닥) in standard Korean (Seoul), but it is “tal” (달) in a southern dialect, such as 庆尚道方言. In other words, although the written form닭 is the same all over Korea, Seoul people only read the right one out of two final consonants (ㄺ), and 庆尚道 people read only the left one.

More interestingly, some scholars say that in Middle Korean, people pronounced both consonants (ㄺ), i.e. 닭 was pronounced as “ta-l-k”, and on the other hand, other scholars insist that those two final consonants  (ㄺ) were employed in the character 닭, as "arbitration", so that it could represent those two different pronunciations at the same time.

As for the 朝鲜人/韩国人 issue, it’s a very complicated problem historically, politically, and “emotionally”, so I must say discussing them here would not be appropriate. Let me just say that, naming-wise, people began to use the word 韩国人 only after World War II, since 大韩民国 was officially established in 1948 (forget the refugee government!).

And therefore, theoretically, people come from the Korean Peninsula were commonly called “朝鲜人” before the end of the war. In that sense, all of Korean Japanese, and their parents and grandparents, WERE 朝鲜人, but not 韩国人. If you would like to learn more about this, just go to Wikipedia (English), after you finish your homework!

Good night.

P/S  A lot of Korean people came to Japan from all over the Korean Peninsula for several reasons before 1945.

Hi Changye! Just came back from school. I can't pronounce the syllables with 2 consonants. They have a rule about it, but it's too hard. :( Something like 밝,않&젋).

I've heard from my Korean friends that Korean-Japanese are originally 朝鮮人，not  韓國人。 Is that true?

Thanks and good luck with your Korean.:)

@ Chinesepod: If you guys are doing Canto., please romanize in Jyutping. MORE POWER GUYS! :D

Hi hitokiri6993,

Thank you so much for the first-hand information. Judging from your research result, it seems that I can’t avoid learning Korean sounds diligently. As for Korean being spoken by Korean Japanese, I understand well why its pronunciations have been so simplified. They have been heavily influenced by Japanese sounds.

I imagine that such a simplified Korean might be good enough in simple daily conversations, but I suspect it would be somewhat difficult for Korean Japanese to talk about more complicated (or academic) matters in their Japanized Korean. Anyway, for most Korean Japanese, their mother tongue is NOT Korean anymore.

Hi Changye! Sorry for the late reply. I had to prepare for school. :( I'm going to be less active in Chinesepod. :(

Anyway, to answer your questions:

1) ㅐ(ae) & ㅔ(e)/ ㅓ(eo) &ㅗ(O) / ㅜ(u) &ㅡ (eu)

still has a distinction in everywhere in Korea. Only 재일 한국어 drops the distinction.

These vowels are extremely important.

2) For the aspirated consonants: they're just as important as the vowels. Japanese Korean, as you said, drops  the aspiration. In Korea, they still do pronounce those consonants.

Ask more if you need something, Changye. :D

너는 할수있다!

Sorry, red font, again.
I don't understand why it automatically (partly) becomes red.

Hi hitokiri6993,

Thank you very much! Your “to-the-point” comment has inspired me again to post another comment. As you said, Korean people actually tend to shorten some syllables, and I always think that might be because of the fact Korean are very hasty people. The phrase “빨리, 빨리” (Hurry up!) must be a kind of “national slogan” in Korea.

Joking aside, it’s very highly possible that there were two kinds of “ai” in old Korean, as you wrote, the shorter one, e.g. (애, 爱) and longer one (아이, child). The former should be a kind of double vowels (or diphthong) such as Chinese “爱” (ai4) or English “I”. The latter may be similar to Japanese “爱 (あい, a-i)” when it’s slowly spoken.

FYI, Japanese words end with open vowels, and indigenous Korean words (not borrowed ones from China), such as 아이 (a-i, child) , (사이, sa-i, interval) and 우리 (u-ri, we), also tended to have open-vowel endings. I heard that old Korean had more words of this kind, i.e. words phonetically similar to Japanese ones, than it has today.

I suspect the Korean character (ㅐ) itself was perhaps one of the “culprits” why 애 (ai) changed to 애 (e, ae) in Korea. Even though it was invented combining ㅏ (a) and ㅣ(i), it IS a one character “visually”, therefore it’s possible that people later gradually “forgot” it was a double vowel “ai” in the beginning. Don’t laugh. It’s just a layman’s guess.

But I still think the advent of Korean characters, in the 15th century, actually affected the pronunciations of Korean words to some extent. In other words, some sounds were changed just because of the use of Korean characters, such as artificially-introduced “vowel harmony” for making character structures meet 阴阳 (Yin-Yang) rules.

By the way, would you do me a favor? I’d appreciate if you would ask your Korean friends the following questions for me. (1) I hear that there is no clear distinction between 애 (e, ae) and 에 (e) anymore, especially among young people in Seoul. Is that true? Actually, such distinction has already disappeared in the Korean society in Japan.

(2) Is it still important to distinguish, for example, ㄷ (t, unvoiced) and ㄸ (t, voiced) in modern Korean? The voiced consonants (浓音) , ㄸ, ㄲ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ, are also said to be gradually disappearing among Korean Japanese. I hear that those consonants appeared in Korean history after around the 16th century, only several hundred years ago.

P/S To tell you the truth,
I can’t pronounce them properly!
That's just why I'm curious about this.

Hi changye. My Korean friends tell me that 애(ae) used to be pronounced as a short "ai" (the longer AI was written in 한글 as ㅇᆡ). Koreans tend to shorten or to make the Jamo syllables easier to pronounce, which is one of the reasons why 입니다(iP ni da), despite having a 비읍(Bieup) consonant (which is pronounced as an unaspirated p or b) as 임니다.(IM NI DA). 

The same rule goes with ㅏ & l  and ㅗ & ㅣ. ㅏ+ㅣ = ㅐ(a + i = ae). ㅗ+ㅣ=ㅚ(o+ i=OE). This rule is neglected when separated with an 이응(ieung), e.g. 아이(ai), 오이(o,i or oi).

If you have more questions, I'll try asking my trusty Korean friend. hehe.:) Hope this helps Changye!

Hi, guys
who learn Mandarin, Korean and Japanese,

Please allow me to stick to “transition in pronunciations” a little more. The character “爱”, as well as “学”, also felt strange to me, because the character is pronounced “e (애)” in Korean despite the fact it is pronounced “ai” in Old/Middle/modern Chinese and old/modern Japanese. Is “Korean LOVE” different from those in China and Japan? WHY?

In a sense, “LOVE is forever” in China and Japan, and how about in Korea? And this question made me get interested in the history of Korean language. I guarantee you that looking into the historical relationship (and transition) of 汉字 pronunciations in Chinese, Korean, Japanese (and preferably Vietnamese) is really interesting and worthwhile.  

The secret behind Korean 爱 (e, 애) is as follows; in fact 爱 had also been pronounced “ai” in Korean, like 爱 in Chinese and Japanese, until 16th or 17th century, and later changed to “e”. Actually this kind of transition, ai > e, is not uncommon, at least, in Japanese, e.g. “たいへんだ (It’s bad!)” (tai-hen-da) is sometimes pronounced “te-e-hen-da” when in hurry.

More importantly, the Korean character “애” (e) itself also hints, or prove, this historical fact. In this character, “ㅇ” has no phonetic value, and “ㅐ” is pronounced “e” in modern Korean, but this “ㅐ” was originally invented by combining “ㅏ” (a) and “ㅣ”(i) to represent the sound “ai”. I think that it’s a very logical and natural way to create a new character.

By the same token, the character “ㅔ” (e) in modern Korean was pronounced “ei” or “oi” in Old/Middle Korean. The word “開発” is pronounced “kai-ha-tsu” and “kebal (개발)” in Japanese and Korean respectively, not so similar to each other, but the Korean pronunciation was close to “kai-pat” more than thousand years ago. The older, the more similar to each other.

Hi Changye,

    Wow...學 has a lot of history. 哈哈！ I've also noticed that some verbs in any other Chinese but Mandarin are differently used, like the 吃 vs。 食 & 飲 vs。 喝.

Hi hitokiri6993,

That’s a very good point! The pronunciation of “学” varies from region to region, and the one in Mandarin, “xue2”, is most peculiar compared to those in other southern dialects (hok, hak, hhok), Korean (hak, 학) and Japanese (gaku). And this IS one of the reasons why I got interested in historical Chinese phonology! My “学问” literally began with the character 学.

In Old and Middle Chinese, 学 was pronounced “hok” or something like that, and it has been preserved in southern dialects, Korean and Japanese, just like other 汉字. But the situation was a little different in Japan. In ancient Japan, there was no consonant “h”, therefore the Chinese sound “hok” was transcribed as “gaku” in Japan, using the consonant “g” instead of “h”.

Phonetically speaking, the consonant “g” is relatively similar to “h”, and “k”. Tongue position and mouth shape are almost the same when you utter those three consonant sounds. And as you know, Chinese characters in Japanese (kanji) basically only have open vowels, and consequently the pronunciation of 学 in Japan became “gaku”, which is still a little similar to “hok”.

The problem is “xue” in 普通话. It’s very different from others. Actually the change from ancient “hok” to modern “xue” is tricky; hok―hio―xio―xue. As a first step, its 入声 (entering tone, “k” in “hok”) disappeared, and later the consonant “h” changed to “x” because of palatalization triggered by the vowel “i”. Finally, “xio” changed to “xue”, only recently, in the 19th century.

“学” is a typical example that shows you the transition in pronunciations of Chinese characters. 我们好好儿学习吧！

Hi auntie68,

The most famous Chinese rhyme book “广韵” was published in the early 11th century, but, owning to the conservativeness of 文言 and 科举, it basically inherited the contents (the pronunciations of Chinese characters) of another older rhyme book “切韵” edited in the late 6th century, and therefore researchers can use 广韵 as materials for deducing 中古音, especially 隋唐音 (6th ～ 9th century).

广韵 is very similar to 切韵, but there still are some discrepancies between them. 切韵 slightly more precisely represents the readings of Chinese characters in 6th century than 广韵 does. Unfortunately, 切韵 had long been lost, but it was finally found, though fragmentary, in 敦煌 and 北京故宫 in the early 20th century. The discovery was a kind of “Rosetta Stone” in historical Chinese phonology.

changye, you are so diplomatic. Aiya. I wasn't right, of course; there was no "Rosetta Stone"-type discovery this century (?) of any long-lost rhyme books which were also concerned with helping poets to make tones "rhyme" as well.

But wouldn't it be exciting if a discovery like that were to be made during our lifetimes, one which could be authenticated? Thanks for the explanation of the system behind the "rhyme books"!

Btw, in the tricky Cantonese sentence -- 我重要返屋企添 --, the "重 ... 添 sandwich" is the Cantonese equivalent of 还 in Mandarin. The 添 provides extra emphasis, sort of like the English words, "as well", "too", "even" etc.

You can omit the 添 from the sandwich if you emphasis is not required, eg. in a questions:

你重唔返屋企？ 

= Aren't you going home? or "Isn't it about time you went home" or "你还不回家？"

Hi auntie68,

You are right. Those old rhyme books I mentioned above are a kind of “Rosetta Stone” in historical Chinese phonology, although they have been known among scholars for over a thousand years, and only one language Chinese (文言), as opposed to Rosetta Stone, is used in those rhyme books.

Of course, there are more “Rosetta Stone-like” books or materials for phonology research, such as books where contents are shown in both Chinese and other countries’ characters (e.g. old Mongolian or Korean characters). They are very helpful for deducing the readings of 汉字 in middle Chinese.

Traditionally, the pronunciations of 汉字 in Chinese rhyme books are indicated by using two other 汉字, which is a little tricky method, just because there was no pinyin or Latin characters in China in those days. This method was probably invented in China around two thousand years ago.

Let me take 东 for an example, its reading is represented by the two characters 德红, de and hong, in rhyme books, and it means “东(dong) = 德(d) + 红 (ong)”, in other words, you read the consonant of the first character and after that read the vowel of the second character. I think it’s a clever way.

But, as you might expect, there is a big problem for researchers. If you don’t know how to read 德 and 红 first, you can never know how to read 东. And unfortunately enough, the pronunciations of 德 and 红 are also indicated by two other characters. It’s a beautiful example of “running in circles”!

Those rhyme books show you the groups of same-vowel characters, but never give you the phonetic value of every character, therefore researchers need to deduce the sounds of middle Chinese characters (中古音) based on both rhyme books and other materials, such as pronunciations in modern dialects.

哎哟，没完没了，今天到此为止吧！

Changye: that's cool! I've heard something about the difference of the pronunciation of Hanzi in Mandarin and the rest of the East Asian languages:

Take 學 for example:

In Korean: 학(hak)

Canto:   hok

Hokkien:hok

Japanese: がく (gaku）

Shanghainese： hhok

Mandarin: Xue2。。。。 奇怪嗎？

Looks like I started a conversation and missed all the fun.  Thanks all for the information.  I'm afraid though that it's all going to remain academic for me.

Auntie68, do Hong Kong newspapers use the characters you used.  It seems like I can generally follow them.  That said, I usually read the business section.

Hi auntie and hitokiri,
.........both numbers are omitted....

Sorry, I'm a bit tipsy now, thanks to three bottles of beer.

I couldn't get the meaning of 邊個 at all, but I noticed that 出手 meant "hit someone" at first sight, because there is the same phrase "手を出す" (hit someone) in Japanese. Hm, Cantonese might be a right language (except for its pronunciations and tones) for Japanese people to learn. This is not a joke. As auntie said, Cantonese, as well as Japanese, has a lot of words in common with those in ancient Chinese, which automatically means that Cantonese and Japanese also have many words in common!

I eat.
我吃。(Mandarin)
我食。(Cantonese)
我は食らふ。(classical Japanese)
私は食べる。(modern Japanese)

I drink.
我喝。(Mandarin)
我饮。(Cantonese)
我は飲む。(classical Japanese)
私は飲む。(modern Japanese)

Auntie, I saw cantonese.sheik.co.uk, a site that you recommended before. The CantoDict was almost unabridged that I found out that 咭 was pronounced as ji1 in Mandarin.  Thanks for the site.:D

Hi Auntie.  咭 is pronounced as kat/gat or gaat. Same pronunciation as the orange you were talking about(桔)。 出手 is to hit someone with the hand. :D

@hitokiri: Is the character 咭 pronounced in a similar way to the Cantonese name for those little Lunar New Year oranges? 

I sound really desperate and pathetic, don't I? Please put this Auntie out of her misery!

Hi. hitokiri, my totally pathetic go at your Cantonese sentences is:

乜嘢係我嘅信用咭號碼？

= What is my credit card number/ PIN number?

邊個出手我呀？

= Who 出手 me? (*I don't know what "choett sau" means!!!)

Help!

And thank you changye, for supplying deeper background. I am curious to know: Are the ancient rhyme books you referred to, the ones which were treated as a kind of "Rosetta Stone" discovery?

I remember reading a passing reference to something like that once. I vaguely recollect that the reason for the excitement was that Middle Chinese poetry didn't rhyme like "European poetry", where the rhyme is limited to the last vowels and stresses of each line. Rather, its conventions included the notion of "internal rhyme", which extended to even the tones in each line.

So the discovery of these rhyme books meant that researchers had, for the first time, an independent way to help them work out the "tones" of Middle Chinese characters. Before this, they could only guess at the tone contours of Middle Chinese through analysing living vernaculars which were believed to have retained vestiges of the full range of Middle Chinese tone contours (eg. Cantonese, Chaozhou etc).

Uncle changye, please teach me everything you possibly can on this topic! My Chinese is not good enough to even begin to read the kinds of commentaries I know you have, which is why too much of what I "know" comes from... Wikipedia! Thanks!

Changye's right. According to Webster, a DIALECT is a slight, but not a heavy variation of a language. Cantonese, being  very  different and unintelligible from Mandarin/Hokkien/Teochew/Shanghainese IS a language.

Hi Cantonese-obsessed guys,

Thank you very much for all of your extraordinary informative (and intriguing) comments posted here. I’m definitely not flattering you, but if I missed this thread, I would certainly regret it. The things about Cantonese you guys have shared with other poddies are really important, and actually not so easy to obtain on your own, at least for me.

Auntie68, very good job! Your comments on 文言，白话，声调，and 汉语历史-related tips are just GREAT! To tell you the truth, at first I also thought I would post a similar comment, but later I just gave up the stupid idea simply because I’ve found your postings are much more informative and nicely explained than that I possibly can offer you. 

I can’t keep a “know-it-all” attitude before you anymore!

And, let me elaborate a little more on 声调 (tones) in Middle Chinese you mentioned, which is one of the highlights in historical Chinese phonology. There were basically four tones (平声，上声，去声，入声) in ancient rhyme books (for written classical Chinese, 文言) such as 切韵 and 广韵, edited in the late 6th and the early 11th century respectively.

But in colloquial Chinese at that time, the four tones were further divided into eight tones, as you wrote, depending on whether a character has a voiced consonant (浊音) or an unvoiced one (清音), that is, a character that had a voiced consonant was pronounced in a little lower key, and one with an unvoiced consonant was spoken in a little higher key.

阴平声 (unvoiced)
阳平声 (voiced)

阴上声 (unvoiced)
阳上声 (voiced)

阴去声 (unvoiced)
阳去声 (voiced)

阴入声 (unvoiced)
阳入声 (voiced)　.......eight tones in total.

I suppose that basically the same goes for modern Cantonese, where voiced consonants and 入声 (entering tones) are still preserved. Conversely speaking, the four tones (轻声 excluded) in modern Mandarin is mainly attributed to the fact that the language lost voiced consonants and 入声 in the past. 广东话 has nine tones, and three of them are 入声.

Lastly, I simply can’t believe that Cantonese, as well as other major dialects, is only a “dialect” in Chinese. It would have been treated as an “independent language”, if Canton was a state, not a province. Cantonese might be a dialect “politically”, but it IS a “language” linguistically. The distance between Cantonese and Mandarin must be larger than that between some European languages.

Hi auntie! I could read some... but I had trouble reading the 2nd one. :D。

For fun, try converting these sentences to Mandarin.:P

乜嘢係我嘅信用咭號碼？

邊個出手我呀？

Hi changye. Yes, the third one is tricky; I'll explain it after others have had a go. And then Sebastian, our CantoProf, can correct all the entries! hitokiri, can you read the simplified Cantonese?

Wow, this thread seems to be VERY interesting. I'll read all the comments today. Thank you, guys!

@tvan: The Sichuan vernacular is cognate with Mandarin; technically it's a dialect of Mandarin. That's one reason, I guess, why its "lexical depth" hasn't translated (so far) into any serious moves to develop a written form. Written Mandarin works fine for them (sort of).

@hitokiri: I learned to read Cantonese using simplified characters; the course materials were developed as a "bridging" course for Mandarin speakers. But I am also using another course, published in the UK, which uses Traditional. 

@tvan: I think you would have difficulty understanding written Cantonese if you skipped over the “non-standard” characters. Have a go at reading these simplified phrases:

I think he just means that they read the simplified character with the Cantonese pronunciation.

(This is one of the hazards of choosing a Chinese name, btw - that which sounds so lovely in Mandarin can come out as 'yuck' or 'fat' or worse when a Cantonese speaking person announces it.)

When people in Sichuan text each other and hapless foreigners in Sichuanhua, they use simplified Hanzi to represent the sounds. So 'I don't know' (bu shaodei) comes out as 不小得.

This is, as you would expect, a pretty inexact science. Would Cantonese in Guangzhou ever be expressed the same way?

mikeinnewsshot: My uncle's from 廣西 and he writes 粵語 in 繁體字。:)

I've just researched that Guangzhou Cantonese compared to HK and Macau Cantonese is written in simplified since colloquial written Cantonese is discouraged.

I know that Guangzhou people talk in Cantonese.  That has nothing to do with what they write.

What I can't still understand is indeed what they write - Cantonese in simplified characters? How does this work. 

Oops.:D I meant that they don't use vernacular Cantonese in writing Cantonese. Something like: 我係邊個？(Vernacular: ngo hai bin go?/Who am I?) as 我是誰(Written:ngo si seoi?/wo3shi4shei2?).

I don't know how Guangzhou people chat in Cantonese though, since they use Simplified characters.

Hitokiri

How can you " write Cantonese as if it was in Mandarin"??

tvan: They don't use simplified characters. Cantonese characters are always written in Trad. chars. However, in Guangdong province; I think that they speak Vernacular Cantonese but they write Cantonese as if it was in Mandarin.

Well, Cantonese characters... I learned something today.  Thanks Auntie68 and Sebastian.  I'm guessing that only standard characters are used in the Hong Kong newspapers; either that or I just skip over the non-standard ones.  Do they have simplified Cantonese characters?  One-screen post please.  ;-)

On the opera connection that Auntie68 mentioned, it's always seemed to me that many different areas of China possess their own local operatic traditions.  Given the logic above, would these dialects (e.g. Sichuanese, 吴语, etc.) also possess comparable lexical (had to look that one up) depth?

@sebastian: thanks for the meaningful elaboration. And the Cantonese characters. I wish I could do that.

@mikeineweshott: I think that the average Cantonese speaker -- especially an overseas Chinese, or an older HKer -- would probably be bloody-minded and read any characters which he could recognize with their Cantonese readings ("internally"). Even if he had studied Mandarin before. And then he would cuss and feel aggrieved because "Mandarin doesn't make any sense!"

Having said that, on a visit to Dongguan in Southern China about ten years back, I was already meeting young parents who had studied Mandarin in school (alongside Cantonese), and were -- not joking! -- taking the immense trouble to say everything twice, in both languages, for the benefit of their toddlers. I would say that anybody under the age of 35 - 40 in Hong Kong would have managed to get at least 6 - 10 years of Mandarin lessons in school.

Classical Chinese is commonly used for formal, ceremonial purposes anyway. Eg. legal decrees, gravestone inscriptions, temple plaques, Cantonese opera lyrics, and fortune-telling manuals would be written in Classical Chinese, and my guess is that a well-educated Cantonese speaker would have less of a problem reading those. Giving a Cantonese reading to each Classical Chinese character, of course.

There are brilliant examples of this in the fun, silly movie, "Dancing Lion", directed by Francis Ng. I wrote a film review about this on a CPOD thread.

My favourite character is the very campy "Uncle", played by Anthony Wong, who is a real riot as the lion dance master uncle who is only speaks in Classical (or classical-sounding) Cantonese. He sounds like a Gandalf, to be honest! And most of the time, he sounds like a lovable uncle who accidentally fried his brains on LSD or bad dope in the 1970s! There's nothing serious or meaningful about this film, but it's one of my favourites because of Uncle! 

Auntie68 - thank you for that explanation.

I have asked several Chinese friends whose first language is Cantonese (in Guangzhou) to explain but they never could.

Can you tell me what a Cantonese speaker 'hears internally' when they read written (Mandarin) Chinese (say) in the newspaper.  Do they hear the sounds of Cantonese or what?  What if they cannot speak Mandarin?

Hong Kong Cantonese has its own set of characters that is mixed with "normal" traditional characters to write Cantonese as it is spoken. This kind of informal writing is used a lot in HK's tabloids, print ads, and on the web in blogs etc. For example, the sentence 

他们在那里 (他們在那裡)

would be written as

佢哋喺嗰度

in Cantonese. You won't find the first four characters in standard written Chinese (no matter whether simplified or traditional). Like auntie68 said, such Cantonese characters often have a 口 radical on the left side.

P/s: IMHO, there is a third vernacular which has the potential to develop a modern written form -- Chaozhou dialect ("Teochew", from the Swatow region).

If vernacular Teochew has the "lexical depth" to permit this to happen one day, it is probably thanks to the great tradition of Teochew opera, which means that there is an important body of very sophisticated lyric work written in Classical Chinese, and meant to be sung in Teochew.

This rich operatic tradition has helped vernacular Teochew to acquire the necessary "lexical depth" for -- say, Tang poems -- to be read in Teochew. I've always found it interesting that the other two vernaculars which have evolved written "standard" forms -- Mandarin and Cantonese -- have long opera traditions too.

Most other Chinese vernaculars lack the "lexical depth" to be developed as written languages without having to "construct" a large number of characters. A relatively obscure dialect wouldn't have a vernacular "reading" for many of the characters used in Classical Chinese, simply because Classical Chinese was too remote to influence its evolution in any meaningful sort of way. These would tend to be dialects associated with regions with historically low rates of literacy in Classical Chinese.

Hi tvan, bazza, I was too imprecise, sorry. I'm no expert on written Cantonese, so by "Cantonese characters" I meant -- loosely -- the Chinese characters which are used to write Cantonese:

Classical Chinese（文言; wen2yan2, in modern Mandarin): The Cantonese and Mandarin versions of the same text/ poem would be virtually identical, ie the character mapping would be very simple. They would use the same characters, written in the same order.

Modern vernacular Chinese （白话; bai2hua4, in modern Mandarin): The Cantonese version would look very different from the Mandarin version, and both would look different from the classical text. Even if both were written in Traditional characters. The key reason for this seems to be differences in the syntax of both vernaculars.

So word order would be slightly different,and different particles might be used. And the character set for the Cantonese version would probably contain more characters matching the character set for the Classical Chinese version.

The reason for this is that the orthodox Cantonese "readings" for Classical Chinese characters are much closer to Middle Chinese than the corresponding Mandarin "readings". The sound contours and tone contours of Mandarin have changed more dramatically.

Eg. Middle Chinese had 7 (or 8) tone contours, whereas Mandarin (classical or modern) has been pared down to 4 key tone contours, and Cantonese has actually acquired an additional tone contour (so arguably Cantonese has 9 tones).

When vernacular Mandarin began developing a written form in the early 20th century (that's the form we are learning now at CPOD), the Mandarinistas had to improvise, selecting characters -- usually from Classical Chinese, but I suspect also from the vast "periodic table" (thanks, Goulniky!) of possible stroke combinations -- to provide standard characters to write down the sounds of the vernacular Mandarin.

The same process occurred in vernacular Cantonese, when it, too, began to be written down. However, because of the sheer strength of Mandarin as the written vernacular, the process of turning Cantonese into a written form has been more haphazard. Some people even argue that there isn't such a thing as "written Cantonese"!

In its written form, Modern vernacular Cantonese does employ a number of characters which were "constructed" rather than being selected from the general lexicon of Classical Chinese. Many of these characters are a "standard" Chinese character modified with a "口" radical as a hint that it has a purely phonetic value. And the freewheeling "Hong Kong" mindset which has evolved since 1949 has created a language culture where writers (usually in the popular press) like to invent their own Cantonese characters. Such characters are like the Cantonese equivalent of American words like "truthiness" and "phat".

tvan, I'm sorry I don't have the character input support on my Mac to give you any examples of these constructed words, but I've had a Hong Kong friend point them out to me before in an issue of "Apple Daily", some years back.

In addition to these "constructed" words, there is also another set of Cantonese characters consisting of Classical Chinese characters which are considered obsolete in Mandarin (and may even have lost their place in the general Classical Chinese lexicon). Whether or not these can be considered to be "Cantonese characters" (ie unique to Cantonese), is still a subject of debate.

I bet you are regretting now having asked me that question, tvan...

tvan says 5 hours ago Auntie68, what is a Cantonese character?  I've heard that there are some spoken words in various dialects that have no characters, but wasn't aware of a dialect having its own characters.

I believe it's usually just Traditional characters for Cantonese, you can get Cantonese based IMEs that use alternative romanisation that's more like the Cantonese pronunciation.

Auntie68, what is a Cantonese character?  I've heard that there are some spoken words in various dialects that have no characters, but wasn't aware of a dialect having its own characters.

Hi Clay! Who's going to host the Canto-podcasts? Just curious. :)

Sebastian: I think we should stick to HK 廣東話，since that's what most 華僑 use.

我要紹鋤晒廣東話。（我要繼續學習廣東話。）

This is great news. I am still longing for a high-quality daily Cantonese podcast, but a weekly show is a great start :).

By the way, what flavor of Cantonese will this show be about? Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong is sometimes quite different from Cantonese spoken in Mainland China.

auntie68,

that would be great, and feel free to email me if you have any suggestions or comments.  You seem to be our resident Cantonese expert!

I'm thrilled! Thanks, Clay! And I promise you that I'll do my amateur best to supply some of the characters somewhere in the Comments... it's high time I learned how to type Cantonese characters. Only hope this is supported, I'm a Mac user.

Again, thanks.

Aunite68

We are going to be doing Cantonese as an Extra show which will be published once a week.  Like the other extra shows, it will consist of just audio, so romanization or the language and characters will not play a role.  It' going to be a fun and quick way to learn some usefull phrases in Cantonese.

Hi sushan. Here is an online resource that I find useful:

http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk

One plus is that they use a fairly standard romanization system -- jyutping.

At this point I'd like to invite CPOD to consider using simplified Cantonese characters as well in their Cantonese lessons.

Although just about EVERYTHING in Hong Kong is in traditional characters, providing simplified Cantonese characters is extremely valuable in a "bridging course" because it makes it that much easier for the student to learn from similarities and differences between the two dialects:

For example, in colloquial Cantonese, "tomorrow" is 听日, and "yesterday" is 琴日.

IMHO, providing the simplified characters too will help the student to focus on Cantonese syntax and vocabulary, without being too distracted by differences which are merely a question of "simplified vs traditional". My written Cantonese just took off when I tried a bridging course (out of print) published in China in the 1990s. The material, which includes audio, was developed by Jinan University and it uses simplified characters.

My attitude is probably shaped by my Singaporean education, which is based on the 识繁写简 philosophy, ie we don't have any psychological baggage concerning an average person's ability to recognize traditional characters despite being taught using simplified characters only.

CPOD, I really do hope that you will consider this. I really want your CantoPOD to be a success, and am willing to mail a copy of my course materials to you in Shanghai because I think that the brief notes provided in English and simplified Mandarin Chinese concerning the "core" Cantonese words are so clear and helpful that anybody in the CPOD office will be able to understand them. And it will save you some "heavy lifting" because it identifies the key syntactical/vocab differences...

I used Mandarin in Hong Kong and didn't have any problems being understood, but I couldn't understand what other people were saying. I am also very interested in Cantonese though; it connects you with the diaspora in ways that Mandarin cannot. Does anyone know of existing online resources for it?

Having spent a lot of time in Taiwan, I've picked up a handful of useful Taiwanese expressions from friends.  If you think chinese people are happy when you can say something in mandarin, just wait to see their face when you can say something in their local dialect.  I'm not really interested in seriously studing Taiwanese/Shanghainese/etc..., but having an occasional lesson in those dialects would be really fun.

BTW - I just got back from China and spent the last few days of my trip in Guangzhou.  I expected to hear a LOT of Cantonese, but I really didn't run into that much.  It certainly was not as much as I heard when I was Hong Kong.  (that was in the late 90s though, and I hear there's much more Mandarin in HK now too)  I'm quite curious, though, as to how prevalent Cantonese is in daily use.  I wasn't in the business/tourist areas of Guangzhou, and I was expecting not to be able to understand what people around me were saying.

Cantonese all the way! :D Clay, thanks for the spoiler! :P

Clay I'm really glad to hear that Cantonese is coming. And I'm really pleased to see others' enthusiasm for Cantonese.  I love Mandarin and I love the ChinesePod way of learning, but I agree with tzeuk that Pimsleur at the moment is my only decent way of learning some basic Cantonese as there really isn't any good books or materials on the net that I've come across for learning Cantonese. I'm so happy to hear that CantonesePod may be in the pipeline, or even a weekly Cantonese lesson here on CP as I love the way Praxis teaches languages.

clay says

7 hours ago

 

It's coming....

Amazing! I am really suprised. It will be worth any wait im sure.

I would love to see Cantonese--even if it's a particular series/set of ChinesePod (ie. a once-a-week lesson)--to let those of us interested have a chance and use CPod's gorgeous setup!

Hello all. What I am finding very exciting about the Chinese language these days is that the PRC's Central Government (our friend who is fondly nicknamed “中央") appears to be more relaxed about letting dialects flourish now that the position of Putonghua is so much more secure across the nation. And because Singapore takes the lead from China in everything concerning Chinese language policy, now I get to watch TV programmes in Cantonese on cable!

Clay, are you saying that CPOD is working on some kind of CantoPod? Whooo-hoooo!!! I really hope that you will at least try. I think there are only about 100 词语 in everyday colloquial Cantonese which are radically different from the syntax of Mandarin. Yay!

Jenny mentioned Shanghainesepod. That sounds cool, love the way Shanghainese sounds!

And I read that it's slowly being diluted by mainstream Mandarin.. so it'd be a good idea to spread Shanghainese to keep the dialect intact!

It's coming....

PLEASE DO! I can't even find a decent book still in print from which to learn cantonese, pimsleur is my only board of call at the moment.

Even releasing a podcast twice a week would be sufficient and or only letting paying members listen. Plus as stated in aunties links, you could just take the current cpod lessons and catonesify them.

On the subject of other languages, I found two Polish learning podcasts today:

One Minute Polish

Bloggy Polish

Haven't decided which is the better of the two yet.

Dear silentnoise, I'm afraid I don't think this is on the cards. But do please form your own opinion; the reasons "for" were ventilated pretty vigorously here:

http://blog.praxislanguage.com/2007/06/13/other-praxis-languages/#comments

I believe that Auntysue has a CPOD-sponsored sub-forum just for Cantomaniacs...