Are there some general rules that tie Mandarin and Cantonese together?

[aprilz]

I have been learning Cantonese for some time. And I found it's very hard. I am a Mandarin speaker, and I found out there are some words that have the same or similar pronunciations in Mandarin will be pronounced quite differently in Cantonese. For example:

带, 代, 袋 or 在, 再, or 集,际

Has anyone here found any general rules that can tie Mandarin and Cantonese together? That will make learning Cantonese a lot easier!

[HashiriKata]

Has anyone here found any general rules that can tie Mandarin and Cantonese together?

Interesting question, but since there seem to be a lot that tie Mandarin and Cantonese together, would it be easier to get answers from: Are there some general rules that clearly separate Mandarin and Cantonese?

[leeyah]

Originally posted by HashiriKata :

Are there some general rules that clearly separate Mandarin and Cantonese?

Good thinking

It's very difficult to answer both questions though. For both similarities and differences I suggest that you take a look at 粤普sound chart @

http://www.chinese-lessons.com/conversion/soundChartMandarin.htm

I'm sure you'll be able to draw some conclusions from there

词汇 & 语法上的差异 well, things can get very complicated here, for basic reference check out

http://file.yingjiesheng.com/list/life/guangzhou/2007/04/07/1985.html & http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=471274593

[aprilz]

The website on the Cantonese sounds helps, but there is a problem. For example:

For any "chu", there are many different possible pronunciations in Cantonese:

cheui || cheut || chyu || cho || chu || jeut || juk# || jyut# || chyun#

How would I know which one is which one? Is there a website list characters other than just pinyin?

[Hanlink]

Much depends on the level of your Mandarin (written and spoken) as to how quickly you can start guessing the sounds and sometimes the tones of the characters and generally picking up the dialect.

The more characters you can read correctly in Cantonese, the more you are likely to make a correct stab at one you do not know. If nothing else, you can at least reduce the possibilities.

I do not know the probabilities of endings being the same throughout, but from experience, you will often be over 70% that an 'ou' ending in Mandarin, for example, is an 'ow' ending in Cantonese etc. Indeed, that is the best way to go about pushing your Cantonese abilities. There are no general rules, or if there are, they are broken too often to be of use, but Cantonese is not so difficult, if you have Mandarin as a base.

There are some very good Mandarin, Cantonese, English situational dictionaries out there, which if you commit parts to memory, you will advance very quickly and it will give you a better feel for the similarities in sound.

Connecting sounds is one of the best ways to pick up a second or third Chinese language; it is amazing how similar things are especially the more formal one becomes. At street-level, though, Cantonese can be very different, but again, nothing is impossible with determination.

[Hofmann]

It's easier to map sounds from Cantonese to Mandarin than the other way. Mandarin has less diversity of sounds and so characters that are homophonous in Mandarin may not be in Cantonese.

For example, look at 第 and 滴. Mandarin pronunciations are pretty similar: di4 and di1 respectively.

Cantonese pronunciations are dai6 and dik6, where the difference is greater. Of course, once you know those pronunciations, you can start guessing that similar characters are pronounced similarly. For example, 弟dai6 睇tai2 娣dai6, 敵dik6 嘀dik1 嫡dik1.

[aprilz]

That is the hard part. Is there any clue to guess the correct pronunciation. I made a mistake of trying to say 鸡, but people thought I said 妓, and 兴趣 for 性趣. Since Cantonese kept a lot more single character words than Mandarin which has gone through a process to make single character words into double characters, it make correct pronunciation in Cantonese more important, isn't it?

[HashiriKata]

it make correct pronunciation in Cantonese more important, isn't it?

I think you're right. As for the mapping of the two sound systems, you'll become more efficient and accurate with time, no doubt.

(I'm no Cantonese speaker, but I have the habbit of knowing what people're talking about, so trust me! )

[yuensin]

Unfortunately there are no rules that them together. Since you speak Mandarin, it is a lot easier for you to learn Mandarin. The only thing that tie them together is only the written word. Some of the colloquial form is the same, but not many.

For your inormation Cantonese, Hokkien, Hainanese ...are much older dialects then Mandarin.

As you are staying in HongKong, pay more attention to listening to Cantonese pop songs, news broadcast and listening to people speaking in the street. You also learn can learn very pure Cantonese by watching Cantonese opera, the words in the lyrics are very classical and advanced.

The words that you posted sounds the same in Mandarin, but is not the same in Cantonese....there are some slight difference in the pronounciation in Cantonese.

In Cantonese they sounds something like

带, dai

代, doey

袋 doi

在, choiy

再, choi

集, zhmp

际 chiey

Cantonese is not that difficult to learn if you listen more to the HongKong TV news broadcaster, listen to Canto pop and the like.

Learning another language takes time and you have an advantage since you already speak Mandarin. My mother tongue is Cantonese.

Regards

Sin

[xieco]

There are, but I'm wondering why you should ask this question here. But I know, Hongkongers won't bother to discuss languages at all, except language politics...

Surely yes, I found a couple of books from Hong Kong that target at Hong Kong readers about how to learn PTH better. The authors often list certain "cognates" and some general corresponding pairs of phonemes. For example, the k, kh, and h sounds are often similar in some ways or other in both. Such books aren't common at all in Guangzhou, as I can see, perhaps some scholarly works and PTH books for Cantonese speakers would do.

[Hofmann]

Unfortunately there are no rules that them together.

For your inormation Cantonese, Hokkien, Hainanese ...are much older dialects then Mandarin.

That's like saying there are no rules to how people walk in a crowded hallway. Upon closer inspection, one will find that people usually pass each other on the right (in the US).

As for age, all Chinese languages (dialects, whatever) are the same age. Cantonese is only more conservative than Mandarin.

[renzhe]

For your inormation Cantonese, Hokkien, Hainanese ...are much older dialects then Mandarin.

How old are these dialects?

I assume you have the dates.

[yuensin]

I am sorry that I cannot refer you to books on chinese dialects written by Chinese lingistic researchers in China now. If you go to a library you may find some books. Most of the books that I came across are written by linguistic professionals and published in China and written in Chinese mandarin. The lingist researcher(excuse me, I do not know what is the proper name for professional people who do research on languages) does research on major dialects and minority dialects such as the Mia tribes languages.

As far as I have read from these chinese dialect researchers, Hokkien is an even more ancient dialect than Cantonese.

If you happen to be in Singapore, go to Singapore Institute of Management library. They happen to have a monthly publication on Chinese dialect research but they are written in Chinese Mandarin.

As I said earlier, there are a lot of common colloquial words between Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese and all other dialects and also a lot of differences as well, but all Chinese use the same written form, that is the written form of Chinese in Mandarin. The spoken and written form of Mandarin is almost the same. Chinese has a very large vocabulary. The reason is that some are used and not used by different Chinese dialects add to the vocabulary. Some of the ancient words are still used by different dialects which are not used by Mandarin dialect.

All colloquial and written of form Mandarin are in the set of written Cantonese and not vice versa. Colloquial Mandarin is a subset of Cantonese so to speak. As a result, a Cantonese usually can "catch" a Mandarin speaker if he speak slower but not the other way round usually.

Mandarin is very pure in the sense that almost all spoken Mandarin can be written. Spoken Cantonese and almost all southern dialects are full of slangs and Mandarin have got no equivalence for them. That is not to say Mandarin dialect is inferior.

Most Northern dialects are quite intelligible from each other. For example, people from Beijing, Heilongjing, Tientsin, JingXi, Jiejiang Henan understand each other, though with only minor difficulties. The further north one goes the more similiar the dialects sound.

Southern Chinese dialects are very different from each other. Sometimes Cantonese words sounds Mandarin, sometimes sound Hokkien and that goes the same for other dialects. Cantonese and Hokkien are more related.

As for whether there is any rule that links Cantonese and Mandarin is that as far as I know all Han Chinese dialects place the adjective before the noun, all Han dialects do not have a pronoun for "I", all use the same official written chinese language, all use the same pronoun "ni" for you except Shanghainese dialect which uses "nong" for you.

Different Han Chinese dialects may use a different quantifier for nouns

Cantonese is the only Han dialect that do not slurs between words, spoken with distinct pause between words and with no stress. Cantonese have got no "r" sound. Singaporean Cantonese tend to speak English with "r" if there is and HongKong Cantonese do not tend to articulate the "r" sound in English(No offence to HongKong Cantonese). With some patience, even a European can distinquish a word and pause even if he does not understand.

Again Shanghainese is very very different from all Han Chinese dialects.

According to Chinese Historians, Southern Chinese were refugees from the Central part of China, escaping persecution and war.

Had it not been the commonality of the written Han Chinese language, Chinese dialects would have diverged even more.

For these reasons, it is very difficult to say some rules that link the Han Chinese dialects. Even I, Cantonese is still learning Hokkien and find it difficult. The only thing is that it is easier because some colloquial words are common. As for a foreigner, I think, will have to learn by rote.

Chinese lingist researchers are still researching when and how did Han Chinese language developed into different dialects.

Note; There are a lot of races in China. There are Mongolian, Korean, Miaw, Manchurian, Han..etc. The Han Chinese are the majority race. People usually refer to Han Chinese as Chinese. By right should be referred to as Mongolian Chinese, Korean Chinese...Han Chinese and so forth.

[yuensin]

Hi, Aprilz,

One easy way, though expensive is to get an electronic translator BESTA, I think is from Taiwan.

It can speak in Mandarin and Cantonese. Mine is BESTA CD-608. However the Cantonese pronounciation is not as good as the Mandarin speech. Newer model may be better.

Regards

[renzhe]

Thank you for your reply.

Still, I am not sure what makes one dialect is "older" than another, as they all developed from middle Chinese. You can say that some dialects preserved more of the older features of the language (e.g. rhymes, consonant stops) on average, but that hardly makes them "older". What would make a dialect/language older is if one can prove that the current spoken speech is mutually intelligible with speech from a long time ago. E.g. a Cantonese speaker from today could understand Cantonese from 400 years ago, but a Mandarin speaker couldn't understand Mandarin from that time. The Chinese characters make this more difficult to trace than alphabetic systems, and I'd be interested in some reading on this topic, if there is some.

I'd agree with Hoffman that they are basically equally old. It's just that the wide spread of Mandarin as opposed to some southern regionalects (I like this DeFrancis term), something that was influenced by the terrain and other factors, has helped Mandarin evolve faster

All colloquial and written of form Mandarin are in the set of written Cantonese and not vice versa.

I'd challenge this. Written Mandarin (I'd consider standard written vernacular to fall under this) is not a part of written Cantonese. You either write written Cantonese or standard vernacular. Cantonese speakers are generally literate in both.

As an analogy, standard Spanish (Castillian) is the standard form of written Spanish. All Catalan speakers are literate in it, but this doesn't make written Castillian a subset of Catalan. Similarly, standard high German is not a subset of Bavarian, although all Bavarians can read and write it.

Edited January 30, 2009 at 01:06 PM by renzhe

[Hofmann]

All colloquial and written of form Mandarin are in the set of written Cantonese and not vice versa.

What's 哪?

[sanbit]

One thing I recommend is that if you plan to study both cantonese and mandarin, try to get a strong base in one of the languages, otherwise if you are trying to study both at the same time , things will get mixed up and you will forget a lot too.