Got rid of NCPR

[889]

Formal written Chinese is the same everywhere, regardless of the dialect of the writer or reader. Historically that's been a significant factor in unifying the country. Grammar and vocabulary of the written language are, more or less, based on the grammar and vocabulary used around Beijing.

 

For some contexts, though, it's useful to use colloquial Cantonese in written form. So in Hong Kong, for example, you'll often see ad posters in Cantonese. In movie magazines, an interview with a starlet will often be written in colloquial Cantonese. But a press conference by a politician, even if in Cantonese, will usually be printed in the newspapers in standard written Chinese, unless there's a good reason to preserve some Cantonese expression or such. So if the Chief Executive uses 睇一睇 in responding to a question, the newspapers will usually turn it into 看一看.

[agewisdom]

18 minutes ago, 889 said:

So if the Chief Executive uses 睇一睇 in responding to a question, the newspapers will usually turn it into 看一看. 

 

Thanks for the information. Just a few questions:

 

1. Why did such a discrepancy arise? Just curious why this variance exist.

2. How widespread are these differences between Mandarin vs Cantonese? Is the list large?

3. Are these common in other dialects as well, such as Hakka, Hokkien etc.?

[889]

Why do they call it boot in Britain but trunk in the US? How did such a discrepancy arise?

[agewisdom]

25 minutes ago, 889 said:

Why do they call it boot in Britain but trunk in the US? How did such a discrepancy arise?

 

I get your point but in Chinese, ONE character is supposed to represent the same meaning across different dialects. So why the difference?

[stapler]

@agedwisdom I think you’re being misled by your belief that Chinese characters represent a “universal script”, as you said above. It’s not. Different Chinese languages use different sounds and often different characters to represent those sounds (if the language even has a written form!) 

 

Spoken language is always prior to written language. As such the script does not inform the language. Rather the written language reflects the spoken language. The Chinese languages are not just one language that is pronounced differently according to your “dialect”.

[agewisdom]

34 minutes ago, stapler said:

I think you’re being misled by your belief that Chinese characters represent a “universal script”, as you said above. It’s not. Different Chinese languages use different sounds and often different characters to represent those sounds (if the language even has a written form!) 

 

Ah, many thanks. So, this means even if one is conversant in Mandarin, it'll still take considerable effort to switch over to Cantonese. Not just the pronunciation, but it goes to the extent of the characters as well.

 

If in terms of Cantonese pronunciation requires, say an effort of 10 to learn for somewhat conversant in Mandarin, on a scale of 1-10, how much effort will it take to bridge the written Mandarin vs. Cantonese? I imagine it'll be somewhat less than 10, as (hopefully!) most script should remain the same... Or am I mistaken?

[fabiothebest]

21 hours ago, 889 said:

or photograph interesting stuff to look at later.

good advice. Nowadays there are apps like Pleco with OCR, anyway it doesn't work for anything..if you have a paper with clear printed text okay, if it's a street sign for example OCR will likely fail..you can still write the character with your finger and look it up on the dictionary if you guess the stroke order, anyway it can take some seconds and if characters are many you may not to have time for checking all the new words you see..taking a picture to check later is a good idea, because unless you have a photographic memory, you'll forget the characters that you saw just once and didn't study yet. 

[889]

"Not just the pronunciation, but it goes to the extent of the characters as well."

 

And to an extent, grammar as well.

 

Though by convention Cantonese is called a dialect, it is in fact a language of its own. Very roughly maybe the difference between Italian and Spanish. Imagine that Italian was used primarily just in spoken form, with all formal writings in Spanish and you'll have an imperfect sense of the situation.

 

Those who are a bit chauvinistic about Cantonese will remind you that the language bears more ties to ancient Chinese than Mandarin.

[Wurstmann]

9 hours ago, Flickserve said:

I remember there is a huge list of Cantonese sentences around on the internet. I can’t remember how I found it nor where it is now. 

 

There's also https://ai.glossika.com/language/learn-cantonese

 

[agewisdom]

21 minutes ago, Wurstmann said:

There's also https://ai.glossika.com/language/learn-cantonese

Many thanks.

 

3 hours ago, 889 said:

Though by convention Cantonese is called a dialect, it is in fact a language of its own. Very roughly maybe the difference between Italian and Spanish. Imagine that Italian was used primarily just in spoken form, with all formal writings in Spanish and you'll have an imperfect sense of the situation. 

 

Those who are a bit chauvinistic about Cantonese will remind you that the language bears more ties to ancient Chinese than Mandarin.

Thanks, jeez... there goes my dream about easily learning Cantonese after I am reasonably fluent in Mandarin. I read somewhere that Cantonese was closer to what was spoken during the Han Dynasty and Mandarin was diluted by foreign elements, namely the Manchu and Qing Dynasty. Not sure how true, but I always felt Cantonese pronunciation is much clearer and 'better' than Mandarin. Maybe my diet of TVB series when I was small colored my impressions, somewhat

[Flickserve]

You used to watch TVB when small? So you have an imprint of Cantonese already in your head. This will be helpful.

 

It’s easier to think of Mandaring and Cantonese as two different languages at the beginning. Don’t be mislead by people saying it is easier. It’s quicker to grasp some concepts but frustrating in that tones are just guesswork.

[agewisdom]

36 minutes ago, Flickserve said:

You used to watch TVB when small? So you have an imprint of Cantonese already in your head. This will be helpful.

 

Yes, I can understand basic Cantonese words. I can also understand basic Mandarin. I never learnt the written language though.

 

So, I generally assumed certain phrases are written the same way in both Mandarin and Cantonese. To my great surprise, even the simple phrase of "take a look" are not only pronounced differently but written differently as well (看一看  vs 睇一睇). I always thought they were written the same way. ?

 

Which shows, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

[anonymoose]

4 hours ago, agewisdom said:

To my great surprise, even the simple phrase of "take a look" are not only pronounced differently but written differently as well (看一看  vs 睇一睇). I always thought they were written the same way.

 

They are written differently, because they are different words.

 

As an analogy, take the words cat and dog in English, and the words Katze and Hund in German. If these were written using characters, you could use the same character 猫 for cat/Katze and just pronounce them differently when speaking English or German, as they are essentially the same word (i.e. from a common root). On the other hand, dog and Hund have different origins, and so would have developed from different characters, akin to 狗 and 犬 for example. And to take this analogy further, while dog (狗) is the common word in English, the word equivalent to Hund, that is hound, is also used in certain situations, like greyhound (灰猎犬).

 

So Mandarin, Cantonese and other dialectal words with common roots could be written with the same character. Those with different roots will be written with different characters (if a character exists at all, which it often doesn't for dialects).

[Flickserve]

On 12/19/2018 at 12:21 PM, agewisdom said:

Thanks for sharing your methods. Good to know. Hopefully these methods will help you improve.

 

I should have also written that I just signed up for glossika. It’s $150 for the year because of a 50% discount offer that will expire in a couple of days. Hopefully I can be diligent with it!

[agewisdom]

5 hours ago, anonymoose said:

So Mandarin, Cantonese and other dialectal words with common roots could be written with the same character. Those with different roots will be written with different characters (if a character exists at all, which it often doesn't for dialects).

 

Thanks. Understood. It's just that I've never heard anyone said 'di yi di' in Mandarin and rarely 'hon yat hon' in Cantonese. Just very surprised one of my assumptions was totally wrong.

[anonymoose]

12 minutes ago, agewisdom said:

It's just that I've never heard anyone said 'di yi di' in Mandarin and rarely 'hon yat hon' in Cantonese.

 

Right. Just as no one would say, "I'm taking my hound for a walk", in English. But just as "hound" is a legitimate word in other contexts, so is 睇 in Mandarin, as in for example, 睇视 and 凝睇 (according to the dictionary, at least).

[agewisdom]

28 minutes ago, anonymoose said:

Right. Just as no one would say, "I'm taking my hound for a walk", in English. But just as "hound" is a legitimate word in other contexts, so is 睇 in Mandarin, as in for example, 睇视 and 凝睇 (according to the dictionary, at least).

 

Many thanks. I understand much better now. So, the SAD conclusion for myself is that if I want to learn Cantonese, not only do I have to learn the pronunciation (which I think is much easier than Mandarin as it rolls of my tongue better) but equally substantial amount of work in re-learning the usage of characters and grammar. Are the differences substantial, you think? Or maybe more manageable at 35% (I mean between written Mandarin and written Cantonese)? Just your gut feel, no need anything scientific.

[anonymoose]

2 hours ago, agewisdom said:

Are the differences substantial, you think?

 

This is very relative. In my opinion, learning Cantonese will be very much easier if you speak Mandarin than if you don't. But like learning any language, it will still involve a substantial amount of work.

[agewisdom]

23 minutes ago, anonymoose said:

This is very relative. In my opinion, learning Cantonese will be very much easier if you speak Mandarin than if you don't. But like learning any language, it will still involve a substantial amount of work.

 

Many thanks for the advice. Appreciate it

[Flickserve]

Learning mandarin after learning Cantonese should be easier than Mandarin to Cantonese