Cantonese (linguistics)
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:
Yuèy", 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.
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 ofCantonese. 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.
 |
The area coloured in red shows the Cantonese-speaking region in the PRC. |
See Standard Cantonese for a discussion of the sounds of Standard Cantonese and pages on individual dialects for their phonologies.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 many 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" (") are written using very similar
characters, but in Mandarin the pronunciation of the two words is quite different to each other ("w'" vs. "è"), whereas in Cantonese they are pronounced similarly (ngo5 vs ngo6 respectively, a difference in tones). Since the written form of the two words suggest a similar pronunciation to each other, it can be assumed that their ancient pronunciation was indeed similar, but in Mandarin the two syllables have diverged in pronunciations over time, whereas in Cantonese the two have remained similar to each other, on this basis some say that "ngo5" and "ngo6" are closer to the older sounds than Mandarin "w'" and "è", even though the ancient pronunciation has also not been maintained in Cantonese.
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, (",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). Mandarin also lacks the syllable-final sound "m"; the final "m" and final "n" from older varieties of Chinese have merged into "n" in Mandarin, eg Cantonese "taam6" (譚) and "taan4" (壇) versus Mandarin tán, "yim4" (鹽) and "yin4" (言) versus Mandarn yán, "tim1" (添) and "tin1" (天) versus Mandarin tiān, "ham4" (含) and "hon4" (') versus Mandarin hán. The examples are too numerous to list. Furthermore, nasals can be independent syllables in Cantonese words, eg "ng5" (") "five," and "m4" ("") "not".
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. Eg
jiang (將) and
zhang (張) are two distinct syllables in Mandarin, but in Cantonese they have the same sound.
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.
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 messaging 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 [
1] 㗎, 叻, ", ", 呃, ', ', ', ", ", "", ", ", 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'搞佢啲嘢。" is often written in easier form as "你o係果度好喇, 千祈'搞佢D野。" (character-by-character, approximately 'you, be, there (two characters), good, (final particle), thousand, pray, don't, mess, he/she, genitive particle, thing', 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, ", 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.
Qin and Han Dynasties (秦漢時期)
In ancient
China, Guangdong was called
Nanyue (南越), and very few
Han people (漢人) lived there. Therefore, the
Chinese language was not widely spoken there at that time. However, in the
Qin Dynasty Chinese troops moved south and conquered the
Baiyue (百越) territories, and thousands of Han people began settling in the
Lingnan (嶺南) area. This migration led to the Chinese language being spoken in the
Lingnan area. After
Zhào Tuō (趙佗) was made the Duke of
Nanyue (南越王) by the
Han Dynasty (漢高祖), given authority over the Nanyue region, many
Han people entered the area and lived together with the Nanyue population, consequently affecting the livelihood of the Nanyue people as well as the stimulation of the spread of the
Chinese language. Although thousands of
Han people settled in the south they were a minority compared with the indigenous Nanyue population. Therefore, early
Cantonese was a mixture of local Nanyue language and Chinese language.
Sui Dynasty (魏晉南北朝時期)
In the
Sui Dynasty,
Central China (中原地區) was in a period of war and discontent, and many people moved southwards to avoid war, forming the first mass
migration of
Han people into the South. As the population in the
Lingnan area dramatically rose, the Chinese language in the south developed significantly. Thus, the Cantonese language began to develop more significant differences with central Chinese.
Tang Dynasty ("朝時期)
As the Han population in the
Guangdong area continued to rise during the
Tang Dynasty, some indigenous people living in the south had been annexed culturally by the Han population, while others moved to other regions (such as Guangxi), developing their own dialects. At the time, Cantonese had been affected by central Chinese and became more standardized, further developed a more independent language structure, vocabulary, and grammar. In the Tang Dynasty,
Cantonese became a mature language.
Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasty (宋元明清時期)
In the
Song Dynasty, the differences between central Chinese and Cantonese became more significant, and the languages became more independent of one another. During the
Yuan and
Ming dynasties,
Cantonese developed still further, developing its own unique characteristics.
Mid-late Qing Dynasty (清朝中後期)
In the late
Qing, the dynasty had gone through a period of
autarky (閉關自守), and Guangdong remained the only city that allowed trading with foreign countries. Therefore, a significant number of foreigners had only learned Cantonese, but not
Mandarin. Moreover, for the sake trading with other countries, many Imperial government officials learned Cantonese, making the language very popular during the late Qing period.
Modern
After the
Revolution of 1911 (辛亥革命)(the
Chinese bourgeois
democratic revolution led by
Dr. Sun Yat-sen, which overthrew the Qing Dynasty, the
Republic of China (中華民國) was established. At the moment when the parliament wanted to set up an official language, significant numbers of MPs demanded the adoption of
Cantonese as the official language /
dialect of China. As
Cantonese MPs had already gained more than half of the votes it was relatively easy for
Cantonese becoming an official language. However,
Dr. Sun Yat-sen (also a
Cantonese) considered the difficulty faced should
Cantonese be universalized, therefore he persuaded MPs to vote in favour of
mandarin as the official language. Finally
Cantonese was lost by 1 vote (somebody suggested that it was 3),
Mandarin became the official language of
China.
After 1949,
Cantonese lost its prestige and diminished in popularity due to its reduced status as simply a
Chinese dialect. Its popularity was also negatively affected by the
Mandarin Movement (推廣普通話運動). Nowadays,
Cantonese begun to
Mandarinized and many youngsters do not know how to pronounce specific vocabularies in
Cantonese.
*
Written Cantonese*
Chinese written language*
Chinese input methods for computersDictionaries
Cantonese Dictionaries or Databases with Spoken Cantonese Entries
*
A Comparative Database of Modern Chinese and Cantonese: A Cantonese"Chinese Dictionary at the Chinese University of Hong Kong: This is one of the few online sites with an extensive database of
spoken Cantonese terms and phrases on the Internet. Exclusively in Chinese.
Character-Only Cantonese Pronunciation Dictionaries
*
The Chinese University of Hong Kong Research Centre for Humanities Computing: Chinese Character Database: With Word-formations Phonologically Disambiguated According to the Cantonese Dialect: A vast Chinese character database of over 13,000 characters with audio pronunciations in Cantonese. This site is viewable in Chinese and English. You can choose from seven transcription schemes to view character pronunciations. By default, the site is displayed in Chinese and uses the LSHK jyutping transcription scheme. To view the site in English and/or use a different transcription scheme, a cookies enabled browser is required. For each character you can find Cantonese pronunciations, Mandarin pronunciations, character ranking/frequency,
Big5 encoding number,
Unicode number,
cangjie (chongkit) input code, and which radical the character can be found under using a traditional Chinese dictionary.
*
Cantonese Talking Syllabary: in Chinese; require Big5 font
*
Chinese Character Dictionary*
MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary: An online Chinese English dictionary supporting both Cantonese and Mandarin. (
You need to click the compound word to get the individual Cantonese readings of each character; no direct Cantonese phrase pronunciation guide at the moment.) Standard Chinese words only. Vernacular Cantonese not supported
Other links
*
Classification of Yue Dialects*
Ethnologue report on Cantonese*
Hong Kong Government site on the HK Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS)*
Official Website for Free Cantonese Classes in New York City*
第六屆國際粵方言"討會論文集 (Sixth International Cantonese Language Research Conference)
*
八十年代以後的粵方言"究 (Post-1980s Cantonese Language Research)
*
A Dictionary of Cantonese Slang: The Language of Hong Kong Movies, Street Gangs and City Life*
Profile and Linguistic Map of Cantonese *
Cantonese is losing its voicezh-yue:粵語
