Cantonese developement can be hindered by Simplified Chinese

[Hofmann]

Consider the difference in behavior of phonetic components before the mainland simplification. The differences in pronunciation between the phonetic components alone and the characters that have the phonetic components were due to natural changes in speech. That makes their behavior predictable. According to these patterns, there is no way a phono-semantic compound written 牺 could be pronounced hei1 in Cantonese. Similarly, there is no way 极 could be pronounced gik6. Other phonetic components, while not precisely describing pronunciation, are more predictable. The introduction of characters such as 牺 and 极 without noting them as exceptions breaks rules that help learn Chinese.

Of course, the behavior of phonetic components is not the only illogical aspect of Simplified Chinese. Even if the behavior of phonetic components has an insignificant effect, combined with other aspects, I think Simplified Chinese makes learning Chinese significantly harder for Cantonese and Mandarin, and certainly for any study of Chinese beyond just using it.

[jbradfor]

In my experience the phonetic component is the last thing that I think about when I learn a new character, which might mean that it is not that important.

It's actually one of the first for me, when I try to learn the pronunciation (as opposed to meaning). I think of characters I already know with the same phonetic part, and delta off the pronunciation.

So yes, I think this might make learning Cantonese harder. But how much harder I'm not sure. There are probably well under 100 characters that underwent a significant simplification based on phonetic part. 擁/拥 and 達/达 also come to mind. Although, in both those cases, the part that was changed has a different tone than the character itself (e.g. 拥 is first tone while 用 is fourth).

@MakMak

Furthermore Roddy, I don't know if you are trying to be confrontational with me because I'm beginning to get a sense of that from you and I hope I am wrong. I don't wish to cause unnecessary commotion.

No, he's not. He's just being standard Western-style direct. While it may come across as angry compared to Chinese-style indirect, he's not. He's just asking you to quote less and only when required.

[xiaocai]

@MakMak

And for the recorded, Cantonese is declining now with Chinese people who move in and speak only Mandarin. Last I remembered, Shenzhen is starting to be like any other part of China now because they all speak Mandarin instead of Cantonese. Correct me if I'm wrong on that part.

Dear MakMak, I don't know if you know about this or not, but there are more than just "Mandarin" and "Cantonese" spoken in China. I went to Wenzhou and people their spoke Wenzhouhua, I went to Fuzhou and people their spoke Fuzhouhua, and I went to Nanjing and people their spoke Nanjinghua. But as soon as they knew that I'm not local they would happily talk to me in Mandarin, which is the common language spoken by many mainland Chinese. I'm not quite sure if you really didn't know the dialects of China or just have been ignorant, but I always think that if you want others to appreciate your language, then you need to show some respect to the languages they speak as well.

[skylee]

Dear MakMak, I don't know if you know about this or not, but there are more than just "Mandarin" and "Cantonese" spoken in China.

I agree.

[Caidanbi]

MakMak, some people I've met are more interested in reading/watching/visiting either Taiwan or the Mainland, for whatever reason. And, as you mentioned, there is some difference in word usage, etc... So that is what I meant by that. Nope, I'm not Cantonese - actually, I'm not Chinese at all.

[MakMak]

@rezaf

Yes that's true. There's beauty in Fantizi, but I'm sure there's also beauty in simplified characters, remember some were developed from cursive writing and ancient scripts. And is it really not an issue? Perhaps now, but it's just a personal thing that, seeing as how I get a feeling that Mainland wants to supress Cantonese doesn't make me feel comfortable about it. [just a feeling, nothing set in stone on that one]

@anonymoose

You make a good point, whether or not the change was severe in enough towards Cantonese I don't know, but as seen in my blogpost, the few that I could think of from the start were these:

鄰 → 邻 (M: lin2, C: leun4) where 粦 (M: lin2, C: leun4) and 令 (M: ling4, ling6)

極 → 极 (M: ji2, C: gik6) where 亟 (M: ji2, C: gik1) and 及 (M: ji2, kap6)

潔 → 洁 (M: jie2, C: git3) where 絜 (M: jie2, C: git3) and 吉 (M: ji2, C: gat1)

藝 → 艺 (M: yi4, C: ngai6) where 乙 (M: yi3, C: yuet6)

憲 → 宪 (M: xian4, C: hin3) where 先 (M: xian4, C: sin1)

@realmayo

I apologize for not posting more of the content here, that was my fault. And yes those people in Guangdong and Guangxi will be learning Mandarin too, I'm just stating that there might be a cause of confusion between the two because of the aforesaid simplifications. Maybe I'm wrong, I just want to find out. This is my opinion and I want yours.

@renzhe

I see... I just worry about the future of Cantonese. As for Shenzhen, that's interesting, does anyone else feel the same way or difference towards that city? I want to know too.

@ xiaocai + skylee

Okay no no no stop. Please do NOT think that. I absolutely am NOT one of those Cantonese or Southern Chinese people that SOME of the other Chinese people would stereotype as self centered. I do NOT in anyway look down on the other languages. I don't konw where you came to that conclusion but that's NOT where I am going for. I have heard that some languages in the other regions have ALSO been in decline.

Think about it, if I am a person in concern for the decline of my own language in China, why would I in any way at same time encourage destructio, elimination and ignorance towards other languages? Please do not think that. I appreciate other languages. I have a penchant for listening to Shanghainese and even Mandarin itself, I like how there's different accents from different areas which gives each person a sense of belonging to that area. So please no Xiaocai and Skylee, I apologize if I gave off any impression resembling "Cantonese Chauvanism" I only want to protect my language. In addition, I encourage other languages to do the same if they feel as passionate for it.

Yes, I know people would be happy to speak Mandarin too. I have no hatred for that. So please, I apologize for anything that came out the wrong way.

[MakMak]

The only thing I wanted to do was present my opinion, I did not mean to impeded upon other people and cause hatred because that is against my goals. My goal with my site is to only spread my culture and preserve it. But it pains me to see a comment such as this one left on my site:

A link to the offensive comment would be fine, no need to paste it here

I'm sure this person from San Francisco could have worded his thoughts in a much more civilized manner.

[MakMak]

Hi guys! I just made a new forum for Preserving and Promoting Cantonese Language and Culture

http://www.canton168.com/forums

No political affiliations on this please!

If you guys are interested! Please join!

[roddy]

Merging, and please get in touch before making any more posts about your own website. Thanks.

[jf.amadei]

Simplified will eventually dominate Hongkong and Taiwan. I have quite a few Taiwanese and Hong Kongese friends who use a mixture of simplified and traditional characters.

That does't mean anything and people over here are still adamant using them. The fact that we do simplify (not necessarily the why the PRC does it by the wat) the handwriting doesn't mean that we would like to simplify printed characters (what would be the reasons?).

[Goujian]

Simplified Chinese is optimized for use in Mandarin Chinese. For other languages, it's best if they used Traditional Chinese. Most Shanghainese users use simplified because they're used to it, but Traditional is more, I should say, perfect for it because of certain initials and rimes that can't be found in Mandarin.

[skylee]

Goujian, I don't think I understand you.

[DespikableMi]

I think Guojian is trying to say that traditional characters suit Shanghainese better as some of the simplified phonetic components don't rhyme well for that language. I'm just guessing so please correct me if I translated wrong.

[LA Guy]

Hi,

I'm not sure how Shanghainese is related to Cantonese development ?

In Hong Kong, they speak Cantonese and use Traditional Characters right ?

LA Guy

[jbradfor]

I think the point that was made earlier in this post is that many of the simplifications made replaced a complex phonetic part with a simpler character with the same pronunciation IN MANDARIN as the original traditional character. Hence, for Mandarin speakers these simplifications often made the character easier to learn. [MakMak gives 犧/牺 as an example in post #14, and I mention 擁/拥 and 達/达 in my post #22.]

However, in non-Mandarin dialects/languages (e.g. Cantonese, Shanghaiese), the new phonetic part of simplified character is not pronounced the same (or similar to) the original character, so it makes the simplified character harder to learn.

MakMak gave a couple of examples (for Cantonese) in post #26. And I think Goujian was saying the same thing for Shanghaiese in post 31.

How big of an issue this is we can debate. I think it's pretty small, as the number of such simplifications is relatively small compared to the total number of simplifications, but I don't think it's a zero effect.

[DespikableMi]

Thanks for the conclusion jbradfor

[anonymoose]

I don't think it's a zero effect.

I agree. It is about a 10^-19 effect, which has a similar magnitude to the charge of an electron.

[skylee]

Thanks for the post jbradfor. Now I know what this thread is about.

[Takeshi]

I also would say it's a non issue.

This reminds me of one time when I was talking to someone about simplified and traditional characters and all. I brought up the whole "simplified characters fix the phonetics system thing" and then he said "well, the simplified 'phonetics' don't always work", bringing up the example of 藥/药. At the time, I didn't know any Chinese yet and only knew Japanese. I was thinking "well, I don't see the problem with that, 薬 is 'yaku' in Japanese, and 約 is also 'yaku', so it's clearly getting the phonetic from there". Then he told me that in Chinese, 药 was pronounced 'yao' while 约 was pronounced 'yue'.

Perhaps the fact that it worked in Japanese was just an accidental coincidence, but this shows that phonetics really just don't matter.

[DullM]

Simplified will eventually dominate Hongkong and Taiwan. I have quite a few Taiwanese and Hong Kongese friends who use a mixture of simplified and traditional characters. In my eyes simplified characters are ugly and logically wrong which is why I don't write them any more but in practise fantizi is no match for jiantizi and unfortunately I don't think that there are so many people from 老百姓 like me who are interested in the beauty and logic behind fantizi. So 敗局已定了

Using a mixture of simplified and traditional Chinese is not new and it's been practiced for many centuries before the first set of simplified Chinese was standardized in the 1950s. One flaw in the prediction is that most people today "type" the Chinese characters, not write it. I rarely see anyone from Hong Kong and Taiwan typing the "simplified Chinese" for the fact that many people don't know how to do it.

For me, I input the characters with an old-school method "Cangjie" and I can easily inpute various types of Chinese, like this: 开関門窗 (GB - JP - TW , see also here ) but not all input methods are as flexible as Cangjie. (By the way, it's also possible to use Cangjie to type the vietnamese chu nom too but the character set is not available )