fewer homonyms in cantonese than mandarin?

[selfconstruct]

One could argue that in Cantonese, [f] is merely an allophone of /hw/.

Except for when it's [w] 黃 還 話 華 皇

I think it might also be related to tone, though to be perfectly honest, I know so little.

[ala]

Except for when it's [w] 黃 還 話 華 皇

I think it might also be related to tone' date=' though to be perfectly honest, I know so little.[/quote']

The characters you gave were all pronounced with "gh" consonant in Middle Chinese (匣母) and in Wu dialects are all voiced [h voiced glottal]; and yes in Cantonese related by the tone (low set of tones). And they are pronounced [w] in Cantonese. So I guess I should further qualify my statement by saying that Middle Chinese voiceless (high tone 阴声) characters in Mandarin today that starts with k/h/f is just a single /h/ ([f] in the case of /hw/) in Cantonese.

The point is that Cantonese does not distinguish hu and fu (correct me if I'm wrong).

方 (Cantonese "fong") in Middle Chinese is [pjwaN] or [pwjAN]. In other words, this obeys the /hw/ --> [f] in Cantonese, so that 方 is not "hong" but "fong" /hw/.

[ala]

Don't want to further digress, but I agree with the first part, i guess I don't know what a japanese syllable is. But ええ and えい are definitely different. How are they the same? They are pronounced differently, just like iu and yuu. Ask any native and they will tell you that ええ is more colloquial, but that えい is the more correct pronounciation. Just like in collouquial pronunciation, many words with ai become ee. not ei.

The below are the two orthography rules (exceptions) for Standard Japanese. Of course, dialects would be different, but let's just talk about the standard.

おう　= long o = おお

えい = long e = ええ

Equivalent. Pronounced the same.

え and えい are exactly the same phonetically, except that えい is spoken twice as long as え.

えい ei (as in 英語) is not e + i; えい ei is different from あい ai (which is really [a] + , or [ai] diphthong).

You don't pronounce おう as o + u, right?

[HashiriKata]

A few figures with data from the current Unihan database :

for the whole database, there are

2168 unique Cantonese pronunciations,

520 Korean (hanja),

554 Japanese On-reading (not all are monosyllabic )

and 1433 Mandarin unique pronunciations

.

(Data concerning Vietnamese pronunciations in the same Unihan database are not significant because the data are very very incomplete)

What are your conclusions, HashiriKata ?

The figures for Cantonese and Mandarin are for the whole of each language, whereas those for Japanese and Korean are just for the Chinese borrowings, and not of the whole repertoire available to these languages, it's therefore difficult for me to conclude from just these figures. Still, I suspect that Korean and Vietnamese must have very rich pronunciation systems (within the 漢字圈) to be able to dispense with the logographic writing system with such ease.

interesting responses.....kinda weird how some people are talking about my surname though.

I wouldn't be so surprised. It's natural that people like talking about famous people!

おう　= long o = おお

えい = long e = ええ

Equivalent. Pronounced the same.

え and えい are exactly the same phonetically' date=' except that えい is spoken twice as long as え.

えい ei (as in 英語) is not e + i; えい ei is different from あい ai (which is really [a'] + , or [ai] diphthong).

Well put and true!

[nipponman]

http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/message/jpnF8DpNLdXF88eK8Ii.html

It's not perfectly right. If you read the modern Japanese orthography carefully, you'll find it is undefined whether the pronunciation of えい in Standard Japanese is "ei" or "ê." It says long vowels are written as ああ, いい, うう, ええ, and おう, and this means when the orthography was defined, the pronunciation of えい remained "ei" in most dialects, including Tôkyô dialect[/b']. Even now, we hesitate to pronounce 時計 (とけい) as "tokê" when we sing, while we commonly sing 行 (ゆ) こう as "yukô," not "yukou."

http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/message/jpnF88fORS3F86mRPso.html

If pronounced properly, 英語 would be "Eh-e-go" (e pronounced as in "easy"), where え and い are pronounced distinctly. [/b']However, in a casual conversation, it tends to be pronounced as "Eh-go" with prolonged "eh." Same with any other えい combination, such as you cite. The same thing occurs with おはよう and it sounds like おはよー when spoken casually.

'nuff said.

[atitarev]

I agree with Nipponman that in Japanese N ん is a separate syllable, so SA-N is 2 syllables, not one, same with long vowels and so called diphthongs (they are missing in Japanese)! That stroke me when I listened to some Japanese songs, so 永遠 (in hiragana: えいえん) (in rōmaji: EIEN) (meaning: eternity) has 4 tones E - I - E - N, quite different from Chinese yǒngyuǎn (Mandarin reading of the same word) - it's just 2 syllables.

The topic has digressed anyway but thought it would be interesting for someone.

[Mugi]

Originally Posted by atitarev

That stroke me when I listened to some Japanese songs

Ahh, good point. In Japanese songs, individual kana characters are often promounced separately, so as you rightly point out, さん sometimes becomes two syllables. You also hear it when people want to clarify the word they're saying if the listner has obviously misheard them. It often carries the tone of "what's wrong with your hearing!?" Mothers teaching little children new words or phrases will also often enunciate each character. And teenage girls (and unfortunately sometimes women in their 20s and 30s) sometimes employ the tactic to sound infantile. Although it won't be for every word in an utterance and is only likely to be sustained for a sentence or two.

Aside from these kinds of situations though, さん will always be one syllable. I believe ala is describing how Japanese is pronounced in regular speech.

Will come back to the えい "ei" vs ええ "ee" issue later after a little field research!

Beautiful weather in Tokyo today - glad I've taken the day off. Time to head into the hills and enjoy the fresh autumn air!!

[ala]

I agree with Nipponman that in Japanese N ん is a separate syllable, so SA-N is 2 syllables, not one, same with long vowels and so called diphthongs (they are missing in Japanese)! That stroke me when I listened to some Japanese songs, so 永遠 (in hiragana: えいえん) (in rōmaji: EIEN) (meaning: eternity) has 4 tones E - I - E - N, quite different from Chinese yǒngyuǎn (Mandarin reading of the same word) - it's just 2 syllables.

No.

SAN さん is 2 morae, but 1 syllable. If you pronounce 新聞 SHIMBUN (sinbun) as four syllables in normal conversation, you have a very serious accent.

The only time SAN is pronounced as two syllables is in songs, where there is artistic freedom to do these things (such as pronouncing the orthography one for one), or in four year olds trying to learn kana.

In Mandarin pop songs, the tones are often ignored, does this mean tones are ignored in normal standard speech too? No.

[ala]

I agree with Nipponman that in Japanese N ん is a separate syllable, so SA-N is 2 syllables, not one, same with long vowels and so called diphthongs (they are missing in Japanese)! That stroke me when I listened to some Japanese songs, so 永遠 (in hiragana: えいえん) (in rōmaji: EIEN) (meaning: eternity) has 4 tones E - I - E - N, quite different from Chinese yǒngyuǎn (Mandarin reading of the same word) - it's just 2 syllables.

No.

SAN さん is 2 morae, but 1 syllable. If you pronounce 新聞 SHIMBUN (sinbun) as four syllables in normal conversation, you have a very serious accent.

The only time SAN is pronounced as two syllables is in songs, where there is artistic freedom to do these things (such as pronouncing the orthography one for one; to get things to rhyme more easily), or in four year olds trying to learn kana.

In Mandarin pop songs, the tones are often ignored, but does this mean tones are ignored in normal standard speech and that Mandarin is non-tonal? No way.

[nnt]

The figures for Cantonese and Mandarin are for the whole of each language, whereas those for Japanese and Korean are just for the Chinese borrowings, and not of the whole repertoire available to these languages, it's therefore difficult for me to conclude from just these figures.

Japanese and Korean are polysyllabic by nature, so it wouldn't make sense to me to include the non-On readings .

Still, I suspect that Korean and Vietnamese must have very rich pronunciation systems (within the 漢字圈) to be able to dispense with the logographic writing system with such ease.

With ease but for the very opposite reasons. Korean is very poor in sounds (500 for the Hanja) but polysyllabic, Vietnamese is very rich in sounds (7000 uniques syllabes , but Unicode contributors for the Vietnamese sections are lazy ) but initially monosyllabic (with tendency for disyllabisation for compound words) .

The Korean/Vietnamese pair could be compared to Shanghainese/Cantonese pair concerning this subject : romanization is feasible for opposite reasons.

[HashiriKata]

Thank you for the data, nnt!

So from the information we've got so far, it's possible to say that the sound system in Cantonese is richer than that in Mandarin, and as a consequence, Cantonese appears to have fewer homonyms than Mandarin. Is this a fair conclusion?

[Ferno]

Not necessarily. Cantonese is very deficient in its number of initial consonants compared to Mandarin. For example' date=' Cantonese has no retroflex (like Mandarin s/sh, z/zh, c/ch), and the Mandarin h/f/k typically become just h in Cantonese. There are many more examples where in Cantonese a pair is homophonous but not in Mandarin, for example: 黄、王 are homophones in Cantonese. Cantonese still ends up with more unique syllables than Mandarin, but not by very much.

1. Cantonese has 1500 unique syllables including its 9 tones.

2. Mandarin has about 1200 unique syllables when including its 5 tones.

3. Urban Shanghainese has about 600 unique syllables including the high/low tonal contrast.

4. Japanese has about 300 unique syllables, not including high/low pitch accent.

Not surprisingly then:

most polysyllabic = Japanese > Shanghainese > Mandarin > Cantonese = least polysyllabic (most monosyllabic)

For example common verbs like "to have" 有 and "to exist" 在 in Shanghainese (yeute 有得, lahei 辣海) and Japanese (aru, iru) are all polysyllabic, because there are less unique syllables, so in order to avoid homophones, the word increases in length of syllables.[/quote']

This is very interesting! Where does Korean fit into this, do you know?

And thus, the best languages for music (in that list) are Japanese, then Shanghaihua, then Mandarin, then Cantonese, with Japanese having a larger margin from the other three due to not having tones?

[nipponman]

Interesting analysis ala. I wonder is Japanese polysyllabic because they don't want to have too many homophones, or because they have inflection? Or maybe its both, maybe that's why they added the ru to verbs (su, u, tsu etc)

nipponman

[amego]

okay, i found some amazing stuff...all along i thought the chinese sound "xi" only has a few variance in Cantonese (i thought there were 6) but now i know ...have a good look

xi1

西 sai1

吸 kap1

惜 sik1

夕 jik6

溪 kai1

xi2

习 jaap6

檄 hat6

蓆 jek6

锡 sek3

xi3

喜 hei2

徙 saai2

xi4

系 hai6

隙 gwik1

潟 cheuk3

肸 yat6

屭 ai3

its a good 16 different sounds! cool

well i really believe that that are more homonyms in chinese than cantonese and hokkien...anyway try to pronounce all these

实施，事实，逝世，实事，适时，时时，史诗，史实，事事，失事，实时，时事，世事，失实，时势，誓师，诗史，石室，师事，实实，时世，失势，视事，失时，噬食，施事，时式，矢石，十四，誓死，诗思，市肆，四时，私事，死尸，巳时，死死......u get the idea?

[xiaocai]

实施，事实，逝世，实事，适时，时时，史诗，史实，事事，失事，实时，时事，世事，失实，时势，誓师，诗史，石室，师事，实实，时世，失势，视事，失时，噬食，施事，时式，矢石，十四，誓死，诗思，市肆，四时，私事，死尸，巳时，死死

These are not all homonyms.

And I think you should use mandarin or putonghua instead of chinese......

[HashiriKata]

u get the idea?

No, I don't!

Actually, your post above would be misleading if it were not too simplistic. Try & have another think!

[Ferno]

Interesting analysis ala. I wonder is Japanese polysyllabic because they don't want to have too many homophones' date=' or because they have inflection? Or maybe its both, maybe that's why they added the ru to verbs (su, u, tsu etc)

nipponman[/quote']

Japanese already do have "tons of homonyms". The influx of Chinese characters is a primary cause of this, because of the Chinese style of morpheme-wordbuilding - not to mention the problem with borrowing pronounciations from a tonal-language and then stripping them of the tones.

[HashiriKata]

Originally Posted by HashiriKata[/b']

It's NOT me, Ferno!

[Ferno]

LOL woops! we really need a "quote" button heh - i can copy and paste the text but i have to write the name from memory

[atitarev]

Nipponman: Interesting analysis ala. I wonder is Japanese polysyllabic because they don't want to have too many homophones, or because they have inflection? Or maybe its both, maybe that's why they added the ru to verbs (su, u, tsu etc)

Japanese is, IMO, polysyllabic by nature as is Korean. With their grammar, I wonder how it would be possible to write it completely in kanji/hanja.

Ferno: Japanese already do have "tons of homonyms". The influx of Chinese characters is a primary cause of this, because of the Chinese style of morpheme-wordbuilding - not to mention the problem with borrowing pronounciations from a tonal-language and then stripping them of the tones.

I agree with this, also the difference in phonetics - the fact that Middle Chinese and Japanese had different number of vowels and consonants made it worse - say, Mandarin has za, zha, jia; sa, sha, xia - Japanese only za and ja; sa and sha.