# Speaking Mandarin with Cantonese pronunciation



## terredepomme

Most books from HK are written in standard written Chinese which is based on spoken standard Mandarin. Also, I've noticed that Hong Kong news reporters read their standard Chinese texts with Cantonese pronunciation. If I spoke to HKers with standard Mandarin grammar with Cantonese pronunciation, would they understand, and how would it be received?


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## SuperXW

That would be totally weird...unless you're reciting an article in a Chinese literature class...
Even the news reporters won't do that completely. They just read a few standard Mandarin words, but they won't read every word in Mandarin format.
For example: 
Daily life: koi地 好惊，唔知点算好，所以报左警。 （I don't know how to type those characters.）
On news (mixed usage): koidi 好惊，不知所措，于是报警。
Standard Mandarin: 他们很害怕，不知所措，于是报警。
My example may not be so good. I hope others could show you better ones.


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## AquisM

I'm a native from Hong Kong and I would definitely understand, but it would sound extremely weird. The only situation in which I would do that is if I were reading aloud and article/report/letter etc.


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## Youngfun

It seems that HK songs are also sung in Standard Chinese with Cantonese pronunciation...
Once I wanted to learn Cantonese pronunciation through songs, but that wouldn't be helpful to learn making conversations, but only to read an article written in Chinese, as SuperXW said.

In Wenzhou there are news in Wenzhou dialect too, they mix real dialect words with Mandarin words that otherwise don't exist in real daily conversation.
Some people complain that there are too many Mandarin-imported words, so it's not the real dialect.
Some people complain that there are too many informal dialect words, making it too rude or rustic（土）。


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## edencheng

SuperXW said:


> That would be totally weird...unless you're reciting an article in a Chinese literature class...
> Even the news reporters won't do that completely. They just read a few standard Mandarin words, but they won't read every word in Mandarin format.
> For example:
> Daily life: koi地 好惊，唔知点算好，所以报左警。 （I don't know how to type those characters.）
> On news (mixed usage): koidi 好惊，不知所措，于是报警。
> Standard Mandarin: 他们很害怕，不知所措，于是报警。
> My example may not be so good. I hope others could show you better ones.



Hi SuperXW, koi would be written as 佢 generally. Since there are no standard character for Cantonese expression, some purists argue that it is written as 渠 and say that is originated from Wu Chinese. But I will say 佢 is used more in general.


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## SuperXW

edencheng said:


> Hi SuperXW, koi would be written as 佢 generally. Since there are no standard character for Cantonese expression, some purists argue that it is written as 渠 and say that is originated from Wu Chinese. But I will say 佢 is used more in general.


Thanks. I know it's 佢, but I just don't know how to type it since i'm typing Pinyin. 
I also know other Cantonese characters, but there seems no way to type it down with Pinyin, such as "o左".


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## Youngfun

How is 渠/佢 pronounced in Cantonese?
In Southern Wu is pronounced as /gi/ or /gei/ (English g) according to the area.
If I remember well, 渠 is also used in Hakka（客家话）。

It seems that Hong Kong people don't care about writing the correct Chinese characters, especially on the Internet, important is to make oneself understand.
So I've seen written 食反（食飯）、系（喺）、医院（instead of TC 醫院）、郁（instead of the much more complicated 鬱）、5（吾）、0檬（檸檬）、ga（equivalent of 的）、老mou（老母？）、diu（vulgarity)


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## OneStroke

現在港人說「老母」，多是用來問後（用髒話罵）別人，絕對沒有尊敬別人母親之意，所以港人多忌諱這個詞語。

I believe 5 is 唔, not the Classical Chinese first-person nominative pronoun. 

「佢」該唸koei5, 調值13. 'oei' 類似法語的'oeil'。


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## Youngfun

对，那个香港人在一个网页游戏里跟我说“老mou（老母）”在在骂我⋯⋯

Thanks! I always confuse 唔 and 吾!
But for example in songs, they always use 不 which I hear as pronounced more or less as bak (kind of 入声，don't know which final)

Btw, in my dialect the word we use for 我 has same pronounciation as 五, I wonder if we are still using the classical Chinese 吾。

So if the pronunciations are koei5 and /gei/ they could have the same origin (Southern Wu retained the voiceless consonant /g/ while other Chinese dialects have lost it converting to /k/ or /kh/).


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## edencheng

fyi, 佢 in IPA is /kʰɵɪ˩˧/​btw, Youngfun, what kind of dialect you speak? I'm just interested​


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## AquisM

Youngfun said:


> 对，那个香港人在一个网页游戏里跟我说“老mou（老母）”在在骂我⋯⋯
> 
> Thanks! I always confuse 唔 and 吾!
> But for example in songs, they always use 不 which I hear as pronounced more or less as bak (kind of 入声，don't know which final)


I think this is to avoid cacophony. 唔 is pronounced as mm6 (very low tone). This sounds very bad when you're composing a song. 不, on the other hand, is pronounced bat1 (high tone), which sounds better and can link with other notes.

By the way, what dialect do you speak?


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## Youngfun

Both of you asked me the same question 
I speak 温州话 and 青田话 both located in Southern Zhejiang （浙江南部）, and considered Southern Wu （南吴语）。
These two cities are far from each other 50 km, but speak different dialects.

In 温州, both "5" and the word for "我" are pronounced "ng".
But in 青田话 they are slightly different, 5 is "ngü" and 我 is "ngu".

My dialects are similar to Cantonese in some ways, we also pronounce 心 as "sang"
I have cousins that only speak Cantonese, sometimes for my father it's easier to talk to them in 温州话 than in Mandarin.
While I speak English to them... lol...

@AquisM:
Are you sure it is only problem of cacophony?
What about other words?
Songs lyrics are always written in Standard Chinese. But how do you sing them?
If there's a 吃，do you actually sing 吃 or rather sing it 食？
If there's a 沒 do you sing it 沒 or 冇？

I could be wrong, but I always hear "mu yao" for 没有 and "mou" for 沒。
And I think I always hear "hei" for 是。


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## AquisM

是 is actually pronounced si4 (mid-low tone). The colloquial 係 is pronounced hai4. However, you're right. Mostly it uses standard Chinese grammar, but an occasional word or two does slip in. I never realised that before.


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## OneStroke

"Mu yao"? That's how Putonghua native speakers (stereo)typically mispronounce 沒有. Same for 'hei' for 係.

Much like how shi and ci writers would mess up with grammar in order to fit in the 平仄 rules, Cantonese songwriters have to follow the rules of composition, ie how the nine tones correspond to the seven notes. Maybe they find standard Chinese or a standard/Cantonese hybrid easier to write.

Why is 心 'also' pronounced  'sang' in your dialect? The Cantonese pronounciation is 'sam'.  Is there something I'm not getting?

In my experience - I'm probably way off the mark - 吾 is nominative and 我 is objective/disjunctive in classical.

Are 波 pronounced pu/bu and 多 pronounced du in your dialect? If so, that syllable you're using might just be a version of 我...

By the way, so you speak several Chinese dialects, four Romance languages, and English, Youngfun? That's really cool.


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## AquisM

You speak FOUR Romance languages?! Do you get confused all the time?


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## Youngfun

OneStroke said:


> "Mu yao"? That's how Putonghua native speakers (stereo)typically mispronounce 沒有. Same for 'hei' for 係.


Yes 
Maybe "mu yao" is stereotypical, but my cousin (that doesn't speak Cantonese but sings Cantonese songs) taught me like that, and that the short form is "mao". So I've also thought that "mao" was "mu yao" pronounced quickly.
So what's the correct pronounciation os 沒有、沒、冇？
Is there a difference between 沒 and 冇？

While "hei"... I just heard it wrong listening to songs. Thanks AquisM for the correction. 
What about newscasts? Would they say "hai4" or "si4" for 是/喺?


OneStroke said:


> Cantonese songwriters have to follow the rules of composition, ie how the nine tones correspond to the seven notes. Maybe they find standard Chinese or a standard/Cantonese hybrid easier to write.


Are you sure?? 
I wouldn't be surprised if great songwriters, such as 方文山 (can you think of a great Cantonese songwriter?), did that.
But I would be very surprised if modern pop singer did that too! That requires great skills in metrics...
Just compare the majority of Jay Chou's songs (lyrics written by 方文山), with 簡單愛 (lyrics written by 徐若瑄) and 牛仔很忙 (lyrics written by himself)... 
The latter two have so simple 口语化 lyrics that I'd be surprised if they cared about tones!
When I was listening to the song 《心雨》by 楊鈺瑩 & 毛寧，I heard “shen1 shen4 地把你想起”... I was thinking: what on earth is shen1 shen4??  
Then I looked at the Karaoke screen and saw it was 深深... but in the melody the tone of the second 深 was high falling... so I was thinking about a character with falling tone shen4...

Maybe Mandarin songwriters don't care but Cantonese ones care about tones? 
I also feel that Cantonese 情歌 are deeper, more expressive than Mandarin ones. But that's my impression only...



OneStroke said:


> Why is 心 'also' pronounced  'sang' in your dialect? The Cantonese pronounciation is 'sam'. Is there something I'm not getting?


I'm sorry, it's me not getting something...
I cannot distinguish clearly 'san', 'sam' and 'sang'.
Again, here I may have heard it wrong, as I didn't study Cantonese, but just hear it seldom.
In both of my 2 dialects, the only standard 尾音 is 'ng' ... so when speaking Mandarin I don't distinguish clearly 前鼻音 "an" and 后鼻音 "ang"。And of course in Cantonese I don't distinguish "am" from "an" and "ang".
In my other native language, Italian, the nasal _codas_ [an, aŋ, am] all exist but are not distintive, are all allofones of the phoneme /an/ depending on the position and on the region of origin of the speaker. 

Anyway, apart from the 尾音，I was just observing how similar are the 2 sound "sam" and "sang", which are all "sa" + nasal coda.
Compared to the Mandarin xin1.


OneStroke said:


> In my experience - I'm probably way off the mark - 吾 is nominative and 我 is objective/disjunctive in classical.
> 
> Are 波 pronounced pu/bu and 多 pronounced du in your dialect? If so, that syllable you're using might just be a version of 我...


Thanks for telling the difference between 我 and 吾... I know nearly nothing about Classical Chinese.
And you are right!
波 is pronounced /p*u*/ in 温州 and /ɓu/ in 青田； 
多 is pronounced /t*u*/ in 温州 and /ɗ*u*/ in 青田。
So in 青田话 “我” must have followed the same rule and being pronounced /ŋ*u*/
In all 温州 surrondings rural areas 我 is pronounced /ŋ*u*/ (if I didn't hear wrong again), only in the city it might be simplified losing the vowel, thus /ŋ/. So here the city speech is the odd one, while the rural speeches are more conservative, as usual elsewhere too.

So as you said we could be using our version of 我……
I was confused by the Mandarin wo...the w consonant...
Then I found on the internet that it was also pronounced with "ng" consonant in 中古汉语.
And it's also "ngo" in Cantonese (non 懒音 version). 


OneStroke said:


> By the way, so you speak several Chinese dialects, four Romance languages, and English, Youngfun? That's really cool.





AquisM said:


> You speak FOUR Romance languages?! Do you get confused all the time?


[OFF-TOPIC]
哪裡哪裡？
Not several dialects lah, only 2 lah! 
I don't get confused in Italian as it's my native language...
My French vocabulary is so limited that I cannot communicate very well... 
But I do confuse a lot Spanish and Portuguese all the time...
And when I don't know a Spanish/French/Portuguese word, I just guess it putting an Italian one... sometimes I'm right, but most of the times I'm wrong, that word either doesn't exist in that language or is a false friend...

Then, when talking with with my brother, my cousins and my friends, I also speak the most *Roman*ce dialect of all: the *Roman* dialect! 
[/OFF-TOPIC]


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## AquisM

> So what's the correct pronounciation os 沒有、沒、冇？
> Is there a difference between 沒 and 冇？


沒(有) mut6 (jau5) [mu:t˨ (jɐu˩˧)]
冇 mou5 [mou˩˧]

Meaning wise, there are no differences.

Of the three, 冇 is the most common in Cantonese, practically the only one used in the spoken language. And you're right, it comes from a blend of the sounds of 沒有. 沒有 is rather literary and would only be found in the written language/sometimes in news/songs. 沒 so much less favoured than its longer counterpart that it is practically not used at all and its use is solely literary (in contrary to Mandarin, where 沒 is most common negating word - 没办法、没知识, while in Cantonese 冇(没有)办法、冇知识) or in certain words like 没事 (spoken as 冇事)、沉没 (note that there is no pronunciation change).



> What about newscasts? Would they say "hai4" or "si4" for 是/喺?


Definitely hai6. (I made a mistake.  They should be hai6 and si6.) One of the few words that are always pronounced in its colloquial form. Also 冇、o既 (Mandarin 的)、蚊 (Mandarin 元/塊)、佢 (Mandarin 他) etc.


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## Youngfun

Thanks!

Then I think that when my cousin taught me "mu yao" that was already a good approximation of the Cantonese sound, as we don't hear the final-consonants...
In Wenzhou we also use 冇 but it's pronounced /nao/


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## strad

AquisM said:


> Of the three, 冇 is the most common in Cantonese, practically the only one used in the spoken language. And you're right, it comes from a blend of the sounds of 沒有.



Etymologically, I doubt there is a relationship between 冇 and 沒有.  沒有 doesn't exist in most (spoken) chinese dialects other than mandarin, many use a variant of 無.  I think 冇 (mou5) is just the colloquial pronunciation of 無 (mou4) and was just written with a different character because of the tone difference.


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## AquisM

Perhaps. I've seen a site that says that it comes from a blend of 没有 (forgot the site URL, though), but I've done another quick search on Google, checked Wiktionary and a few Chinese dictionaries, and all of them either doesn't state anything about the etymology or says "unknown".


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## Youngfun

Well, I can still make a comparison with my 2 dialects.

In 青田 没有 is used in oral speech, together with 没。

In 温州 we only use 冇 in speech. We never use 没 and 没有。
I've read that this 冇 pronounced nao, is formed by merging the sounds of 没有 me yao, that became mao, then the m turned into n, and became 'nao'.
But the written form could be a borrowing of the Cantonese character 冇, as our dialect historically never had a written form.
But our 冇 is very very different from 無。
冇 nao
無 vu


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## OneStroke

Sorry. I assumed you must speak Putonghua as you're currently living in the capital (and after what Kong Qingdong said about us, who wouldn't at least have a shot at learning it?)

This discussion may be related: http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE5Zdic86Zdic87.htm


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## Youngfun

But I do speak Putonghua. Have I said that I don't speak it?  (Though many people born and raised overseas like me don't)
I don't know what Kong Qingdong said...
I just made a comparison with my 2 native dialects, answering to Strad.

I intended to say, that actually there are Chinese dialects that do use 没有 in speech (I think most of the Mandarin ones, 官话 group as well).

Then for the etimology I'm not sure.
I have 2 guesses:

1) If Wenzhou 冇 is the same as Cantonese 冇... then 冇 is not derived from 無…… as in many non-Cantonese dialects they are pronounced in completely different ways. 
I also suspect that our "vu" pronounciation for 無 is a 文牘…… But I cannot think if there's an alternative 白讀 pronunciation.

2) Our 冇 could be a different thing from Cantonese 冇。Then our 冇 derived from merging of 沒+有。
And Cantonese 冇 derived from a 無 with different tone. But... do we really create new characters for a different tone?

Thanks OneStroke for the link. 
It seems that the dictionary definition doesn't cover all the Chinese that use it.
But what a user said in that discussion is interesting.


> 粤语中有不少新造字，疑为“文化断层”的产物。
> 由于交通不便，自秦代由中原迁来的汉人，与世隔绝般地生活在这“百越文身之地”，所操的中原古音越来越显得另类，后来被冠以“粤语”（“粤”同“越”）。古音保留了下来，古字却慢慢被遗忘。
> 例如不会写“毋”字，就造个会意字“冇”来充数，大抵如此。​


Do you agree that 冇 comes from 毋？​


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## AquisM

> I don't know what Kong Qingdong said...


Lol... There was an incident on the Hong Kong Metro where a girl from the Mainland was eating cup noodles. A Hongkonger went up and told them that eating was prohibited within the trains with horrible Putonghua, and then the mum became defensive and it got out of hand, with insults coming from both of them. "Professor" Kong Qingdong (who claims to be the 73rd or something descedant of the great Confucius) literally called Hongkongers "dogs" and "wolves" and described Hong Kong as a place where there are cheaters, kidnappers, cons etc. everywhere (ironic isn't it? ). He said that anyone who refuses to speak Putonghua are bastards and Hongkongers are simply colonial slaves, sucking up to Britain and other foreigners, saying that we wouldn't survive without Chinese support (which I guess is true). This sparked a chain reaction with groups from both sides protesting (although I would say the protesters in HK were rather puerile, practically singing stupid songs that have had their lyrics changed to insults towards Mainlanders). One protester was even interviewed and said "we will not succumb to such discrimination and insulting comments. It is wrong.", to which the journalist asked "Then how do you justify your own insults towards them? Aren't you contradicting yourself?", to which he replied "Yeah, it's wrong, but what can we do?" 

OK, back on topic. 



> Do you agree that 冇 comes from 毋？​



Judging from their meanings, I'd disagree. 毋 does not have the sense of _not have__. _In fact, meaning-wise, 无/無 would be closer to 冇. Some people say that 冇 is a vernacular version of 無/无, created due to the tone difference.​


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## OneStroke

Sorry, Youngfun. I was a bit confused. 

I think 毋 could be the origin of 冇. Their pronunciations are the same. Even though 毋 does not mean 冇, I can see how someone might use 毋 in speech and the listener, probably not a native speaker of Cantonese, confuses it with 無.


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## AquisM

OneStroke said:


> I think 毋 could be the origin of 冇. Their pronunciations are the same.


But their tones are different.


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## OneStroke

Fair enough.  I was confusing myself comparing those pronunciations against PTH... (Yes, I know they're different in PTH too.) Anyhow I think it's possible that it might originate from an eggcorn..


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## Youngfun

But do you agree that in songs 沒有 is read as literal 沒有 while 沒 is read as 冇？

Also, in Mainland Pinyin IME 冇 can be typed using 'mao'.
So, does it also exist in Mandarin (whether Standard or other 官话方言) with pronunciation 'mao'?


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## AquisM

Youngfun said:


> But do you agree that in songs 沒有 is read as literal 沒有 while 沒 is read as 冇？


I would say that 没 is never used in songs (perhaps a few exceptions exist). Then again, I'm not a fan of Cantopop.


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