Cantonese (linguistics)

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

Written Cantonese

:Main article: Written Cantonese

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Standard written Chinese is, in essence, written Standard Mandarin. People who speak another Chinese language (or dialect), when reading aloud, usually use their language's sound values for the characters. However, this written language sounds stilted and unnatural. Unusual for a regional (i.e., non-Mandarin) Chinese language, Cantonese has a written form, including 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. However, written Cantonese is commonly used informally among Cantonese speakers. Circumstances where written Cantonese is used include conversations through instant messenger services, 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.

Related Topics:
Standard Mandarin - Standard written Chinese - Instant messenger - Subtitle - Hong Kong movies - Advertisement - The Simpsons

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Records of legal documents in Hong Kong also use written Cantonese sometimes, in order to record exactly what a witness has said.

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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, and in other informal forms of communication. 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 Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS).

Related Topics:
Hanyu - Hong Kong - Supplementary Character Set

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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:

Related Topics:
Chinese character - Mainland China

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The written word for "to be" is 是 in spoken Mandarin (pronounced shì) but is 係 in spoken Cantonese (pronounced hai6). In formal written Chinese, only 是 is normally used; 係 is only used in classical literature. However, in Hong Kong, 係 is often used in colloquial written Cantonese.

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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 http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=35CE&useutf8=false 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.

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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.

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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.')

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Other common characters are unique to Cantonese or deviated from their Mandarin usage, they include: 乜, 冇, 仔, 佢, 佬, 係, 俾, 靚 etc.

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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.

Related Topics:
Cognate - Doublet

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