Differences between Mandarin and Cantonese consistent?

[roddy]

Are the differences between Mandarin and Cantonese consistent?

For example, if you have a word, say xiexie in Mandarin, and that's . .

er . . (tries to think of a Cantonese sounding syllable). kwok kwok (ok, I'm guessing) in Cantonese. So 'xie' becomes 'kwok'

Will other Mandarin 'xie' syllable words (shoe, write, etc) also be pronounced 'kwok'?

Does the question make sense?

Roddy

[Guest Anonymous]

Although I'm not completely fluent in Cantonese, but I know enough that the difference in pronounciation between Mandarin and Cantonese are generally consistent but not always.

For example, usually hua in Mandarin would be wa in Cantonese (dianhua/dinwa, zhonghua/jongwa), except in the case of flower, which is fa in Cantonese.

Not only that, some words are also completely different between Mandarin and Cantonese because most of Cantonese vocabulary tend to be from classical Chinese.

Some of the differences include:

English / Mandarin / Cantonese

* A little bit / 一點點 yi diandian / 少少 siusiu

* Beautiful / 美 mei / lang (I'm not sure which character this is in Cantonese)

[pazu]

roddy, I don't understand kwok kwok, what's that?

But yes, there're some consistency, like the sounds mysteriously changed into another one, not just in one word, but in many other words using the same sound.

Here're some examples.

Character Cantonese Mandarin ENGLISH MEANING

建 (gin) (jian) to build

見 (gin) (jian) to see

堅 (gin) (jian) hard, rigid

Note that the Chinese characters have nothing in common, they don't have the same "sound part" (聲符) and they have different meanings, but when it comes to the sounds, all "g" in Cantonese changes into "j" in Mandarin.

Let's see another example:

黔 (kim) (qian) abbr. of Guizhou Province

鉗 (kim) (qian) clamp, pincers, tongs, etc.

Again, "k" to "q".

I still remember I was so fascinated by this when I first started learning Mandarin Chinese in 1998 (I'm a native Cantonese speaker), I try to find some explanation for that, but nobody can tell me a good answer so far. A book named The Power of Babel by John McWhorter said that this happened in some other languages, that a group of a single sound element changed into another sound element throughout years, he didn't give an explanation, just said it's mysterious. (well... this is indeed a good explanation!)

Just give you another example if you want to know more:

兄 (hing) (xiong) brother

興 (hing) (xing) prosperous

鄉 (heung) (xiang) home town, village

but,

牽 (hian) (qian) lead along

哈 (ha) (ha) laugh, as in Wahaha!

Some changed, some didn't change.

Isn't it fun?

[Quest]

Will other Mandarin 'xie' syllable words (shoe, write, etc) also be pronounced 'kwok'?

xie(thank) is "zie" (close to mandarin 'z'+'ie' but not exactly)

xie(shoe) is "hai"

xie(write) is "sie"

so i guess in this case, its not consistent, but in other cases there's some consistency.

PS: there's a joke about a cantonese lady looking for her "hai zi" on a train. people thought she lost her child, but she really meant her shoes.

[Guest jekor]

DeFrancis put out some interesting figures in his book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy regarding the overlap between Mandarin and Cantonese (which he refers to as "regionalects"). I'm quoting from memory, so these may be incorrect:

Grammar: 80%

Vocabulary: 60%

Pronunciation: 40%

[roddy]

Ok, so they're similarish, but there are also plenty of differences . . . .

I was just thinking, if the correspondences were regular (ie 'xie' always become 'hai') it would make the language a lot easier to learn.

Thanks

Roddy

[Guest Anonymous]

DeFrancis put out some interesting figures in his book The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy regarding the overlap between Mandarin and Cantonese (which he refers to as "regionalects"). I'm quoting from memory' date=' so these may be incorrect:

Grammar: 80%

Vocabulary: 60%

Pronunciation: 40%[/quote']

I believe "regionalect" would be the closest translation to fangyan in Chinese.

Ok' date=' so they're similarish, but there are also plenty of differences . . . .

I was just thinking, if the correspondences were regular (ie 'xie' always become 'hai') it would make the language a lot easier to learn.[/quote']

Generally speaking, Cantonese is still be the easiest regionalect/language a Mandarin speaker will be able to learn, and vice versa. As you can see from the statistics from above, Mandarin and Cantonese are much more similar than different. I know I personally, being a native Mandarin speaker, picked up a lot more Cantonese in a much shorter time than I ever did with any other language.

[pazu]

Kulong, but IMHO, I think Cantonese is easier to learn because there're more textbooks on the market, and there're many programmes to listen or to watch in Cantonese. It's not necessarily that they have more similarities than they have with other Chinese dialects.

I want to learn some Chaozhouhua and found it extremely difficult, because textbooks are just too scarce!

[Guest Anonymous]

Kulong' date=' but IMHO, I think Cantonese is easier to learn because there're more textbooks on the market, and there're many programmes to listen or to watch in Cantonese. It's not necessarily that they have more similarities than they have with other Chinese dialects.

I want to learn some Chaozhouhua and found it extremely difficult, because textbooks are just too scarce![/quote']

Most of my non-Mandarin Asian friends consists of Cantonese, Vietnamese and Korean. I know a little of all three languages and I have never touched a textbook on any of them. All the Cantonese, Vietnamese, and Korean I picked up are straight from my friends. Out of these three, I picked up Cantonese the quickest and felt the easiest, except for some pronounciation. I believe it's quite safe to say that Cantonese is the closest to Mandarin out of these three.

Note that I never mentioned any other Chinese regionalects as the topic is just about Mandarin and Cantonese.

I have personally never attempted to learn Chaozhouhua but I've heard it's extremely difficult as well.

P.S. I have seen a computer program on CD-ROM that teaches Cantonese. I went straight to pronounciation because it's one of the few problems I'm having with Cantonese. Since the CD-ROM was aimed at English speakers, it has this Cantonese romanization system which confused the heck out of me. It said that Cantonese had nine tones and there were accent and tonal marks left and right. I felt easier just trying to imitate my friends instead of using the CD-ROM. My point is, just because a language/regionalect/dialect has more educational resources it doesn't necessarily make it easier to learn.

[skylee]

I have seen a computer program on CD-ROM that teaches Cantonese. I went straight to pronounciation because it's one of the few problems I'm having with Cantonese. Since the CD-ROM was aimed at English speakers, it has this Cantonese romanization system which confused the heck out of me. It said that Cantonese had nine tones and there were accent and tonal marks left and right.

Cantonese does have nine tones. I posted some examples of the nine tones on this forum before. And Pazu's examples there are even better. My dictionary is simplier. It just calls them tones no. 1 to 9.

[Guest Anonymous]

I have seen a computer program on CD-ROM that teaches Cantonese. I went straight to pronounciation because it's one of the few problems I'm having with Cantonese. Since the CD-ROM was aimed at English speakers' date=' it has this Cantonese romanization system which confused the heck out of me. It said that Cantonese had nine tones and there were accent and tonal marks left and right.[/quote']

Cantonese does have nine tones. I posted some examples of the nine tones on this forum before. And Pazu's examples there are even better. My dictionary is simplier. It just calls them tones no. 1 to 9.

I wasn't arguing that the CD-ROM is wrong or that Cantonese doesn't have nine tones. My point of the post is that although having extra resources may contribute to the learning of a language, but Cantonese is similiar enough to Mandarin that it would be very simple for a Mandarin speaker to pick up Cantonese and vice versa. At least much simpler than picking up a completely unrelated language, say Arabic.

[Guest snow]

my mom says it's easier for hk people to learn mandarin than the other way round

is it true?

[Guest Anonymous]

my mom says it's easier for hk people to learn mandarin than the other way round

is it true?

There are no absolutes.

I've heard some Cantonese people who speak lousy Mandarin while others speak perfect Mandarin.

I've also heard (from my Cantonese friends) that some Mandarin people speak lousy Cantonese while others speak perfect Cantonese.

I believe it all depends on the person learning the language. How much effort he or she puts into it and how linguisticly talented he or she is.

From my personal experience though, being a native Mandarin speaker myself, it was much of a challenge to pick up Cantonese, although I've been told I speak with a heavy Mandarin accent. Bah! I say, as long as people can understand me then that's good enough for me. :-P

[pazu]

my mom says it's easier for hk people to learn mandarin than the other way round

is it true?

Your mom is true, at least for the Cantonese-speaking group in Hong Kong, because the written form of Mandarin is understood by most people in Hong Kong who have studied Chinese at school. The Chinese taught in Hong Kong schools are written as Mandarin Chinese but spoken as Cantonese. So for most HK people, learning Mandarins means that they have to pick up the pronunciation mostly, and in most cases they don't have to learn the grammar or vocabulary differences.

But for a Mandarin speaker, you have to understand some new characters (like 冇, o既, o的, o都, and of course, 門小, 門西....... , and a whole new set of vocabularies.

Okay, at least this is the idea. But as Kulong said, most Cantonese (and indeed most are Cantonese-speaking HKer) can't speak good Mandarin, I found most of them actually found Mandarin too similar, so they did think Mandarin is just a matter of twisting their tongues! (and thus they can't speak it well)

[Guest Anonymous]

But as Kulong said, most Cantonese (and indeed most are Cantonese-speaking HKer) can't speak good Mandarin, I found most of them actually found Mandarin too similar, so they did think Mandarin is just a matter of twisting their tongues! (and thus they can't speak it well)

Whoa whoa whoa, I didn't say that most Cantonese can't speak good Mandarin! :-P

There are no absolutes.

I've heard some Cantonese people who speak lousy Mandarin while others speak perfect Mandarin.

I've also heard (from my Cantonese friends) that some Mandarin people speak lousy Cantonese while others speak perfect Cantonese.

I merely tried to point out that there are no absolutes. It's not safe to assume that:

Cantonese speaker = speak poor Mandarin

That's what I was trying to DISPROVE :-P

[pazu]

Whoa whoa whoa' date=' I didn't say that most Cantonese can't speak good Mandarin! :-P

[/quote']

kYA kya kya! Yes, but I did mean this, especially Hong Kong Cantonese.

[smithsgj]

Kulong what's all this about Vietnamese and Korean? Surely it's obvious that these languages would be more difficult to learn, for a Mandarin speaker, than Cantonese? The only valid comparison is with other varieties of Chinese!

[Guest Anonymous]

Kulong what's all this about Vietnamese and Korean? Surely it's obvious that these languages would be more difficult to learn, for a Mandarin speaker, than Cantonese? The only valid comparison is with other varieties of Chinese!

Why do people keep bringing up other Chinese regionalects?

Kulong, but IMHO, I think Cantonese is easier to learn because there're more textbooks on the market, and there're many programmes to listen or to watch in Cantonese. It's not necessarily that they have more similarities than they have with other Chinese dialects.

I was trying to make a point to prove that Cantonese was easier for me to learn *NOT* because "there are more textbooks on the market" as pazu said but because it's more similiar to Mandarin than any other language, such as Korean and Vietnamese. pazu was arguing otherwise.

[niubi]

korean in terms of grammar is similar to japanese and therefore one should not compare it to chinese at all. however. vietnamese is much more like chinese. vietnamese contains a large number of chinese derived words. and even a mandarin speaker can figure out a lot of such words. i think a cantonese speaker or some other southern dialect would have a better chance on dealing with the tones of vietnamese than a mandarin speaker - even a speaker of minnanhua (or as some so-called taiwanese like to re-imagine it as tai yu) would have a closer connection to the tonalities of vietnamese. vietnamese grammar is closer to chinese than korean/japanese.

[smithsgj]

> Why do people keep bringing up other Chinese regionalects?

Because Kulong you said:

"Generally speaking, Cantonese is still be the easiest regionalect/language a Mandarin speaker will be able to learn, and vice versa"

How else to compare?

niubi:

The relationships between Chinese and Vietnamese I find extremely interesting. They are from different language families though, aren't they? I read somewhere that most of the shared vocab was of an official or legal nature: don't know if that's correct.

What's all this about "so-called Taiwanese" and "re-imagined" Taiyu? Taiyu is the Mandarin word used in Taiwan for the form of Minnanyu spoken in Taiwan, and Taiwanese is the English version. I've never heard anyone here (tw) call it minnanhua (or minnanese or whatever)! What about the terms Hokkien, Fujianese, Fujianhua? Are they politically incorrect (as I take it you are trying to say Taiyu is) as well?