Can Mandarin people understand Cantonese?

[nipponman]

Hey all,

I know we must have had a topic similar to this, but I gonna ask anyway. For some background, I was watching "Legend of Heaven and Earth" and even though it has subtitles, I find that I can at least associate a character with the pronounciations that I hear (I'm oblivious to the tones, however) so maybe it is even easier for a native chinese to understand? Any insight into this?

nipponman

[Quest]

not without subtitles I dont think, but a word here and there, just like when I watch Japanese drama. Also, I find it easier to pick out Chinese words in Japanese than in Korean. Why is that?

[Song You Shen]

not without subtitles I dont think, but a word here and there, just like when I watch Japanese drama. Also, I find it easier to pick out Chinese words in Japanese than in Korean. Why is that?

I would assume it is because many Japanese characters derive from Chinese characters (and in most cases are the exact same character). Although, only on rare occassions do the words mean the same thing... and I am unaware of any occassion when they are pronounced the same. I am not sure why Korean appears so much different than Chinese/Japanese, but it would seem that Korean would be harder to follow because the characters used in Korean have no real corilation with Chinese characters. Just my 2 cents.

Youshen

[zh-laoshi]

... it would seem that Korean would be harder to follow because the characters used in Korean have no real corilation with Chinese characters.

I tend to disagree. Korean uses Hanzi at times for clarification of words that have similar spelling in Hangul, and they do correlate with the Chinese characters. It's just the grammar of Korean being different from Chinese (Korean has a Japanese style grammar pattern), and of course, the pronunciation is different.

Korean uses its own alphabet (Hangul) more than the Japanese use kana in their language, therefore, the Hanzi (Korean - Hanja) would be used a little less frequently. If you want to see a good example of Hanja use in Korean, pickup a Korean newspaper where they use as much Hanja as possible to save on space. You can pretty much pick out the story if you know your Chinese.

[Quest]

嗯~~ if you couldn't tell, I meant spoken Japanese and spoken Korean.

[Peng]

Are you talking about Heroes/Warriors of Heaven and Earth? Anyways, it's difficult for Mandarin and Cantonese speakers to understand each others without writing Chinese.

Koreans in South Korea believe that if you learn Hanja, you will understand Hangul. In North Korea, they use pure hangul, no hanja being used ever. I was told by Korean friend that Korean Bible has a lot of Hangul used in itself.

[nipponman]

not without subtitles I dont think, but a word here and there, just like when I watch Japanese drama. Also, I find it easier to pick out Chinese words in Japanese than in Korean. Why is that?

That's a good question, since the korean pronounciation of words (which deal with the characters anyway) is closer to mandarin than Japanese on-yomi is. E.g 方

mandarin = fang1 korean = bang Japanese = hou. Maybe korean doesn't use sino words as much.

[xiaocai]

After watching HK Dramas for years with the aid of subtitle, now I think I'm able to get the rough idea of daily cantonese(in fact I think sometimes it's harder than formal speech!), but still unable to speak......

[Xiumei]

Maybe korean doesn't use sino words as much.

That's not true. About 40-60% of the korean words have chinese roots. Nearly all the verbs with -hada (-하다) have their origins in chinese.

[Harpoon]

What type of Chinese? Whatever dialect was spoken in the region in ancient times? I wonder if a Cantonese speaker would be able to use more of these helping root-words in learning Korean than a Mandarin speaker... (if Cantonese is more similar to ancient Chinese... then again Korea is pretty far north)

[Quest]

I wonder if a Cantonese speaker would be able to use more of these helping root-words in learning Korean than a Mandarin speaker...

It's not about root-words, they all share the same root-words (by that I mean the shared vocab, not the indigenous core vocab). It's just a matter of understanding the spoken form of these words in each language.

[zh-laoshi]

What type of Chinese? Whatever dialect was spoken in the region in ancient times? I wonder if a Cantonese speaker would be able to use more of these helping root-words in learning Korean than a Mandarin speaker... (if Cantonese is more similar to ancient Chinese... then again Korea is pretty far north)

Korean was borrowing from the CHinese before and after Mandarin came into view. Many Korean words are basically related to the older Chinese, Cantonese and picked up some Mandarin along the way.

Nearly all the verbs with -hada (-하다) have their origins in chinese.

Yes, true. You can use hanja there (if you know them). I have a dictionary where most of the Korean-English definitions (95%?) have their Hanja equivalents - which is a very useful thing for translation work. If you can find a dictionary like that, hold on to it!

[tigerx9]

Dialects are fascinating, when you consider how many different dialects exists in China!

When it comes to speaking and listening, one Chinese dialect speaker usually cannot understand the other dialect speaker, if they have not been exposed to the other dialect. It can seem like a totally different language all together when heard for the first time. It's as if the one dialect speaker knows the other person is speaking Chinese, but at the same time have no idea what is being said.

If we take a couple of dialects as examples - Mandarin, Cantonese, and Teo-jiu (the dialect spoken by Chinese Thais), the pronunciation and tones can be so different.

e.g. Hello.

Mandarin - Ni Hao

Cantonese - Ney Hoe

Teo-jiu - Leu Hoh

another e.g. counting one to ten

Mandarin - Ee, Ir, San, Seu, Oo, Lio, Chi, Bar, Jio, Sheu

Cantonese - Yut, Ee, Saam, Sey, Meu, Lok, Chut, Baht, Gao, Sup

Teo-jiu - Zek, Ngor, Saa, See, Ngo, Luk, Chik, Bui, Gao, Jup

And that's not even taking the tones into consideration!

That being said, alot more Cantonese speakers can speak & understand Mandarin, more than Mandarin speakers can speak & understand Cantonese.

Two main reasons are: Mandarin is the more accepted standard or univerally spoken Chinese dialect now, and hence alot more Cantonese speakers are learning Mandarin, an increasing trend in Hong Kong and Guang-zhou over the last decade.

And secondly, Cantonese is slightly harder to learn for starters than Mandarin, with Cantonese having up to 9 tones, whereas Mandarin has 4.

Chinese speakers can pick up another dialect alot quicker than, say the closest language neighbours, being Koreans and Japanese, can. That's because of a single universal written and grammar language for the Chinese. So when watching movies, as long as the subtitle's there, there should be no problems with understanding. Dialects also have a fairly set guideline in how certain tones, consanents, and vowels are pronounced, and once these basic rules are mastered, so is the dialect. Although there are some words being used different, or are exclusively used, these are learnt fairly quickly, the knowledge or grammar and vocab is there already. One good example of this is with how different English can be between the UK, US, and Australia (slangs, local lingo, etc).

Whereas, for the Koreans and Japanese, although originating from the Chinese language, have totally different grammar structure altogether. However, as XiuMei says, around about half of Korean and Japanese language utilizes the Chinese characters in some form, but more as a root vocab rather than grammar. If you go to Korea or Japan, the Chinese characters are nearly everywhere. Street signs, subways, and shop signs. If the Chinese characters are taken out of the Korean or Japanese language, literally half of the meaning would be gone. And that is the reason why Chinese characters are still used today in Korea and Japan. Because I can tell you that the Koreans are very proud of their written system, the HanGul. The Korean & Japanese written system just makes it easier for reading and writing, but cannot replace the Chinese character, simply because their root vocab is based on it.

The Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters, I can say, sounds most similar to Fu-jian dialect (the dialect spoken by Taiwanese, also known as the Taiwanese dialect or Minan-Yu). Most probably back in the ancient times, the Fu-jian dialect or similar were considered the royal or universal dialect at that time (not Cantonese or Mandarin), and hence being used by Koreans, then in turn by Japanese. Japanese and Koreans do have very similar grammar and vocab, and they can learn each others language alot quicker than Chinese can.

Quest, you said you find Japanese easier to understand than Korean. My best guess is, Japanese acknowledges and still attributes their linguistic relationship with the Chinese characters, but Koreans tend to do the opposite and move away from that relationship. Language has alot to do with the culture and the thinking of the people. I also find that people tend to pick up Japanese alot easier than Korean as well.

Whew! Did I write all that? Unbelievable... anyway, nice ta meet u all, my first post here in chinese-forums

[nipponman]

O.P. = XiuMei

That's not true. About 40-60% of the korean words have chinese roots. Nearly all the verbs with -hada (-하다) have their origins in chinese.

Hey, sorry for not responding for a week, just got back from vacation. Anyway, I don't know what I was trying to say there, but you're probably right. My bad.

Later

nipponman

[kelan]

Mandarin people do not understand cantonese unless they learn it, but a lot of Cantonese people understand Mandarin, just because Mandarin is a mandatory language in China.

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http://zdt.sourceforge.net/

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[Yuchi]

By the way could we use "mandarin speakers" instead of "mandarin people"?

It's more accurate that way since "mandarin people" don't actually exist (I don't think).

[Hofmann]

Maybe someone who speaks another dialect of Chinese can pick out words in Korean or Japanese easier.

For example, 學校 in japanese is "gakkou (がっこう)." In Cantonese it's "hok haau" and in Mandarin it's "xue xiao." Therefore a Cantonese speaker would be able to pick out 學校 in Japanese easier than a Mandarin speaker.

[megastepxo]

I am a Cantonese speaker.. and from what I heard from my Mandarin speaking friends, they all say it's pretty hard to understand Cantonese. But I don't know for me, I find it quite easy to understand Mandarin (just by listening) though I can't speak it.. and as for Korean or Japanese.. I've watched lots of Korean and Japanese series and for some reason I tend to find more similiarities (in pronounciation and meaning) in Korean and Chinese then Japanese.

[盤古]

I'm a fluent Mandarin speaker and have picked up a little Cantonese over the years.

Before I started learning Cantonese about five years ago, Cantonese sounded as alien to me as say German or Korean. However, once I started learning and it was like a light bulb went off in my head and after learning just a few vocabulary words, I was able to decipher more on my own as I started seeing more patterns. For example, most of the time Mandarin hua turns into Cantonese wah except in the case of flower which is fah in Cantonese. I don't think I can say the same for any other foreign languages I've learned.

megastepxo: Yes, when Koreans imported Chinese words, they imported both character AND pronunciation. Japanese though, imported only characters and although they have supposedly a "Chinese pronunciation", it's actually quite far from Chinese. This shouldn't be surprising as Korea is much closer to China geographically and Japan was even separated by sea.

[atitarev]

I agree with 盤古 (Pan Gu) that Korean seems much closer to Chinese than Japanese. The reason it is harder to understand for Chinese than Japanese must be the pronunciation. For Europeans the Japanese accent is a breeze. Some fluctuations in the intonations are easy to pick up. I know some of Japanese and Chinese and I have no idea how they can be understood by a speaker of the other language without any previous knowledge, probably only some nouns, the word order is completely different.

日本語を話せますか？

Nihongo-wo hanasemas(u) ka?

Can you speak Japanese?

中国へ行きます。

Chugok(u)-e ikimas(u).

(I/we/he) go to China.

学校から来ました。

Gakko:-kara kimashita.

Returned from school.

From the above pronunciation of Japanese 学校 and 中国 can probably be understood by a Cantonese but that word order will confuse.

Mandarin speakers, IMHO could understand separate words much better than whole sentences, especially if standard Chinese words are used, not the colloquial Cantonese.

Can't type in full characters on this machine, sorry:

Some major words shouldn't cause many problems, even for a learner:

广东话, 普通话, 中国