Spoken vs Written Cantonese

[Bull14]

Hey, I'm wondering about how I should learn both Written and Spoken Cantonese and not just spoken.

Because Cantonese people don't write like they speak on formal occasions, I would have to learn two different sets of characters for many words and phrases in order to be able to write and read in both ways.

But not all material provide characters for both written and spoken.

Some materials teach both written and spoken, but some is only teaching Spoken Cantonese or a mix of the both without stating if the word is in Written or Spoken Cantonese.

How would I find the word or phrase in Written Cantonese?

Is Written Cantonese just like Mandarin? In other words, can I translate a word or phrase to Mandarin and the characters for that word or phrase would be pretty much the same as those used in Written Cantonese?

Or would the grammar and a significant amount of words be different?

If that method isn't reliable, then how can I learn Written Cantonese? :s

I want to make sure I'm learning written and not only spoken, as reading and writing formally will be more important to me than informally, although I will learn both ways.

So, does anyone have suggestions on how to learn both ways of writing instead of just spoken?

I'm sorry if it sounded stupid in any way, but this Written vs Spoken Cantonese difference is slightly confusing to me somehow and I'm also learning alone.

[thefamousamos93]

From my understanding, formal written Cantonese is identical to written Mandarin in terms of vocabulary and grammar. From my own experience, whenever I read through formal publications from Hong Kong, I can comprehend the text perfectly, although I don't speak Cantonese (I'm Taiwanese-American by the way). Written Cantonese that is based on the spoken version of the language, however, is a completely different animal.

 

So if you already know Mandarin, then you basically already know written Cantonese, and all you need to learn is the Cantonese pronunciation of the characters if you intend to practice reading such texts aloud. But if you want to learn how to write in colloquial Cantonese, then learn the spoken language first and then familiarize yourself with special characters designed for Cantonese terms and grammatical particles.

 

Not sure if I was able to answer all of your questions, so feel free to give me a heads up if you have any more inquiries. And good luck on your studies!

[Hofmann]

To put it simply, Cantonese and Mandarin are different languages. Most people who speak Cantonese usually write in Mandarin. This is probably what you mean by "Written Cantonese." It isn't Cantonese, and it isn't more formal. It's a language that has higher prestige. As many Chinese people think there is one Chinese language, and they write in Mandarin, and it is more prestigious, (true) Cantonese writing is mostly restricted to informal media.

 

An analogy would be if England took over Europe and an asshole set the rules, they'd call their language Germanic and German speakers would speak German and write English. Written German would be restricted to informal media, as nobody, even German speakers, would be taught to write it. There would be no standard spellings and everybody's German writing would look childish and unrefined.

 

As for what you should learn,

If you want to be literate in Cantonese, write exactly what you would say.

if you want your writing to be understood without distractions to most Chinese people, you should learn Mandarin, and write in it, and when you read aloud, use Mandarin pronunciation.

[Bull14]

Thanks to both of you for the help.

One question remains.

Is the word order different when Cantonese people write in Standard written Chinese than when Mandarin-speaking people writes?

Like, when writing in Standard Chinese do Cantonese people keep the order of the words that they use when speaking, or do they use the Mandarin word order when writing?

[Hofmann]

It is (or should be) identical to Mandarin.

[superyyh]

No need to learn written Cantonese separately.

 

To learn written Cantonese:

1. Consolidate your comprehension on written Mandarin.

2. Then, learn some specified cases that how Cantonese is different with Mandarin, for example, "是" ( Mandarin ) is equivalent to "係" ( Cantonese )

 

That is enough for us to understand written Cantonese in most circumstances, because the vocabularies and sentences are usually identical to how we write Mandarin. To be advanced, I recommended you to learn it in practise, surfing the Hong Kong forum will be effective, with the premise that you read formal Chinese well (which is so called written Mandarin).

[Lu]

To learn written Cantonese:

1. Consolidate your comprehension on written Mandarin.

2. Then, learn some specified cases that how Cantonese is different with Mandarin, for example, "是" ( Mandarin ) is equivalent to "係" ( Cantonese )

That is enough for us to understand written Cantonese in most circumstances,

As a reader of Mandarin, I'm afraid it's not quite that simple. Written Cantonese, at least as far as I have read (and failed to understand) it, is more than just Mandarin with a few characters replaced. Of course, it depends on how difficult the text is and how Cantonese-ified, but for many texts, this will not be enough.

[renzhe]

An analogy would be if England took over Europe and an asshole set the rules, they'd call their language Germanic and German speakers would speak German and write English. Written German would be restricted to informal media, as nobody, even German speakers, would be taught to write it. There would be no standard spellings and everybody's German writing would look childish and unrefined.

This is already the case in Germany.

Standard written German is standardised across all German speaking countries, and Standard German (its spoken form) is taught as the "standard" language everywhere. Much like standard written Chinese and Mandarin, at least on the Mainland.

Locally, people speak dialects (like Bavarian, Schwabian in the south, etc.), or even different languages (Low Saxon in the north), but these are rarely written because they lack prestige.

[chickpea]

This is already the case in Germany.

Standard written German is standardised across all German speaking countries, and Standard German (its spoken form) is taught as the "standard" language everywhere. Much like standard written Chinese and Mandarin, at least on the Mainland.

Locally, people speak dialects (like Bavarian, Schwabian in the south, etc.), or even different languages (Low Saxon in the north), but these are rarely written because they lack prestige.

But the differences between German dialects and Standart German are not that big as Chinese languages to Mandarin (except Mandarin dialects) . It's rather comparable German and Dutch or Swiss German.

Best example swiss German.

For written understanding it's surely more important to know Mandarin because the grammar is not so flexible like in Cantonese. Written Mandarin can be understood more likely by Cantonese speakers doesn't matter what the pronunciation would be. While written Cantonese is rarely transferable because of grammatical freedom.

[renzhe]

But the differences between German dialects and Standart German are not that big as Chinese languages to Mandarin

German dialects, sure, but Plattdeutsch is a separate language, every bit as different from Standard German as Dutch:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Saxon_languages

In the North, it is still common, especially in rural areas. There has been a trend of trying to revive it and around Hamburg, you can find books in Plattdeutsch. Standard German is only vaguely helpful with those.

All of this is a bit off-topic perhaps, and analogies are never perfect.

[Takeshi]

You do not need to learn Mandarin at all if you don't want to.

 

I think you have a misunderstanding about what "written" and "spoken" Cantonese is, and some (but not all) of the replies seem to be misunderstanding what you are trying to ask.

I think I know what you mean tho, you want to learn "Cantonese Chinese" (like people in HK for example), and you want to be able to speak and write the way the majority of such Cantonese people do. This means speaking in Cantonese, and writing in Mandarin/Standard Written Chinese/whatever you want to call it.

Even in Hong Kong, the standard written form is very similar to Mandarin. I'd say it's on a dialect continuum with it. There are some slight differences between writing styles of Cantonese versus Mandarin people, or between HK versus Mainland people, but seriously, it is all very minor. 

 

I think you confused everyone by saying you want to learn "spoken" and "written" Cantonese. When people here say "written Cantonese", they generally mean "Spoken Cantonese that is written down using special characters". This is not a formal writing style in anywhere in the world right now.

 

Considering that you were worrying about learning how Cantonese people write in formal situations which is "different from spoken Cantonese", it sounds like what you actually want to learn how to write is Mandarin/Standard Written Chinese/whatever you want to call it. (It /is/ Mandarin, no matter how much you want to hide it. However, some Cantonese people take offence to calling it such because perhaps they don't even speak Mandarin and they only read out the characters with Cantonese readings, so to them it is a different formal/written register of Chinese, that just happens to coincidentially be mutually intelligible with Mandarin itself.)

 

There are two ways of doing this:

 

1) Learn spoken Mandarin as well, and by extension the written language, and then look up in a dictionary or something the Cantonese reading of every word so that you will know how to read them in Cantonese if you cared.

 

2) Learn this written "Mandarin/Standard Written Chinese/whatever you want to call it" language, but only with Cantonese pronunciations and no regard to Mandarin pronunciations. (This is how people in HK who don't speak Mandarin function.) This is a little bit harder because indeed there are very few resources for this kind of thing. But there is one that I know of:

 

http://www.green-woodpress.com/products_detail.php?id=102

 

Check out that book.

 

Most resources for learning "Cantonese" will only teach you the spoken language, though some of these words may be acceptable in the written "Mandarin/Standard Written Chinese/whatever you want to call it" language.