Cantonese without Cantonese in it :P

[Hofmann]

Uhh...right. That is why I find "佢哋唔識字" crude compared to "渠等無識字," although they are pronounced the same way. The latter can be understood by non-Cantonese speakers. The former just looks like a bunch of wrong characters and onomatopoeia, as you know how 口 radicals are commonly used in Chinese.

[green40]

Uhh...right. That is why I find "佢哋唔識字" crude compared to "渠等無識字," although they are pronounced the same way. The latter can be understood by non-Cantonese speakers. The former just looks like a bunch of wrong characters and onomatopoeia, as you know how 口 radicals are commonly used in Chinese.

I think this is a prejudice.

Combining radicals and sounds compose 90% of the Chinese characters. 形聲字

Why was Cantonese people wrong for creating a set of characters that suit them more?

Besides

渠, which has a 水 water radical in it, usually mean trench.

Cantonese people took the sound of 巨 and add a human radical人 to create a new character just for the use of pronoun.

[Hofmann]

Care to read the whole thread? Carefully?

[green40]

I did read the whole thread. The creation of Cantonese character should not be considered as taking "wrong character" because this is how ancient Chinese created 90% of characters. People took the sound and meaning of "方" and created more words with adding radicals. Grass-flower radical is added to "方" to become "芳" because of nice smell of plants. "言" is added to become "訪" because you speak when you visit people. Cantonese people did the same with adding mouth and human radicals.

If Cantonese were thought to be taking wrong characters, 90% of Chinese characters were based on wrong characters too. I know you are actually defending this language but there is better description for how Cantonese characters were made from.

Japanese is a bit like Cantonese. In the past, they wrote in full Chinese characters. Later, they added hiragana and katakana to represent their sounds better. Since Cantonese didn't think outside of the box of China, they added mouth radical instead. Cantonese nowadays are too conservative about word invention. Maybe this is the result of suppression.

[Altair]

Does anyone happen to know what the derivation is of the word that is represented by 佢? Does it have an antecedent in earlier Chinese?

I also must confess, that although I understand intellectually why Cantonese might prefer not to write with Cantonese-specific characters and with the grammar of spoken Cantonese, I do not understand why 粵劇 could be so respected? Doesn't 粵劇 use the same language that so many people don't like using in their own writing?

[green40]

佢 is derived from 渠. Like the creation of 形聲字, the pronunciation of 巨 is taken out from 渠 and human radical 亻 is added to represent this pronoun.

http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE6ZdicB8ZdicA0.htm

Wu language also uses 渠 for pronoun.

(1) 他 [he]

渠會永無緣。——《玉台新詠·古詩為焦仲卿妻作》

(2) 又如:渠人(他人;其他人);渠伊(方言。他,他們);渠輩(他們);渠儂(方言。他,她)

I don't think Cantonese opera is respected nowadays. It is going to become extinct.

On the other hand, like Mandarin, Beijing opera is introduced in schools NATIONWIDE.

[trien27]

People took the sound and meaning of "方" and created more words with adding radicals. Grass-flower radical is added to "方" to become "芳" because of nice smell of plants. "言" is added to become "訪" because you speak when you visit people. Cantonese people did the same with adding mouth and human radicals.

Sometimes the 言 in words are simplified to 口 radical, like 咏 which is a simplified form of 詠.

Note: You speak most of the time when you're with people, not ONLY when you're visiting them. 訪 doesn't just mean "visit". 訪 only means "visit" when it's an abbreviated form of 探訪. 訪 can also mean "interview" plus other meanings.

芳 = fragrant: 艹 added to 方 is not because of the "nice smell", it's because of it being related to plants, therefore the grass radical.

If Cantonese were thought to be taking wrong characters, 90% of Chinese characters were based on wrong characters too. I know you are actually defending this language but there is better description for how Cantonese characters were made from.

They are NOT wrong characters, they just SEEM to be WRONG because if read by other non-Cantonese people it might seem to be wrong because they might not know how to pronounce these Cantonese words.

I also must confess, that although I understand intellectually why Cantonese might prefer not to write with Cantonese-specific characters and with the grammar of spoken Cantonese, I do not understand why 粵劇 could be so respected? Doesn't 粵劇 use the same language that so many people don't like using in their own writing?

粵劇 was respected because Chinese opera was a part of Chinese theater, and not really a separate art. Most of the songs used in Chinese opera were sometimes from Chinese poems especially the 300 Tang poems, which rhymes better in Cantonese, more so than Mandarin.

Doesn't 粵劇 use the same language that so many people don't like using in their own writing?

If it's respected, then I don't understand why you'd say so many people don't like using it in their own writing?

Edited March 28, 2010 at 04:25 PM by trien27

[Goujian]

Cantonese, Gan and Hakka 書面語 is based on Mandarin.

Gan and Hakka are closer to Cantonese, esp. in its written form.

[Hofmann]

green40,

Conservative? What happened was equivalent to adopting 哩 as "you" because some people pronounce 你 as "lei5." Furthermore, my exact words were "the former [referring to 佢哋唔識字] just looks like a bunch of wrong characters and onomatopoeia." Looks like. And possibly other stuff you misunderstood. Anyway, it isn't up to you to determine which characters suit Cantonese users better.

If Cantonese were thought to be taking wrong characters, 90% of Chinese characters were based on wrong characters too.

Most of those characters were created where there were no other characters. Furthermore, they were really phono-semantic compounds and not phono-mouth compounds.

And also,

Cantonese, Gan and Hakka 書面語 is based on Mandarin.

There is no such thing as Cantonese 書面語, or if there is, it has no basis in Mandarin. There was a nice diagram somewhere that illustrated this.

Edit: Found it.