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Written Cantonese on the packaging of Hong Kong beverage brandVitasoy

Written CantoneseFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Written Cantonese is the written form of Cantonese, the most complete written form of Chinese afterthat for Mandarin Chinese. Written Chinese was originally developed for Classical Chinese, and was themain literary language of China until the 19th century. Written vernacular Chinese first appeared in the17th century and a written form of Mandarin became standard throughout China in the early 20thcentury.[1] While texts written in this system can in principle be read word for word in other Chinesevarieties, this sounds unnatural because of differences in idiom, grammar, and usage. Modern Cantonesespeakers have therefore developed their own written script, sometimes creating new characters for wordsthat either do not exist or have been lost in standard Chinese.

A good source for well documented written Cantonese words can be found in the scripts for Cantoneseopera. Readings in Cantonese colloquial: being selections from books in the Cantonese vernacular withfree and literal translations of the Chinese character and romanized spelling (1894) by James Dyer Ballhas a bibliography of printed works available in Cantonese characters in the last decade of the nineteenthcentury. A few libraries have collections of so­called "wooden fish books" written in Cantonesecharacters. Facsimiles and plot precis of a few of these have been published in Wolfram Eberhard'sCantonese Ballads. See also Cantonese love­songs, translated with introduction and notes by CecilClementi (1904) or a newer translation of these by Peter T. Morris in Cantonese love songs : an Englishtranslation of Jiu Ji­yung's Cantonese songs of the early 19th century (1992). Cantonese characterversions of the Bible, Pilgrims Progress, and Peep of Day, as well as simple catechisms, were publishedby mission presses. The special Cantonese characters used in all of these were not standardized andshow wide variation.

With the advent of the computer and standardization of character sets specifically for Cantonese, manyprinted materials in predominantly Cantonese speaking areas of the world are written to cater to theirpopulation with these written Cantonese characters.

Contents

1 History2 Cantonese characters

2.1 Vocabulary2.2 Cognates2.3 Native words2.4 Loanwords2.5 Particles

3 Cantonese words3.1 Loanwords

4 Cantonese characterformation

4.1 Borrowings4.2 Marked phoneticloans4.3 Derived characters4.4 Use

5 See also

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5 See also6 References7 Notes8 Further reading9 External links

History

Before the 20th century, the standard written language of China was Classical Chinese, which hasgrammar and vocabulary based on the Chinese used in ancient China, Old Chinese. However, while thiswritten standard remained essentially static for over two thousand years, the actual spoken languagediverged further and further away. Some writings based on local vernacular speech did exist but thesewere rare. In the early 20th century, Chinese reformers like Hu Shi saw the need for language reformand championed the development of a vernacular that allowed modern Chinese to write the language thesame way they speak. The vernacular language movement took hold, and the written language wasstandardised as Vernacular Chinese. Because they had the largest number of speakers, Mandarin waschosen as the basis for the new standard.

The standardisation and adoption of written Mandarin pre­empted the development and standardisationof vernaculars based on other varieties of Chinese. No matter which dialect one spoke, one still wrote instandardised Mandarin for everyday writing. However, Cantonese is unique amongst the non­Mandarinvarieties in having a widely used written form. Cantonese­speaking Hong Kong was a British colonyisolated from mainland China so most HK citizens do not speak Mandarin. Written Cantonese wasdeveloped as a means of informal communication. Still, Cantonese speakers have to use standard writtenChinese, or even literary Chinese, in most formal written communications, since written Cantonese maybe unintelligible to speakers of other varieties of Chinese.

Historically, written Cantonese has been used in Hong Kong for legal proceedings in order to writedown the exact spoken testimony of a witness, instead of paraphrasing spoken Cantonese into standardwritten Chinese. However, its popularity and usage has been rising in the last two decades, the lateWong Jim being one of the pioneers of its use as an effective written language. Written Cantonese hasbecome quite popular in certain tabloids, online chat rooms, instant messaging, and even socialnetworking websites. Although most foreign movies and TV shows are subtitled in Standard Chinese,some, such as The Simpsons, are subtitled using written Cantonese. Newspapers have the news sectionwritten in Standard Chinese, but they may have editorials or columns that contain Cantonese discourses,and Cantonese characters are increasing in popularity on advertisements and billboards.

It has been stated that Written Cantonese remains limited outside Hong Kong, including otherCantonese­speaking areas in Guangdong Province; e.g. (Snow, 2004). However, colloquial Cantoneseadvertisements are sometimes seen in Guangdong, suggesting that written Cantonese is widelyunderstood and is regarded favourably, at least in some contexts.

Some sources will use only colloquial Cantonese forms, resulting in text similar to natural speech.However, it is more common to use a mixture of colloquial forms and Standard Chinese forms, some ofwhich are alien to natural speech. Thus the resulting "hybrid" text lies on a continuum between twonorms: Standard Chinese, and colloquial Cantonese as spoken.

Cantonese characters

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Written Cantonese advertisingbanner in Mainland China

A Hong Kongbillboard in WrittenCantonese with amixture of Englishwords in the typicalcode switch style ofHong Kong speech.

A Hong Kong politicaladvertisement inWritten Cantonese

Political banner inWritten Cantonese

Written Cantonese contains many characters not used in standard written Chinese in order to transcribewords not present in the standard lexicon, and for some words from Old Chinese when their originalforms have been forgotten. Despite attempts by the government of Hong Kong in the 1990s tostandardize this character set, culminating in the release of the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Setfor use in electronic communication, there is still significant disagreement about which characters are"correct" in written Cantonese, as many of the Cantonese words existed as descendants of Old Chinesewords, but are being replaced by some new invented Cantonese words due to the Hong KongGovernment's lack of knowledge about some of the Cantonese words.

Vocabulary

General estimates of vocabulary differences between Cantonese and Mandarin range from 30 to 50percent. Donald B. Snow, the author of Cantonese as Written Language: The Growth of a WrittenChinese Vernacular, wrote that "It is difficult to quantify precisely how different" the two vocabulariesare.[2] Snow wrote that the different vocabulary systems are the main difference between writtenMandarin and written Cantonese.[2] Ouyang Shan made a corpus­based estimate concluding that onethird of the lexical items used in regular Cantonese speech do not exist in Mandarin, but that between theformal registers the differences were smaller. He analyzed a radio news broadcast and concluded that ofits lexical items, 10.6% were distinctly Cantonese.[2]

For example, the character for "not" (不) bu in Cantonese is 唔 m, the third­person pronoun (他 ta

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For example, the character for "not" (不) bu in Cantonese is 唔 m, the third­person pronoun (他 ta"he/she") in Cantonese is 佢 keoi, the plural pronoun marker (们/們 men) in Cantonese is 哋 dei and thepossessive particle (的 de) in Cantonese is 嘅 ge.[2] For example:

Is it theirs?Variety Characters Romanization TransliterationCantonese 係唔係佢哋嘅？ Yale haih mh haih keúih deih ge?

Mandarin 是不是他們的？ Pinyin Shì bú shì tāmen de?

In the above table the two Chinese sentences are grammatically identical, using an A­not­A question toask "Is it theirs?" (referring to some previous mentioned thing). But the characters are all different,though they correspond 1­1.

Cognates

There are certain words that share a common root with standard written Chinese words. However,because they have diverged in pronunciation, tone, and/or meaning, they are often written using adifferent character. One example is the doublet 來 lòih (standard) and 嚟 lèih (Cantonese), meaning "tocome." Both share the same meaning and usage, but because the colloquial pronunciation differs fromthe literary pronunciation, they are represented using two different characters. Some people argue thatrepresenting the colloquial pronunciation with a different (and often extremely complex) character issuperfluous, and would encourage using the same character for both forms since they are cognates (seeDerived characters below).

Native words

Some Cantonese words have no equivalents in Mandarin (though equivalents may exist in classical orother varieties of Chinese). Cantonese writers have from time to time reinvented or borrowed a newcharacter if they are not aware of the original one. For example, some suggest that the common word 靚(leng), meaning pretty in Cantonese but also looking into the mirror in Mandarin, is in fact the character令.[3]

Today those characters can mainly be found in ancient rime dictionaries such as Guangyun. Somescholars have made some "archaeological" efforts to find out what the "original characters" are. Often,however, these efforts are of little use to the modern Cantonese writer, since the characters so discoveredare not available in the standard character sets provided to computer users, and many have fallen out ofusage.

In Southeast Asia, the Cantonese people may adopt the local Malay words into their daily speech such asusing the term 鐳 /lɵy/ rather than saying 錢 /tsʰiːn/ which would be what the Hong Kong Cantonesewould say, meaning money and written 錢.

Loanwords

New characters have been created to represent new concepts or loanwords.

Examples:

Lift/Elevator

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(single character " (http://www.unicode.org/cgi­bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=282E2&useutf8=false)") /líp/ is composed of the radical 車 ("car", symbolising atransportation vehicle) and the phonetic component 立 /lɐp/.

Particles

Further information: Cantonese grammar

Cantonese particles may be added to the end of a sentence or suffixed to verbs to indicate aspect. Thereare many such particles; here are a few.

咩 ­ "mē" is placed at the end of a sentence to indicate disbelief, e.g.: 乜你花名叫八兩金咩？ Isyour nickname really Raymond Lam?呢 ­ "nē" is placed at the end of a sentence to indicate a question,[4] e.g. 你叫咩名呢？ What isyour name?未 ­ "meih" is placed at the end of a sentence to ask if an action is done yet, e.g.: 你做完未？ Areyou done yet?吓 "háh" is placed after a verb to indicate a little bit, i.e. "eat a little bit"; "há" is used singly, toshow uncertainty or unbelief, e.g.: 吓？乜係咁㗎? What? Is it really like that?緊 ­ "gán" is placed after a verb to indicate a progressive action, e.g.: 我食緊蘋果。 I'm eating anapple.咗 ­ "jó" placed after a verb to indicate a completed action, e.g.: 我食咗蘋果。 I ate an apple.哂 ­ "saai" placed after a verb to indicate an action to all of the targets, e.g.: 我食哂啲蘋果。 I ateall the apples.埋 ­ "maàih" is placed after a verb to indicate an expansion of the target of action, or that theaction is an addition to the one(s) previously mentioned, e.g.: 我食埋啲嘢就去。 I'll go after Ifinish eating the rest. ("Eating the rest" is an expansion of the target of action from the food eatento the food not yet eaten); 你可以去先，我食埋嘢先去。 You can go first. I'll eat before going.(The action "eating" is an addition to the action "going" which is previously mentioned ormutually known.)哇/嘩 ­ "wa" 嘩！ Wow!㗎啦 ­ "Ga la" is used when the context seems to be commonplace, e.g.: 個個都係咁㗎啦。Everyone is like that.啫嘛 ­ "Jé ma" translates as "just", e.g.: 我做剩兩頁功課啫嘛。 I just have two pages ofhomework left to do.

Cantonese words

In Chinese, distinction is made between single syllable characters, which may represent either a word,morpheme, or particle, and multi­syllabic words. Characters are generally represented by a uniquecharacter, while a word may be composed of two or more characters, which may not be necessarilyrelated in meaning. Thus, some Cantonese words may use existing characters to form words which donot exist or possess different meaning in Mandarin.

Also, some existing Chinese words are used differently in Cantonese than they are in Mandarin. Forexample, the word for "to eat" in Mandarin is 吃 (e.g. 吃飯 ­ to eat a meal). However, 吃 is never usedin Cantonese. Instead, the word 食 is used in Cantonese to mean "to eat" (e.g. 食飯 ­ to eat a meal). 食 isalso used in Mandarin, but not as a verb; instead, it is a noun mainly meaning "food". So when writing inCantonese, it is necessary to use the appropriate Cantonese word. Some examples include:

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Mandarin: 走 (v. walk) ­ Cantonese: 行 (as in Classical Chinese)Mandarin: 吃 (v. eat) ­ Cantonese: 食 (as in Classical Chinese)Mandarin: 喝 (v. drink) ­ Cantonese: 飲 (as in Classical Chinese) (Mandarin has since adapted thisfrom Hong Kong.)Mandarin: 看 (v. look) ­ Cantonese: 睇 (as in its Classical Chinese counterpart, 睼)Mandarin: 怎麼 (adv. how) ­ Cantonese: 點Mandarin: 像 (v. resemble, adv. like) ­ Cantonese: 似Mandarin: 還 (adv. still) ­ Cantonese: 仲 or 重 (zung6; as in Classical Chinese)Mandarin: 要 (v. want to have) ­ Cantonese: 想要 (soeng2 jiu3) or 想愛 (soeng2 oi3)Mandarin: 說 (v. say) ­ Cantonese: 講 (gong2) or 話 (waa6)

Loanwords

Some Cantonese loanwords are written in existing Chinese characters.

ExamplesEnglish word Written Form of Cantonese Written Form of Mandarinbus 巴士 (ba1 si2) 公共汽車

taxi 的士 (dik7 si2) 計程車 / 出租車

bye bye 拜拜 (bai1 bai3) 再見 (zàijiàn) (Also uses 拜拜 in informal speech)chocolate 朱古力 (jyu1 gu1 lik7) 巧克力 (qiǎokèlì)sandwich 三文治 (saam1 man4 zi6) 三明治 (sānmíngzhì)

Cantonese character formation

Cantonese characters, as with regular Chinese characters, are formed in one of several ways:

Borrowings

Some characters already exist in standard Chinese, but are simply reborrowed into Cantonese with newmeanings. Most of these tend to be archaic or rarely used characters. An example is the character 子,which means "child". The Cantonese word for child is represented by 仔(jai), which has the originalmeaning of "young animal".

Marked phonetic loans

Many characters used in Cantonese writings are formed by putting a mouth radical (㗎, 口) on the lefthand side of another better­known character, usually a standard Chinese character. This indicates that thenew character sounds like the standard character, but is only used phonetically in the Cantonese context.(An exception is 咩, which does not sound like 羊 (sheep), but sounds like the sound that sheep make.)The characters which are commonly used in Cantonese writing include:

㗎 (http://www.unicode.org/cgi­bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=35CE&useutf8=false) gaa(function word)吓 háah/háa (function word)吔 yaa/yaah (function word)

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呃 ngāak (v. cheat, hoax) Standard Chinese: 騙噉 gám (function word like this) Standard Chinese: 這樣 e.g. 噉就死喇咁 gam (function word like this) Standard Chinese: 這麼 e.g. 咁大件咗 jó (function word past tense) Standard Chinese: 了咩 mē (function word) 嗎, also a contraction of 乜嘢,哂 saai (function word complete e.g. 搬哂 moved all, finished moving) Standard Chinese: 掉, 完哋 deih (function word; to show plural form of pronoun) Standard Chinese: 們呢 nī/nēi (adv. this) Standard Chinese: 這唔 mh (adv. not, no, cannot; originally a function word) Standard Chinese: 不唥 lāang (function word)啱 ngāam (adv. just, nearly) Standard Chinese: 剛; (adv. correct, suitable) Standard Chinese: 是啲 dī/dīt (genitive, similar to 's but pluralizing i.e. 呢個this one­>呢啲these, 快點=快啲=hurry)Standard Chinese: 的, 些, 點喐 yūk (v. move) Standard Chinese: 動喺 hái (prep.) At, in, during (time), at, in (place) Standard Chinese: 在嗰 gó (adv. that) Standard Chinese: 那嘅 ge (genitive, similar to 's; sometimes function word) Standard Chinese: 之,的,底嘜 māk (n. mark, trademark; transliteration of "mark")嘞 laak (function word)喇 laa (function word)嘢 yéh (n. thing, stuff) Standard Chinese:, 事物嘥 sāai (v. waste) Standard Chinese: 浪費嚟 lèih/làih (v. come, sometimes function word) Standard Chinese: 來嚡 háaih (function word)嚿 gauh (function word, piece of)囖 lō/lo (function word)唞 táu (v. rest)喊 haam (v. cry) Standard Chinese: 哭咪 maih/máih (v. not be, contraction of 唔係 mh haih, used following 係 in yes­no questions)Standard Chinese: 否, 非; also other uses吖 aá (final particle expressing consent and denial, liveliness and irritation, etc.) Mandarin: 呀

There is evidence that the mouth radical in such characters can, over time, be replaced by a Signific,which indicates the meaning of the character. The new character is then a semantic compound. Forinstance, 冧 (lām, "bud"), written with the signific 冖 ("cover"), is instead written in older dictionaries as啉, with the mouth radical.

Derived characters

Further information: Chinese character classification § Derived characters

Other common characters are unique to Cantonese or are different from their Mandarin usage, including:乜, 冇, 仔, 佢, 佬, 俾, 靚 etc. The characters which are commonly used in Cantonese writing include:

冇 móuh (v. not have). Originally 無. Standard written Mandarin: 沒有係 haih (v. be). Standard written Mandarin: 是佢 kéuih (pron. he/she/it). Originally 渠. Standard written Mandarin: 他, 她, 它, 牠, 祂乜 māt (pron. what) often followed by 嘢 to form 乜嘢. Originally 物也. Standard written

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Mandarin: 什麼仔 jái (n. son, child, small thing). Originally 子.佬 lóu (n. guy, dude). Originally 獠.[5]

畀/俾 béi (v. give). Standard written Mandarin: 給靚 leng (adj. pretty, handsome). Originally 令. Standard written Mandarin: 漂亮晒/曬 saai (adv. completely; v. bask in sun)瞓 fan (v. sleep). Originally 困. Standard written Mandarin: 睏, 睡攞/拎 ló/ling (v. take, get). Standard written Mandarin: 拿脷 leih (n. tongue). Standard written Mandarin: 舌攰 guih (adj. tired). Standard written Mandarin: 累埞 dehng (n. place) often followed by 方 to form 埞方. Standard written Mandarin: 地方

The words represented by these characters are sometimes cognates with pre­existing Chinese words.However, their colloquial Cantonese pronunciations have diverged from formal Cantonesepronunciations. For example, 無 ("without") is normally pronounced mòuh in literature. In spokenCantonese, 冇 (móuh) has the same usage, meaning, and pronunciation as 無, except for tone. 冇represents the spoken Cantonese form of the word "without", while 無 represents the word used inClassical Chinese and Mandarin. However, 無 is still used in some instances in spoken Cantonese, suchas 無論如何 ("no matter what happens"). Another example is the doublet 來/嚟, which means "come".來 (lòih) is used in literature; 嚟 (lèih) is the spoken Cantonese form.

Use

As not all Cantonese words can be found in the current encoding system, or their encoding or inputmethod may be obscure, some Cantonese writers use simple romanization (e.g. use D as 啲), symbols(add a Latin letter "o" in front of another Chinese character; e.g. 㗎 is defined in recent versions ofUnicode, but will not display in many browsers due to lack of proper fonts or the browser's failure to usethe correct fonts, hence the proxy o架 is often used), homophones (e.g. use 果 as 嗰), and Chinesecharacters with that have different meanings in Mandarin (e.g. 乜, 係, 俾; etc.) 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la, 千祈咪搞佢D野。"(character­by­character, approximately 'you, being, there (two characters), good, (final particle),thousand, pray, don't, mess with, him, (genitive particle), things', translation 'You'd better stay there, andplease don't mess with his/her stuff.')

See also

Cantonese brailleHong Kong Sign LanguageWritten HokkienSaam kap dai

References

Snow, Donald B. Cantonese as Written Language: The Growth of a Written Chinese Vernacular.Hong Kong University Press, 2004. ISBN 962209709X, 9789622097094.

Notes1. Mair, Victor. "How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language".

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Cantonese edition ofWikipedia, the freeencyclopedia

2. Snow, Cantonese as Written Language: The Growth of a Written Chinese Vernacular, p. 49(http://books.google.com/books?id=pFnP_FXf­lAC&pg=PA49).

3. cantonese.org.cn (http://www.cantonese.org.cn/Articles/2006/200606/Articles_20060623184855.html)4. ctcfl.ox.ac.uk (http://www.ctcfl.ox.ac.uk/Chinese/lessons/4/grammar/q5_state5.htm)5. Zhifu Yu. 粵講粵過癮[100601][細路]. Foshan TV. Retrieved 3 September 2013.

Further reading

Cheung, Kwan­hin; Bauer, Robert S. (2002). The representation of Cantonese with Chinesecharacters. Journal of Chinese linguistics. Monograph series, no. 18.Li, D.C.S. "Phonetic Borrowing: Key to the vitality of written Cantonese in Hong Kong(http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/wll/2000/00000003/00000002/art00001)." WrittenLanguage & Literacy, John Benjamins Publishing Company. Volume 3, Number 2, 2000,pp. 199–233(35).Snow, Donald Bruce (1991). "Written Cantonese and the culture of Hong Kong: the growth of adialect literature", PhD thesis, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, Ann Arbor, MI: UniversityMicrofilms International.——— (1994). "A short history of published Cantonese: what is dialect literature?" in Journal ofAsian Pacific Communication, 4(3), pp. 127–32.

External links

Chinese and English phrase book : with the Chinesepronunciation indicated in English

(http://www.archive.org/stream/chineseenglishph00lancrich#page/48/mode/2up) by BenoniLanctot(published in 1867)Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect: Chinese words and phrases by (http://books.google.com/books?id=QwaFAAAAIAAJ&pg=PT302&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false) RobertMorrison (missionary), published in 1828S. L. Wong's A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced according to the Dialect of Canton, by the CUHK(http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Canton/)A Chinese Talking Syllabary of the Cantonese Dialect: An Electronic Repository, by the CUHK(http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Canton2/)Modern Standard Mandarin and Cantonese conversion, by the CUHK(http://hanyu.chi.cuhk.edu.hk/)Yueyu.net (http://www.yueyu.net)Learn Cantonese! (http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk) Cantonese learning, including Cantonesecharacters

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