# Written Chinese / Mandarin



## panjabigator

When non Mandarin speakers have to write notes to each other, would they write it in Mandarin then?  In another thread, Vince stated that many feel Cantonese cannot be written, but it has its own Wikipedia.  

I think I understand a little bit more about Chinese languages, but can someone just clarify this a bit further.  You can read the Chinese newspaper with either a Mandarin pronounciation or a Cantonese pronounciation, but it will still be Mandarin (even though it won't sound like it)?  And then there exists the Cantonese language?

I hope I haven't confused myself even more!

Shee Shee!


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## MingRaymond

*'When non Mandarin speakers have to write notes to each other, would they write it in Mandarin then?'*
I sometimes write notes in Cantonese, provided that the person who will read the notes know Cantonese. Otherwise, I will write in Standard Chinese (the written form based on Mandarin).

*'I think I understand a little bit more about Chinese languages, but can someone just clarify this a bit further. You can read the Chinese newspaper with either a Mandarin pronounciation or a Cantonese pronounciation, but it will still be Mandarin (even though it won't sound like it)? '*
Yes. Every words hava a Cantonese pronunciation.

*And then there exists the Cantonese language?*
Yes. Cantonese has a spoken and written form. Actually, all Cantonese words have a written form, but they are not taught in schools, so sometimes we don't know how to write some words. Some new words are being created, such as 嘅 (equivalent to Mandarin 的).

Ming


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## panjabigator

When you mean created, you mean a Cantonese written word is created for a already existing spoken word, right?


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## vince

panjabigator said:
			
		

> When you mean created, you mean a Cantonese written word is created for a already existing spoken word, right?


Yes.

Cantonese writing is not fully standardized. Even many simple Cantonese words have multiple variant characters. Picture English in Shakespeare's time. People had a dozen ways to write a single word.

Because Hong Kong-ers primarily write in Mandarin-based Standard Written Chinese, I guess the need for a standardized written form is not very urgent. But if (I hope) Cantonese ever gains credibility as an independent written language, standards will necessarily follow.

Most Chinese languages and even some unrelated non-Chinese languages like Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese, have local readings for the majority of Chinese characters. Just open up an entry for a character in a good Chinese dictionary and look for the Korean and Japanese readings.
Here's an example: 学 (learning / school)
From the Wiktionary entry:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%AD%B8
Mandarin pinyin: xue
Cantonese Jyutping: hok
Japanese on'yomi: *gaku*
Korean Hanja: *hak

*Try it out for different characters to verify what I'm saying.

You see, you can read out any Chinese text (newspaper, website, magazine, letter) in "Korean", "Japanese", or "Vietnamese". But Korean/Japanese/Vietnamese people won't have much idea of what you're saying unless they have studied Standard Chinese grammar. So it's not really Korean/Japanese/Vietnamese. (I think the term is Sino-Korean, Sino-Japanese, and Sino-Vietnamese, though these terms are usually reserved for old Chinese texts read out in these languages, since modern Koreans/Japanese/Vietnamese have their own written languages)

The same idea goes with Cantonese, except that Cantonese is actually linguistically related to Written Chinese, unlike the other languages listed above. Standard Chinese can be read in Cantonese, but that does not make it Cantonese.

The reason why HK people understand Written Chinese read out using the Cantonese readings of the characters is because HKers are taught Standard Chinese grammar, and that this is the only "correct" way to write and read Chinese. That any other way is "slang" and "dialect" writing.

Although Cantonese and Written Chinese are related, they are not related enough to the point of mutual intelligibility. i.e. Written Chinese pronounced in _*Cantonese pronunciation*_ cannot be understood by a native Cantonese speaker *who has not studied Written Chinese*. These people are almost exclusively a.) illiterates b.) young children and c.) Americans/Canadians whose Chinese parents speak to them in Cantonese but who have never studied Chinese writing.

This leads to the very amusing fact that Chinese children's books have to be translated by the adult in order to be understood by pre-school children. I have witnessed this translation in action: my mother runs a daycare for Chinese children, whenever it's storytime it's translation time.

I have tested this hypothesis another way:

I talk to children using simple phrases, e.g.
Ta xi huan chi shenme dongxi? ("What does he like to eat")

But where the characters are pronounced in Cantonese reading:
Ta hei fun hek sammo dongsai?

I am not using ANY slang or regionalisms, NO formal, educated vocabulary, only characters and words you would see in Chinese 101.

Yet the 6-year-old monolingual Chinese child had no idea what I had just said! Just looked at me like I was some sort of alien!

However, if I translate the above sentence into Cantonese: "Keoi zongyi sik meh?" they answer me normally. "Keoi zongyi sik si-do-be-lei" (He likes to eat strawberries).

EDIT: I said earlier in my post that
Although Cantonese and Written Chinese are related, they are not related enough to the point of mutual intelligibility. I am clearly referring to "recitation intelligibility" - i.e. can Cantonese native speakers understand a Written Chinese text (even basic ones) recited in Cantonese pronunciation? The answer is NO unless they are literate in Written Chinese.

But if you compare Written Cantonese writing and Mandarin-based Written Chinese writing, there is more mutual intelligibility, in fact, probably enough to enable the understanding of the gist of a story. But this is to be expected. The exact same thing happens with Spanish and Catalan (or even French): there is low mutual intelligibility between the spoken languages, but literate Spanish speakers can partially understand Written Catalan without ever studying it.


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## vince

Note: Chinese people have a strict distinction between written language and spoken language.

Mandarin ALWAYS refers to the spoken language. Technically, there is no such thing as "Written Mandarin". Written Mandarin is either Standard Chinese, or Standard Chinese with a few regional vocabulary added in.

"Written Chinese" almost always refers to the written language whose grammatical and vocabulary base is Mandarin. Text composed by HKers, Beijingers, Shanghai-ers are all Written Chinese texts as long as they conform to the Mandarin-based grammatical and lexical rules. Even if they are intended for a local non-Mandarin-speaking audience. Many people in Hong Kong can write Mandarin-based Written Chinese perfectly, but they will not say they "know Mandarin" unless they also know how to pronounce the characters in Mandarin readings. My father is an example of someone who uses Written Chinese, but has no comprehension of Mandarin. My view of this is that: Like all literate Chinese people, he knows Mandarin grammar, but he does not know how to *speak or understand* Mandarin.


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## modus.irrealis

Hi,



			
				vince said:
			
		

> But where the characters are pronounced in Cantonese reading:
> Ta hei fun hek sammo dongsai?
> ...
> However, if I translate the above sentence into Cantonese: "Keoi zongyi sik meh?"


It seems to me that the Cantonese pronunciation of the Written Chinese and the Spoken Cantonese don't share any words. How true is this in general? I'm roughly asking what percentage of the Cantonese words used in reading Written Chinese are part of everyday Cantonese speech. Because if this percentage is high, I would somewhat expect Written Chinese (and Mandarin through it) to have a fairly deep influence on Spoken Cantonese. Is there any sign of convergence among the different forms of Chinese?


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## vince

modus.irrealis said:
			
		

> Hi,
> 
> 
> It seems to me that the Cantonese pronunciation of the Written Chinese and the Spoken Cantonese don't share any words. How true is this in general? I'm roughly asking what percentage of the Cantonese words used in reading Written Chinese are part of everyday Cantonese speech. Because if this percentage is high, I would somewhat expect Written Chinese (and Mandarin through it) to have a fairly deep influence on Spoken Cantonese. Is there any sign of convergence among the different forms of Chinese?


When the question "what percentage of Cantonese words are in Cantonese speech" is asked, this contains a certain ambiguity that prevents comparison with Western languages.

If you ask this to a Chinese person, they will give you an estimate of how many *cognates* are used. This is probably fairly high, probably 70-79%, a similar level as that between French and Spanish. But most of these cognates are themselves unintelligible between Mandarin and Cantonese. Take 学 in my above post as an example.

In Mandarin this is pronounced "xue" (almost like shoo-eh in English)
In Cantonese, this is pronounced "hok". 

Chinese people would consider these two words to be the EXACT same word, because they share a Chinese character, despite their vastly different pronunciation.

Very few Mandarin words are pronounced the same as Cantonese words. Less than 10% probably. The phonology is just too different. There are many sounds in Mandarin that don't exist in Cantonese, and vice-versa. If you count tones, this number drops even further.

Contrast the situation with phonetic writing systems. If you ask a French person: How many Spanish words are the same as French words? You will get a number  < 10%.

To her mind, "dormir" (Spanish for "to sleep") would be the same word as "dormir" (French for "to sleep"), but "hoja" (Spanish for "leaf"/"sheet") would  not be considered the same word as "feuille" (French for "leaf"/"sheet"). Even though both words share the same etymology, having evolved from the ancient word "folla" (French: folla --> foll --> feuille; Spanish: folla --> holla --> hoja). This is because phonetic writing systems preserve pronunciation, but not etymology. But if you compare the number of cognates, i.e. words that are merely related between French and Spanish (and would therefore be written with the same "character" if they followed the Chinese writing system), you will get 75% (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=spa)

Here is an example of a sentence that Chinese people would consider as "identical" between Cantonese and Mandarin (since they are written with the exact same characters):

Mandarin
Wo zuo gong-ke (I do homework)

Cantonese reading of the above sentence:
Ngo zou gong-fo (I do homework)

The first sentence is acceptable in spoken Mandarin, the second is suitable in spoken Cantonese _*without translation*_. This does not happen very often. In fact, if you want to say "I AM DOING homework" (progressive aspect), the two languages diverge:

Mandarin:
Wo zai-zuo gong-ke (I am doing homework)

Cantonese reading of the above sentence:
Ngo zoi-zou gong-fo (I am doing homework)

The second sentence is NOT suitable in spoken Cantonese. The translation would be: Ngo zou-gan gong-fo. Notice that Cantonese employs a verbal suffix (gan) to form the progressive, whereas Mandarin employs an etymologically-unrelated prefix (zai).

I can do the exact same thing with French and Spanish:
Spanish:
Yo iré a la biblioteca (I will go to the library)

French:
J'irai à la bibliothèque (I will go to the library)

These sentences would be considered completely identical in a character-based writing system like Chinese, due to their etymology.


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## modus.irrealis

I think you answered my question but now I'm slightly confused about what I wanted to ask. But you say between 70-79% of words are cognates so I would assume that the pronunciation of the majority of written characters are everyday words used in Spoken Cantonese, and that there's a relatively small number of Cantonese words that need new characters to be written down. Is that right? If so, is there any sort of influence from Written Chinese on Cantonese and other forms of Spoken Chinese?

I think you used the analogy on this forum that the situation is like if all Romance language speakers had traditionally written in Latin and then there was a change to make the written language be based mainly on the language spoken in France. In this case, I would expect the spoken language in Italy, Spain, etc. to converge towards French, and that's why I'm wondering if anything similar is happening with Chinese today.



			
				vince said:
			
		

> But if you compare the number of cognates, i.e. words that are merely related between French and Spanish (and would therefore be written with the same "character" if they followed the Chinese writing system), you will get 75% (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=spa)


Although, I don't think you can call them all cognates (in the strict sense) because many (the majority?) of the words that are very similar are words that each language reintroduced (i.e. borrowed) from Latin and aren't commonly inherited forms like your hoja ~ feuille example.


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## vince

modus.irrealis said:
			
		

> I If so, is there any sort of influence from Written Chinese on Cantonese and other forms of Spoken Chinese?


I am not fluent in Mandarin or Cantonese so we'll have to wait for a native speaker like MingRaymond to answer this question. There probably is, formal spoken Cantonese uses more Standard-Chinese-based vocabulary than everyday spoken Cantonese.

But this reminds me of a situation where I was reading a Portuguese article  from a scientific technical journal, out loud but translating into Spanish cognate-by-cognate. A Mexican next to me commented that I read Spanish quite well!

i.e. If I saw: "As graves conseqüências do rito de exorcismo sobre a jovem motivaram a abertura de um processo criminal", I would read: "Las graves consecuencias del rito de exorcismo sobre la joven motivaron la abertura de un proceso criminal" (taken from the Portuguese Wikipedia front page).



> Although, I don't think you can call them all cognates (in the strict sense) because many (the majority?) of the words that are very similar are words that each language reintroduced (i.e. borrowed) from Latin and aren't commonly inherited forms like your hoja ~ feuille example.


In Romance languages there are two classes of cognates: ones that evolved independently (like ego (English: I) --> je (Fr.) & yo (Sp.)) and those that were reborrowed (often from Greek as well) (e.g. biologia (Sp.) = biologie (Fr.).

The same thing happens in Chinese languages. There are a class of cognates that evolved independently (Middle Chinese: kwij (English: turtle) --> Mandarin "gui", Cantonese "gwai") and there are words that one Chinese language coins (or even a non-Chinese language sometimes: like Japanese), and all others follow suit by using the local reading of the characters for the word. A well-known example is the word for telephone. The word used in most Chinese languages is derived from Japanese _den-wa_ (電話). It is pronounced dian-hua in Mandarin but din-wa in Cantonese. In this case, these two words would be called the same word. And biología and biologie would if they were written using characters.

By cognate I am referring to words that have the same origin between two languages, no matter what path they took to evolve.

EDIT: If you want to look at how many words are the same between Mandarin and Cantonese, but considering only cognates that evolved independently from the same ancient source (i.e. not considering words that are cross-borrowings), the number is dismally low (19.4%) according to this website:
http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/research/mutint/lex/yue.php
(Yue = Cantonese)


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## MingRaymond

modus.irrealis said:
			
		

> is there any sort of influence from Written Chinese on Cantonese and other forms of Spoken Chinese?


 
There is an influence. But it is difficult to tell which phrases we use in everyday spoken Cantonese are orginially from Written Chinese. We just use them.

Ming


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## vince

MingRaymond said:
			
		

> There is an influence. But it is difficult to tell which phrases we use in everyday spoken Cantonese are orginially from Written Chinese. We just use them.
> 
> Ming


I think you can usually tell with phrases, but not for individual vocabulary (unless one speaks Mandarin and notices that people are starting to use the Cantonese cognate!). Like if you see "bat" instead of "m" in a negation, or "si" instead of "hai" for "to be".

Or are there phrases that are subtle enough that you can't tell?


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## MingRaymond

vince said:
			
		

> I think you can usually tell with phrases, but not for individual vocabulary (unless one speaks Mandarin and notices that people are starting to use the Cantonese cognate!). Like if you see "bat" instead of "m" in a negation, or "si" instead of "hai" for "to be".
> 
> Or are there phrases that are subtle enough that you can't tell?


 
No. Every Cantonese-speaking people can tell you 唔 is 不 in Mandarin. What I mean is that Cantonese-speaking people use some phrases every day in daily life. For example, 信封 (envelope) , but we don't know if this phrase is orginally Cantonese, or Mandarin. We can tell some phrases are from Mandarin. For example, 郵票(stamps), old Cantonese use a transliteration 士擔 (si dam), but everyone use 郵票 now. Others phrases are difficult to tell.


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## vince

Thanks MingRaymond.

Your examples remind me of how English borrowed many French words. Us English-speakers can easily tell if a word is originally French if it is a recent borrowing: like "déjà vu" or "hors d'oeuvre".

but some words are so old like "coincidence", "archive", and "terminate", we can't tell since they've been completely assimilated into English. "We just use them", to use the same choice of words as you


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## midismilex

panjabigator said:
			
		

> I think I understand a little bit more about Chinese languages, but can someone just clarify this a bit further. You can read the Chinese newspaper with either a Mandarin pronounciation or a Cantonese pronounciation, but it will still be Mandarin (even though it won't sound like it)? And then there exists the Cantonese language?


It's easy to explain.

Things like SCHOOL in English. Englishmen have this word and pronunciation.

But Frenchmen also can use their pronunciation to say SCHOOL, but it means nothing, because they say école, not school.

Same as German or other countries in Romanized letters, they all can use their language to pronounce SCHOOL, but means nothing to them, because they aslo have their words like Schule...

On the contratry, "一層糕" in Korean (of course, they don't use SYMBOL anymore), pepole in Taiwan, Japanese, Cantonese, Chinese, etc. can use their pronunciation to SPEAK it. But nobody know what "一層糕" is except Korean who ever learned SYMBOL.

Hope I helped.


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## panjabigator

Would the same things be true of the other "dialects" and Taiwanese?


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## midismilex

I'd say yes.

In Taiwan, no matter Taiwanese, Hakka, and all our obrigines and Mandarins, etc., have their own different pronunciations to say "一層糕". But means nothing to all of us.


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## MingRaymond

Hello midismilex,

Actually, what is 一層糕？  Is this something you can eat?

Ming


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## midismilex

Sorry, I really don't know what it is. That just for an example to answer this question which one day I tried to use SYMBOL to learn Korean language only.^_^


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## vince

panjabigator said:
			
		

> Would the same things be true of the other "dialects" and Taiwanese?



Yes, but the other Chinese languages have even less standardized writing systems. This may be due to the fact that most people outside of HK can speak Mandarin, since that's the language of education in China, Taiwan, and Singapore. Plus the fact that Hong Kong was separated from the Chinese government for a century and a half. So it is even harder to write languages like Minnan (Taiwanese) and Wu (Shanghainese) than it is to write Cantonese.

I have heard that the level of bilingualism in Taiwan and China is decreasing, i.e. children now use Mandarin to talk to their friends and to do business. I know someone from China and he says that he only uses his "dialect" when talking to his grandparents (He is from Nanchang in Jiangxi province, a Gan-speaking region). I also know someone from Fuzhou, Fujian (where Min-zhong is spoken) and he also says that he is no longer fluent in his native language. This leads me to believe that for most people in Taiwan and PRC, they actually read Written Chinese in Mandarin, i.e., they no longer use the local readings of the characters. There have been surveys that show that many people in Taiwan and China no longer know how to read characters in their spoken language.




> 一層糕



I am guessing this is Korean Hanja for "school"? i.e. This is Sino-Korean: Korean written in Chinese characters?


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## midismilex

OH OH...Wish panjabigator would not  again. God bless you.


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## panjabigator

midismilex said:
			
		

> OH OH...Wish panjabigator would not  again. God bless you.



Come again?


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## ilikeenglish

If you cannot master Mandarin Chinese, how can you master Cantonese? Cantonese is just a different prononication system and has no independence or real difference in terms of grammr or vocabulary from Mandarin Chinese.

Without a solid Mandarin Chinese basis, you are just looking for trouble if you want to systematically imitate Cantonese, unless you think you have enough spare time and you attmept to conquer some really difficult tasks.

As for most learners, Mandarin Chinese is already too much a headache, isn't it?  And surely you can have more educational listening materials for Mandarin Chinese.   

Besides, dialcts in China often do not correspond to written forms. If you watch a Hongkong movies, you are going to find out if you can understand the scripts.

The standard Mandarin Chinese,  Putonghua 普通话, correspond exactly to its written form. 
So that should be your target when you begin to learn Chinese.


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## vince

ilikeenglish said:
			
		

> If you cannot master Mandarin Chinese, how can you master Cantonese? Cantonese is just a different prononication system and has no independence or real difference in terms of grammr or vocabulary from Mandarin Chinese.
> 
> Without a solid Mandarin Chinese basis, you are just looking for trouble if you want to systematically imitate Cantonese, unless you think you have enough spare time and you attmept to conquer some really difficult tasks.
> 
> As for most learners, Mandarin Chinese is already too much a headache, isn't it?  And surely you can have more educational listening materials for Mandarin Chinese.
> 
> Besides, dialcts in China often do not correspond to written forms. If you watch a Hongkong movies, you are going to find out if you can understand the scripts.
> 
> The standard Mandarin Chinese,  Putonghua 普通话, correspond exactly to its written form.
> So that should be your target when you begin to learn Chinese.


Yeah, dialects suck, they are the same as Mandarin, but with slang and deviant pronunciations. Only stupid uneducated people speak them. Go Mandarin!


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## Dalian

ilikeenglish said:
			
		

> If you cannot master Mandarin Chinese, how can you master Cantonese? Cantonese is just a different prononication system and has no independence or real difference in terms of grammr or vocabulary from Mandarin Chinese.


FYI, Cantonese is different from Mandarin at phonological, lexical and syntactical levels. For examples please refer to what Vince has posted under this thread. Cantonese should definitely be regarded as a separate language, instead of a dialect, from Mandarin. Whether two speech varieties are languages or dialects should be measured against "mutual intelligibility", a yardstick generally agreed on. Mandarin and Cantonese are far from related to this point. Languages like Cantonese are treated as 'dialects', that's largely due to political needs.




			
				ilikeenglish said:
			
		

> Besides, dialcts in China often do not correspond to written forms. If you watch a Hongkong movies, you are going to find out if you can understand the scripts.


This is in obvious contradiction to what you stated before. It is evident that Cantonese has its writing system, not 'just a different pronunciation system'. I guess you're implying that pronunciation in Cantonese doesn't correspond to what you know as standard written Chinese. But why should it?


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## ilikeenglish

F24, 
You can give some examples to show us Cantonese is independent of Mandarin Chinese.  I watch Cantonese movies. I know there is no grammar points different from Mardarin Chinese.  What you say different may be just some phrases or vocabulary. But that's another version. Not someone that cannot be corresponded to Madarin Chinese.
You ask me "I guess you're implying that pronunciation in Cantonese doesn't correspond to what you know as standard written Chinese. But why should it?"
Please record a talk by you people, and then post it directly to your magazines.  Maybe you cannot do that, because there are something you cannot write down in words. There are very repetition and redundancy.

In comparison, Mandarin Chinese is more concise. Every word can be printed on newspaper as it is said, unless there are some offending words. 

Of course, in this circumstance, local dialects in Mainland China are not like Putonghua 普通话 , which case is quite similar to Cantonese.  
In a word, Mandarin has a formal written system corresponding to its spoken form.
But written Cantonese  is just Mandarin Chinese, using its Complex Characters/ Marks/ Signs. 

You say, "Cantonese is different from Mandarin at phonological, lexical and syntactical levels." Then you think American English can be independent from British English ?   AE and BE do have differeces at phonological, lexical and syntactical levels. But that cannot discard AE's orgin in BE. Even America is a strong economy, that does not mean we have to learn two languages in English class.  We just point out some differences in them, particularly in pronunciation.  
Who can deny AE is just a dialect of English, just as South African English, Indian English, etc.  All this has been acknowledged in academic works by natives. 
The Great Britain is the orgin place of all varieties of English. So their language, BE will not be called a dialect in the near future. 

You would have to wait really a long long time to have Cantonese really separated from Chinese to be an independent language.


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## Dalian

ilikeenglish said:
			
		

> In a word, Mandarin has a formal written system corresponding to its spoken form.
> But written Cantonese is just Mandarin Chinese, using its Complex Characters/ Marks/ Signs.


Perhaps it is the official position of Mandarin in China that leads you to think so. 
It can't be said that written Cantonese is just another version of Mandarin (or based on Mandarin). Cantonese does not evolve from Mandarin. They can be regarded as sister languages both descended from Middle Chinese. What's more, it is Cantonese that preserves more features of Middle Chinese in terms of phonology and orthography. 
Consider the 'dormir' example in French and Spanish. It is not right to say written French is just Spanish, or vice versa.


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## MingRaymond

Dalian said:
			
		

> Perhaps it is the official position of Mandarin in China that leads you to think so.
> It can't be said that written Cantonese is just another version of Mandarin (or based on Mandarin). Cantonese does not evolve from Mandarin. They can be regarded as sister languages both descended from Middle Chinese. What's more, it is Cantonese that preserves more features of Middle Chinese in terms of phonology and orthography.
> Consider the 'dormir' example in French and Spanish. It is not right to say written French is just Spanish, or vice versa.


 
I agree. Mandarin and Cantonese are two different languages. Ilikeenglish, do you think Mandarin is better?


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## vince

Dalian said:
			
		

> Perhaps it is the official position of Mandarin in China that leads you to think so.



I think people in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore are taught this idealogy too.

That there is one unified Chinese language composed of many unimportant dialects.


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## panjabigator

It is a *SAD *mentality...is this a recent way of thinking or have people been puttin Mandarin first for centuries...

Let me just reiterate: *SAD!*


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## midismilex

I'm a person in Taiwan. I'm not a person in Hong Kong, or Singapore, or China. So what do they think of, *I would never be the representative of any other countries or areas as if I am a Jack-of-all-trades.*

In Taiwan, we've been putting any of our languages first for 30 years, especailly now.


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## vince

For Taiwan, look at the percentage of people who spoke Taiwanese (a dialect of Minnan) fluently fifty years ago, then compare the number of Minnan speakers today. What percentage of young people in Taiwan use Minnan amongst themselves (and not just to their grandparents)?

Which language is the _Guoyu_ ("national language") of Taiwan? Is it Taiwanese, or the northern-China-originated Mandarin?

When was the last time you wrote a full sentence of Taiwanese? I talked to a forumer from Taiwan, and when I expressed my desire to learn to write Taiwanese, he tried to discourage me from learning "slang" (how Chinese refer to the grammatical/lexical differences between "dialects" and Mandarin).

This link provides a lot of insight into the Taiwanese situation. Although you are Taiwanese, I think it would be insightful for you to hear a scientific perspective different from the official PRC/ROC/HK/Singapore Chinese one: 
How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language


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## midismilex

I'm sorry, vince. Are you living in modern life?


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## vince

I'm sorry, what do you mean by that?


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## panjabigator

vince said:
			
		

> I'm sorry, what do you mean by that?



I feel that he is intimating that any support of the "dialects" is pointless.  Mid, I really disagree with your viewpoint.


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## vince

A lot of Chinese people are afraid that acknowledging the existence of independent Chinese languages other than Mandarin would threaten linguistic unity, i.e. people would have trouble communicating with each other. I do support the use of Mandarin as a unifying national language, but not to the exclusion of all others. People in Catalonia have no trouble knowing both the national language (Spanish) and their own related native language. They embrace their own language even though it is so similar to the national one, and aren't afraid to write in it (Catalan). Will there ever be a day when people in China can do the same?


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## MingRaymond

vince said:
			
		

> A lot of Chinese people are afraid that acknowledging the existence of independent Chinese languages other than Mandarin would threaten linguistic unity, i.e. people would have trouble communicating with each other. I do support the use of Mandarin as a unifying national language, but not to the exclusion of all others. People in Catalonia have no trouble knowing both the national language (Spanish) and their own related native language. They embrace their own language even though it is so similar to the national one, and aren't afraid to write in it (Catalan). Will there ever be a day when people in China can do the same?


 
I don't know. But I type Cantonese every day. I use Cantonese to communicate with my friends on MSN messenger. I often type my diary in Cantonese. Cantonese is my mother tongue. I love it. I agree that China should have a unifying national language for people from different parts of the nation to communicate with each other. However, we should not forget our mother tongue.


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## ilikeenglish

MingRaymond said:
			
		

> But I type Cantonese every day. I use Cantonese to communicate with my friends on MSN messenger. I often type my diary in Cantonese. Cantonese is my mother tongue. I love it. I agree that China should have a unifying national language for people from different parts of the nation to communicate with each other. However, we should not forget our mother tongue.


 
Your last two sentences are sth I appriate, because it shows your proper morality.
However, I doubt the fact that Cantonese is a different language from Mandarin, as you said earlier. 
When you say you type in Cantonese, do you really think the Complex Written System of Hongkong is something  attributed to its creation?  Isn't it just the achient written system Mainland China just abadoned before the national liberation?  Does Hongkong ever have its independent written system?  
 If you don't agree, just type Cantonese written system here. (Not type slang, every dialect has slangs that are difficult to be translated word by word)  
I am sure I would be able to write it word by word into Mandarin Chinese, and also translate in English for more people to understand the situation clearly.


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## panjabigator

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese_(linguistics)


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## ilikeenglish

Those so called experts have conflicting voices among them. 
 Besides, your link isn't functioning.

I hope non-Chinese-natives can talk in Chinese before making an effort to dicuss big affairs of the Chinese language.  
If you don't even talk or write in Chinese, how can you expect me to trust your opinons to be grounded?


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## vince

Want examples of Cantonese?

Go here:
http://zh-yue.wikipedia.org

Learn about Cantonese in Cantonese:
http://zh-yue.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%B2%B5%E8%AA%9E



			
				ilikeenglish said:
			
		

> Not type slang, every dialect has slangs that are difficult to be translated word by word


You fell into my parodic trap:


			
				vince said:
			
		

> Yeah, dialects suck, they are the same as Mandarin, but with slang and deviant pronunciations


Search my previous posts about the myths of Simplified = Mandarin, Traditional = Cantonese
and also how some Chinese people have a very very very liberal definition of slang (i.e. anything that differs from Mandarin/Written Chinese, including essential grammatical constructs (e.g. the verb "to be", the word for "yes", verb aspects, basic modals, word order, pronouns))


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## Dalian

For your information, Vince, in mainland China, wikipedia is blocked by our government.


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## vince

For the benefit of those in China:



			
				Wikipedia said:
			
		

> *粵語*，即係*廣東話*或者*白話*，係屬於漢藏語系漢語語族嘅聲調語言。喺中國南方嘅廣東中西部、廣西中南部同埋香港、澳門同埋東南亞嘅部分國家或者地區，同埋海外華人社區都有好多人講廣東話。中國古代叫南方做「越」或「粵」，所以呢種語言就叫做粵語喇。由於喺語言學分類，中國學者同埋西方學者有唔同意見，所以粵語係方言定係獨立嘅語言，尚有爭議。注1
> 依家全球大約有6.6千萬人講粵語。注2。雖然使用嘅人口少過官話漢語，但係粵語嘅使用地區非常之廣泛。唔單止喺海外華人社區裏面廣泛應用，而且支持住以香港文化同埋南粵文化為中心嘅粵語文化，令到粵語具有好強嘅影響力，可以講係目前世界上有較強生命力嘅語言之一。
> 廣府話口音係粵語嘅公認標準口音。但係隨住近年來大量外來人口嘅湧入，廣東境內一些原粵語城市甚至出現外來人口多過本地人口嘅現象，漢語普通話使用人群當然就大增，加上近年嚟香港粵語流行曲、電視電影對中國大陸粵語使用人群嘅強勢影響，粵語文化嘅中心城市事實上已經由廣州遷移到嚟香港。
> 香港粵語同廣州話，有一定程度嘅差異，有時可以由整體口音上區別；但喺個別字詞上，就好難分到。



Licensed under GNU's Free Documentation License, so there shouldn't be an issue with copyright.

Before someone starts screaming "hey, I don't know Cantonese, only Standard Written Chinese, yet I can understand most of the basic idea!" Let me tell you that this is possible between Spanish and Catalan, or Polish and Czech, are they the same languages then? No, because related languages are naturally more mutually intelligible in written form then in spoken form.


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## ilikeenglish

Vince,
Pick up some pieces of articles in support of your opinions, do you expect me to follow suit!  
Can you on the earth communicate in Chinese, any kind of dialect, please!

You won't discuss French, Portuguese with you, for I haven't learned them and do not know the details. 
But since you, Vince, and all western people here, have so strong motives to discuss our language, you surely want to qualify yourself by showing you at least can communicate in Chinese.
On the earth can or cannot you communicate in Chinese? Do you even successfully understand Chinese.
I hope you are not studying or discussing Chinese just from secondly hands or repeat others' opinions.
Show your Chinese to qualify for you.
Besides, I am not shouting (how can say such rude words, I expect you are really angry for I ask you to show Chinese but you cannot).


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## vince

Haha lol I wasnt referring to anyone in particular,

it's just that it's a knee-jerk reaction that I often get from proponents of the Chinese-is-one-language doctrine.

No hard feelings man.


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## panjabigator

Vince, do your parents write in Cantonese or Mandarin?  Im just curious since you have very strong view points on Chinese languages...I was wondering if it ran in the family too!

I was about to say that wikipedia is censored in China.  And if you type in falun gong in Chinese google, the only things that will appear are negative articles.


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## vince

My parents are from Hong Kong

But I believe the situation is like this in Hong Kong (a HKer should correct me if I'm wrong):

Cantonese writing is reserved for IM conversations, informal blogs, and informal dialog.
Standard Written Chinese (based on Mandarin) is used by Hong Kong people to write everything else. Personal and business letters, books, magazines (except the gossip sections), newspapers, signs, webpages, pamphlets, brochures, formal blogs (e.g. a political commentary blog would NOT be in Cantonese, but a Xanga-type diary would often be). Most surprising, pop songs are written in Standard Written Chinese (a point not realized by many Chinese-is-a-single-language proponents who often point to Cantopop lyrics as proof that Written Cantonese and Mandarin are indistinguishable), though a minority of Cantonese artists do write lyrics in Cantonese.

The Cantonese wikipedia was very controversial because it broke the taboo of Written Cantonese being used in a non-conversational situation. I think most HKers still cannot imagine Cantonese as a written language that can be used for all purposes, both formal and informal.

So the short answer is, my parents write in "Mandarin" (but see my post about the Chinese tradition of not referring to Written Chinese as "Mandarin", even though it is based on it in grammar and vocabulary; possibly due to reasons explained in my comparison of China's Mandarin-dominated linguistic situation with a hypothetical French-dominated European one)


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## panjabigator

I should of rephrased myself with the correction "standard written Chinese."  Gosh...I feel like I know too much now!


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## ilikeenglish

http://www.wikipedia.tw/wiki/%E7%B2%A4%E8%AF%AD
I  see here  粤语 (Cantonese) is catogired under 汉语 (Chinese) and regarded 汉语方言 (Chinese dialect).

http://pda.en.wapedia.org/Cantonese_%28linguistics%29
Also says that,
*Cantonese* (, Jyutping: _Yuet6yue5_; Mandarin pinyin: _Yuèyǔ_, lit. "Yue (Guangdong) language") is one of the major dialect groups or languages of the Chinese language or language family. It is mainly spoken in parts of southern Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, by Chinese minorities in Southeast Asia and by many overseas Chinese of Guangdong and Hong Kong origin worldwide. The name is derived from ''Canton'', a former romanized Western name for Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province.


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