學廣東話的 Pimsleur CD

[xiaojiang216]

大家好,

我正在做自己的transcript呢, 可是我有個問題.

In the first lesson, I learned how to say, "Can you understand Cantonese?" Through their explanation of this, I figured that it would be written something like this: "你會不會聽廣東話啊？" However, I went onto http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/

and looked everything up before I printed out the transcript.

I found that 會　is pronounced like wui2/5/6 or kui2. However, this doesn't seem like it would be the same word I heard, which was something like "sik".

Does anyone know what I mean? If so, am I getting confused with a different word?

Thank you!

[Ncao]

I found that 會　is pronounced like wui2/5/6 or kui2. However, this doesn't seem like it would be the same word I heard, which was something like "sik".

Sik is 識. Cantonese uses 識 instead of 會.

[geraldc]

Unlikely they'd use 不, more likely 唔

[Ncao]

Yes 唔 replaces 不 in Cantonese. "Can you understand Cantonese?" would be 你識唔識聽廣東話?

[xiaojiang216]

Yes, that was an error on my part... I was typing my post with pinyin input and practicing my Cantonese out loud... still not used to that...

But thanks for the help!

[L-F-J]

Nei sik m sik teng gwong dung wa a?

[xiaojiang216]

我唔係好識聽.

[L-F-J]

Hai bin dou hok ga?

[Ncao]

Nei sik m sik teng gwong dung wa a?

Actually you don't need the a (啊).

[L-F-J]

Can if ya want. Pimsleur says to do it. Actually they put "a" on the end of every question sentence, which actually got quite redundant and kind of annoying. Like in Korean every sentence seems to end with "-nida" or "-haseyo".

[Ncao]

Can if ya want. Pimsleur says to do it. Actually they put "a" on the end of every question sentence, which actually got quite redundant and kind of annoying. Like in Korean every sentence seems to end with "-nida" or "-haseyo".

But most people don't.

[yuensin]

會 means able to do, know, know how to,

sik is a different word, means able, know, recognise...etc

In this sentence 會 mean able and sik means know, but then in colloquial Cantonese

they meant the same meaning do you know/able to do .....

In Cantonese, when we ask a person whether he knows to do a certain thing, in this case sometime we use 會 or sik.

In Chinese, Cantonese or any Chinese dialects, the same words can have totally unrelated meaning, different pronunication as well as different pronunication depending whether it is a used in a question, position in the sentence, where it is used with other words.

Spoken/colloquial Cantonese usually have only a single word for a verb, noun,adjective unlike Mandarin which usually have two words for a meaning,

Mandarin is a newer dialect. Cantonese,Hokkien, Hainanese ...are southern dialects and are much ancient than Mandarin. Southern dialects still retain ancient chinese language structure in spoken and written form. That is why in Cantonese just the spoken word for able has the following words for the same meaning;

會, sik, heu, tek which mean the same thing as able, but a very subtle differences.

Cantonese, Hokkien colloquial form/words are able to convey very subtle differences and Mandarin is not able.

Cantonese has got colloquial words which hasve got no equivalence in Mandarin.

Cantonese in this sense is more expressive and has got more slang as well and also more slang are being added.

Because of of this it is difficult to write Cantonese, but every Chinese of any other dialect understands the written form which is also the colloquial form of Mandarin.

It sounds very confusing, but it is quite easy, because if you use it wrongly, you can tell that the word does not rythm because Chinese is a tonal language and you automatically sense that the tone is wrong. Of course you will not if you are beginning.

Regards

[xieco]

Cantonese has got colloquial words which hasve got no equivalence in Mandarin.

Cantonese in this sense is more expressive and has got more slang as well and also more slang are being added.

That's strictly non-linguistic. If they should be two separate languages, their power of expression should be the same just like any other languages. The problem is, rather, that since Mandarin has to be neutral and understood (actually, imposed on some people as well, notably southern provinces) by everybody in the same country, Mandarin simply can't incorporate every word from every region. At least, that's not plausible.

But Cantonese, at least in Hong Kong, has no official regulation (and no Cantonese Shuiping Ceshi, no Cantonese HSK, whatsoever), so anything of Mandarin may be imported to enrich Cantonese, and I'd have a multitude of synonyms to use, but the other way round isn't possible - at least, "Mandarin" speakers can't normally understand Cantonese words that aren't already borrowed by themselves.

When I use Cantonese, especially when I write, I have both Cantonese and Mandarin (standard Chinese taught in Hong Kong, and perhaps colloquial Mandarin as well) words to use. Needless to say, regardless of my own linguistic ability, I do have greater choice of words in Cantonese than Mandarin. But this doesn't mean I can use Mandarin rather liberally with my native-speaking counterparts. Sometimes the message, I just won't get it across if you suddenly say 打的 in Hong Kong (which was much more common in Guangzhou, but now also in much of the north). People may have negative feelings about this mainlandism, but it's also gaining a bit of popularity.

So, when I do use Mandarin, I have to make sure whether the people who are going to understand me know the Cantonese words, so much that they accept them as Mandarin words as well. Since the handover and rapid economic development in the last decade, it seems Mandarin does acquire quite a number of very basic vocab from Cantonese, to the extent of replacing the old equivalents, such as 老公/老婆 for 愛人. During the early 90s, my senior relatives (aged 40 to 60) used to call their spouses as 愛人 in official contexts, but now Cantonese people revert to 老公/老婆 again. Hong Kong, I guess, does play an important role of spreading nice colloquialisms to their northern counterparts.... to both Guangzhou and general Mandarin at least.

One word that HAS entered the modern Chinese dictionary is 買單 mai3dan1, from Cantonese 埋單 maai4daan1. Something has changed, but surely I can see some changes of words... just like in other languages, owing to what people do with them.

[Hofmann]

唔 doesn't replace 不. 不 is only read m4, and someone decided that they should make a separate character for it.

...and don't end every question with 啊 (or 呀), even if Pimsleur tells you to. It's weird.