Mandarin vs. Cantonese orthography

[doe_witch]

I have a general question for Chinese experts here. When I studied Mandarin in college, it was strongly implied that my learning simplified hanzi would enable me to interpret a great deal of written Cantonese as long as it also used the simplified forms. I have still never studied Cantonese and thus have yet to test this myself. In any case, I

Comments

[trinker]

When I studied Mandarin in college, it was strongly implied that my learning simplified hanzi would enable me to interpret a great deal of handwritten Cantonese

Fixed that for you. ;)

[trinker]

(i.e. simplified hanzi is based on calligraphic/handwritten shorthand forms of traditional characters.)

[doe_witch]

O_o Ah. So your point is that for printing Cantonese nobody bothers to use simplified forms at all; the simplified forms are confined to handwriting?

[trinker]

See below about Guangzhou/HK distinction re: printed hanzi for Cantonese.

But the handwritten form is what simplified is based on, and probably what leads Mandarin speakers to tell you that you'll be able to read Cantonese. (I'm not a Cantonese speaker, and not a fluent Mandarin speaker - I can only speak for hanzi/kanji issues in broad terms.)

My understanding is that formal written Chinese is *intended* to be "dialect"-blind, but if one writes down vernacular Mandarin/Cantonese/etc., idiosyncratic features of those languages do not necessarily "translate".

[muckefuck]

I don't think I've ever seen Cantonese written in Simplified. Hong Kongers are the only ones who really seem to use Written Cantonese and they still prefer Traditional. And, yeah, you won't get far at all with it if you don't learn the Cantonese-specific characters. Most of the function words are completely different. I'm sure you saw this example in the Wikipedia article:

Cantonese: 係唔係佢哋嘅？
Standard Chinese: 是不是他們的？
English: Is it theirs?

Every single character in the sentence is different from its equivalent in Standard Chinese.

Cantonese is far less multisyllabic than Cantonese, but pretty much all Cantonese speakers are familiar with Standard Chinese, which is essentially the same as Mandarin. So from what I gather, they can recognise Standard Mandarin words spoken with Cantonese pronunciation. (Apparently, they aren't uncommon in broadcasts, where newsreaders often supply off-the-cuff translations of Standard Chinese copy.)

[doe_witch]

Hooooly crap yes, that example blew my mind a bit. The 係唔係 and 是不是 construction indicated a similar interrogative structure to me but that was all I could glean. All of this is indicating that I got told a rather heinous lie at the beginning of my studies. Are there ANY Chinese languages where this is less of a problem, or is Cantonese really only the tip of the iceberg?

[greentea173]

The grammatical structure isn't the same every time.

Have you eaten dinner yet? (How do you do in English)

In mainstream Cantonese: 你食咗飯未? Many young Cantonese even write like this in chat room:食-ed 飯.
In some Cantonese dialects: 你食飯唔曾?
In Hakka: 你食飯唔曾?
In some Mandarin dialects: 你吃飯否?

Some scholars claim that "咗" is some mutated form of "着".

吃 is orginally written as 喫.
Min nan and Hakka speakers can use 喫 as "to drink".
I notice that the Japanese also use 喫 to mean "drink" in 喫茶.

[akibare]

Yes, 喫する(kissuru) verb too.　It can be more general "consume" also (or metaphorical even) but probably the most common thing is definitely 喫茶.

(In Japanese, that is.)

[staticlights]

I haven't formally studied Cantonese (I did learn Mandarin in school, though I've forgotten large amounts of it), but my mother's family is from Hong Kong, so I have some practical experience with this

[doe_witch]

Fascinating, thank you so much!

[greentea173]

1. Hong Kong Cantonese is written with traditional character

[akibare]

I have a general question about Hong Kong now, are the general public schools done in Cantonese, Mandarin, or both? If the answer is Mandarin, did they phase it in slowly by grade, or everyone switch at once

[greentea173]

Parents prefer English-medium school and schools strive to be in full English

[akibare]

Yeah, as an outsider I remember being told that Mandarin and Cantonese are just different pronunciations of the same language.

But looking at my Garfield book, convinced me otherwise!

[greentea173]

"using a Mandarin-focused dictionary would be utterly useless."

Well, it is like you look up a Spanish word with a French dictionary.