Written Cantonese

Written Cantonese is the written form of Cantonese, the most complete written form of Chinese after that for Mandarin Chinese. Written Chinese was originally developed for Classical Chinese, and was the main literary language of China until the 19th century. Written vernacular Chinese first appeared in the 17th century and a written form of Mandarin became standard throughout China in the early 20th century.[1] While texts written in this system can in principle be read word for word in other Chinese varieties, this sounds unnatural because of differences in idiom, grammar, and usage. Modern Cantonese speakers have therefore developed their own written script, sometimes creating new characters for words that either do not exist or have been lost in standard Chinese.

With the advent of the computer and standardization of character sets specifically for Cantonese, many printed materials in predominantly Cantonese speaking areas of the world are written to cater to their population with these written Cantonese characters.

Written Cantonese on the packaging of Hong Kong beverage brand Vitasoy


History

Before the 20th century, the standard written language of China was Classical Chinese, which has grammar and vocabulary based on the Chinese used in ancient China, Old Chinese. However, while this written standard remained essentially static for over two thousand years, the actual spoken language diverged further and further away. Some writings based on local vernacular speech did exist but these were rare. In the early 20th century, Chinese reformers like Hu Shi saw the need for language reform and championed the development of a vernacular that allowed modern Chinese to write the language the same way they speak. The vernacular language movement took hold, and the written language was standardised as Vernacular Chinese. Because they had the largest number of speakers, Mandarin was chosen as the basis for the new standard.

The standardisation and adoption of written Mandarin pre-empted the development and standardisation of vernaculars based on other varieties of Chinese. No matter which dialect one spoke, one still wrote in standardised Mandarin for everyday writing. However, Cantonese is unique amongst the non-Mandarin varieties in having a widely used written form. Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong was a British colony isolated from mainland China, so most HK citizens do not speak Mandarin. Written Cantonese was developed as a means of informal communication. Still, Cantonese speakers must use standard written Chinese, or even literary Chinese, in most formal written communications, since written Cantonese may be unintelligible to speakers of other varieties of Chinese.

Historically, written Cantonese has been used in Hong Kong for legal proceedings in order to write down the exact spoken testimony of a witness, instead of paraphrasing spoken Cantonese into standard written Chinese. However, its popularity and usage has been rising in the last two decades, the late Wong Jim being one of the pioneers of its use as an effective written language. Written Cantonese has become quite popular in certain tabloids, online chat rooms, instant messaging, and even social networking websites; this would be even more evident since the rise of localism in Hong Kong from the 2010s, where the articles written by those Localists media are written in Cantonese. Although most foreign movies and TV shows are subtitled in Standard Chinese, some, such as The Simpsons, are subtitled using written Cantonese. Newspapers have the news section written in Standard Chinese, but they may have editorials or columns that contain Cantonese discourses, and Cantonese characters are increasing in popularity on advertisements and billboards.

Written Cantonese advertising banner in Mainland China

It has been stated that Written Cantonese remains limited outside Hong Kong, including other Cantonese-speaking areas in Guangdong Province; e.g., (Snow, 2004). However, colloquial Cantonese advertisements are sometimes seen in Guangdong, suggesting that written Cantonese is widely understood and is regarded favourably, at least in some contexts.

Some sources will use only colloquial Cantonese forms, resulting in text similar to natural speech. However, it is more common to use a mixture of colloquial forms and Standard Chinese forms, some of which are alien to natural speech. Thus the resulting "hybrid" text lies on a continuum between two norms: Standard Chinese, and colloquial Cantonese as spoken.

Cantonese characters

Early sources

A good source for well documented written Cantonese words can be found in the scripts for Cantonese opera. Readings in Cantonese colloquial: being selections from books in the Cantonese vernacular with free and literal translations of the Chinese character and romanized spelling (1894) by James Dyer Ball has a bibliography of printed works available in Cantonese characters in the last decade of the nineteenth century. A few libraries have collections of so-called "wooden fish books" written in Cantonese characters. Facsimiles and plot precis of a few of these have been published in Wolfram Eberhard's Cantonese Ballads. See also Cantonese love-songs, translated with introduction and notes by Cecil Clementi (1904) or a newer translation of these by Peter T. Morris in Cantonese love songs : an English translation of Jiu Ji-yung's Cantonese songs of the early 19th century (1992). Cantonese character versions of the Bible, Pilgrims Progress, and Peep of Day, as well as simple catechisms, were published by mission presses. The special Cantonese characters used in all of these were not standardized and show wide variation.

Characters today

Written Cantonese contains many characters not used in standard written Chinese in order to transcribe words not present in the standard lexicon, and for some words from Old Chinese when their original forms have been forgotten. Despite attempts by the government of Hong Kong in the 1990s to standardize this character set, culminating in the release of the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS) for use in electronic communication, there is still significant disagreement about which characters are correct in written Cantonese, as many of the Cantonese words existed as descendants of Old Chinese words, but are being replaced by some new invented Cantonese words due to the Hong Kong Government's lack of knowledge about some of the Cantonese words.

Vocabulary

General estimates of vocabulary differences between Cantonese and Mandarin range from 30 to 50 percent. Donald B. Snow, the author of Cantonese as Written Language: The Growth of a Written Chinese Vernacular, wrote that "It is difficult to quantify precisely how different" the two vocabularies are.[2] Snow wrote that the different vocabulary systems are the main difference between written Mandarin and written Cantonese.[2] Ouyang Shan made a corpus-based estimate concluding that one third of the lexical items used in regular Cantonese speech do not exist in Mandarin, but that between the formal registers the differences were smaller. He analyzed a radio news broadcast and concluded that of its lexical items, 10.6% were distinctly Cantonese.[2]

For example, the character for "not" (不) bu in Cantonese is 唔 m, the third-person pronoun (他 ta "he/she") in Cantonese is 佢 keoi, the plural pronoun marker (们/們 men) in Cantonese is 哋 dei and the possessive particle (的 de) in Cantonese is 嘅 ge.[2] For example:

Is it theirs?
Variety Characters Romanization Transliteration
Cantonese 係唔係佢哋嘅？ Yale haih m̀h haih keúih deih ge?
Mandarin 是不是他們的？ Pinyin Shì bú shì tāmen de?

In the above table the two Chinese sentences are grammatically identical, using an A-not-A question to ask "Is it theirs?" (referring to some prior mentioned thing). But the characters are all different, though they correspond 1-1.

Cognates

There are certain words that share a common root with standard written Chinese words. However, because they have diverged in pronunciation, tone, and/or meaning, they are often written using a different character. One example is the doublet 來 lòih (standard) and 嚟 lèih (Cantonese), meaning "to come." Both share the same meaning and usage, but because the colloquial pronunciation differs from the literary pronunciation, they are represented using two different characters. Some people argue that representing the colloquial pronunciation with a different (and often extremely complex) character is superfluous, and would encourage using the same character for both forms since they are cognates (see Derived characters below).

Native words

Some Cantonese words have no equivalents in Mandarin, though equivalents may exist in classical or other varieties of Chinese. Cantonese writers have from time to time reinvented or borrowed a new character if they are not aware of the original one. For example, some suggest that the common word 靚 (leng), meaning pretty in Cantonese but also looking into the mirror in Mandarin, is in fact the character 令.[3]

Today those characters can mainly be found in ancient rime dictionaries such as Guangyun. Some scholars have made some "archaeological" efforts to find out what the "original characters" are. Often, however, these efforts are of little use to the modern Cantonese writer, since the characters so discovered are not available in the standard character sets provided to computer users, and many have fallen out of usage.

In Southeast Asia, the Cantonese people may adopt the local Malay words into their daily speech such as using the term 鐳 /lɵy/ rather than saying 錢 /tsʰiːn˨˥/ which would be what the Hong Kong Cantonese would say, meaning money and written 錢.

Particles

Further information: Cantonese grammar

Cantonese particles may be added to the end of a sentence or suffixed to verbs to indicate aspect. There are many such particles; here are a few.

Loanwords

Some Cantonese loanwords are written in existing Chinese characters.

Examples
Written form of Cantonese[5] Jyutping Cantonese pronunciation English word English Pronunciation Written form of Mandarin
巴士 baa1 si2 /paː˥ɕiː˧˥/ bus /bʌs/ 公車 (Taiwan)
公共汽車、公交车(Mainland China)
的士 dik1 si2 /tɪk˥ɕiː˧˥/ taxi /ˈtæksi/ 計程車(Taiwan)
出租車(Mainland China)
德士(Singapore/Malaysia)
多士 do1 si6 /tɔ́ːɕìː/ toast /ˈtɘʊst/ 吐司
朱古力 zyu1 gu1 lik1 /tɕyː˥kuː˥lɪk˥/ chocolate /ˈtʃɒklɪt/ 巧克力
三文治 saam1 man4 zi6 /saːm˥mɐn˨˩tɕiː˨/ sandwich /ˈsænwɪdʒ/ 三明治
士多 si6 do1 /ɕiː˨tɔː˥/ store /stɔː/ 商店
士巴拿 si6 baa1 naa2 /ɕìːpáːnǎː/ spanner or wrench 扳手
士多啤梨 si6 do1 be1 lei2 /ɕiː˨tɔː˥pɛː˥lei˧˥/ strawberry /ˈstrɔːbəri/ 草莓
啤梨 be1 lei2 /pɛː˥lei˧˥/ pear /peər/ 梨子
沙士 saa1 si6 /saː˥ɕiː˨/ SARS /sɑːz/ 嚴重急性呼吸道症候群
非典(Mainland China)
拜拜 baai1 baai3 /paːi˥paːi˧/ bye bye /ˈbaɪbaɪ/ 再見
BB bi4 bi1 /piː˨˩piː˥/ baby /ˈbeɪbi/ 嬰兒
菲林 fei1 lam2 /fei˥lɐm˧˥/ film /fɪlm/ 膠卷
菲屎 fei2 si2 /fěiɕǐː/ face 面子
三文魚 saam1 man4 jyu4 /saːm˥mɐn˨˩jyː˨˩/ salmon /ˈsæmən/ 鮭魚
沙律 saa1 leot6 /sáːlɵ̀t̚/ salad 沙拉
呔 taai1 /tʰáːi/ 1, tire
2, tie		 1, 輪胎
2, 領帶
褒呔 bou1 taai1 /póutʰáːi/ bow-tie 蝴蝶型領結
飛 fei1 /féi/ fee 票
波 bo1 /pɔ́ː/ ball 球
哈囉 haa1 lou3 /háːlōu/ hello 您好
迷你 mai4 nei2 [mɐ̭i.něi] mini 小
摩登 mo1 dang1 /mɔ́ːtɐ́ŋ/ modern 時尚、現代
肥佬 fei4 lou2 [fḙilǒu] fail 不合格
咖啡 gaa3 fe1 /kāːfɛ́ː/ coffee 咖啡
OK ou1 kei1 /ʔóukʰéi/ okay 可以
咭 kaak1 /kʰáːk̚/ card 卡
啤牌 pe1 paai2 /pʰɛ́ː pʰǎːi/ poker 樸克
基 gei1 /kéi/ gay 同性戀
蛋撻 daan6 taat1 /tàːn.tʰáːt̚/ egg tart 蛋塔
可樂 ho2 lok6 /hɔ̌ː.lɔ̀ːk̚/ cola 可樂
檸檬 ning4 mung1 [ni̭ːŋmíːŋ] lemon 檸檬
扑成 buk1 sing4 [pʊ́k̚.si̭ːŋ] boxing 拳擊
刁時 diu1 si2 [tiːú.sǐː] deuce (Before the final game of tennis )平分
干邑 gon1 jap1 [kɔ́ːn.jɐ́p̚] cognac 法國白蘭地酒
沙展 saa1 zin2 [sáː.tsǐːn] sergeant 警長
士碌架 si3 luk1 gaa2 [sīːlʊ́k̚.kǎː] snooker 彩色檯球
士撻(打) si3 taat1 (daa2) [sīː.tʰáːt̚ tǎː] starter 啟輝器
士啤 si3 be1 [sīː.pɛ́ː] spare 後備，備用
士啤呔 si3 be1 taai1 [sīː.pɛ́ː tʰáːi] spare tire 備用輪胎
Often used to describe people with waist and abdomen fat
士的 si3 dik1 [sīː.tɪ́k̚] stick 手杖，拐杖
士多房 si3 do1 fong4 [sīː.tɔ́ː fɔ̭ːŋ] storeroom 貯藏室
山埃 saan1 aai1 [sáːn ʔáːi] cyanide 氰化物
(叉)電 (caa1) din3 [tsʰáː.tīːn] charge 充電
六式碼 luk3 sik1 maa2 [lʊ̄k̚.sɪ́k̚ mǎː] Six Sigma 六西格瑪
天拿水 tin1 naa4 seoi2 [tʰíːnna̭ː sɵ̌y] thinner 稀釋劑，溶劑
比高 bei2 gou1 [pěikóu] bagel 過水麵包圈(Mainland China)，貝果(Taiwan)
比堅尼 bei2 gin1 nei4 [pěikíːnnḙi] bigini 比基尼泳裝
巴士德消毒 baa1 si1 dak1 siu1 duk6 /páː.sí tɐ́k̚.siːú.tʊ̀k̚/ pasteurized 用巴氏法消毒過的
巴打 baa1 daa2 [páː.tǎː] brother 兄弟
巴黎帽 baa1 lai4 mou2 [páːlɐ̭imǒu] barret 貝雷帽
巴仙 baa1 sin1 / pat6 sen1 [páːsíːn] / /pʰɐ̀t̚.sɛ́ːn/ percent 百分之，趴(Taiwan)
古龍水 gu2 lung4 seoi2 [kǔː.lʊ̭ŋ sɵ̌y] Cologne water 科隆香水(Mainland China)
布冧 bou3 lam1 [pōulɐ́m] plum 洋李，李子，梅
布甸 bou3 din1 [pōu.tíːn] pudding 布丁
打令 daa1 ling2 [táː.lǐːŋ] darling 心愛的人
打比(打吡) daa2 bei2 [tǎː.pěi] Derby 德比賽馬
卡 kaa1 [kʰáː] car （火車）車廂
卡式機 kaa1 sik1 gei1 [kʰáː.sɪ́k̚ kéi] cassette 盒式錄音機
卡士 kaa1 si2 [kʰáː.sǐː] cast / class 1. 演員陣容
2. 檔次，等級；上品，高檔，有品味
卡通 kaa1 tung1 [kʰáː.tʰʊ́ŋ] cartoon 動畫片，漫畫
卡巴 kaa1 baa1 [kʰáː.páː] kebab 烤腌肉串
甲巴甸 gaap3 baa1 din1 [kāːp̚.páː.tíːn] gabardine 華達呢
呢 le1 [lɛ́ː] level 級，級別
叻㗎 lek1 gaa4 [lɛ́ːk̚.ka̭ː] lacquer 清漆
仙 sin1 [síːn] cent 分
他菲亞酒 taa1 fei1 aa3 zau2 [tʰáː.féi ʔāː.tsɐ̌u] tafia / taffia 塔非亞酒
冬甩 dung1 lat1 [tʊ́ŋ.lɐ́t̚] doughnut 炸麵餅圈(Mainland China)
奶昔 naai2 sik1 [nǎːi.sɪ́k̚] milk shake 牛奶冰淇淋
安士 on1 si2 [ʔɔ́ːnsǐː] ounce 盎司，英兩，啢
安哥 en1 ko1 /ʔɛ́ːn.kʰɔ́/ encore 再來一個，再演奏（Song）一次

Cantonese character formation

Cantonese characters, as with regular Chinese characters, are formed in one of several ways:

Borrowings

Some characters already exist in standard Chinese, but are simply reborrowed into Cantonese with new meanings. Most of these tend to be archaic or rarely used characters. An example is the character 子, which means "child". The Cantonese word for child is represented by 仔(jai), which has the original meaning of "young animal".

Marked phonetic loans

Many characters used in Cantonese writings are formed by putting a mouth radical (口) on the left hand side of another better-known character (e.g. 㗎), usually a standard Chinese character. This indicates that the new character sounds like the standard character, but is only used phonetically in the Cantonese context. (An exception is 咩, which does not sound like 羊 (sheep), but sounds like the sound that sheep make.) The characters which are commonly used in Cantonese writing include:

There is evidence that the mouth radical in such characters can, over time, be replaced by a Signific, which indicates the meaning of the character. The new character is then a semantic compound. For instance, 冧 (lām, "bud"), written with the signific 冖 ("cover"), is instead written in older dictionaries as 噉, with the mouth radical.

Derived characters

Other common characters are unique to Cantonese or are different from their Mandarin usage, including: 乜, 冇, 仔, 佢, 佬, 俾, 靚 etc. The characters which are commonly used in Cantonese writing include:

The words represented by these characters are sometimes cognates with pre-existing Chinese words. However, their colloquial Cantonese pronunciations have diverged from formal Cantonese pronunciations. For example, 無 ("without") is normally pronounced mòuh in literature. In spoken Cantonese, 喇 (móuh) has the same usage, meaning, and pronunciation as 無, except for tone. 喇 represents the spoken Cantonese form of the word "without", while 無 represents the word used in Classical Chinese and Mandarin. However, 無 is still used in some instances in spoken Cantonese, such as 無論如何 ("no matter what happens"). Another example is the doublet 來/嚟, which means "come". 來 (lòih) is used in literature; 嚟 (lèih) is the spoken Cantonese form.

Workarounds

Though all Cantonese words can be found in the current encoding system, input workarounds are commonly used by those not familiar with them. Some Cantonese writers use simple romanization (e.g., use D as 啲), symbols (add a Latin letter "o" in front of another Chinese character; e.g., 㗎 is defined in Unicode but will not display if not installed on the device in use, hence the proxy o架 is often used), homophones (e.g., use 果 as 嗰), and Chinese characters which have different meanings in Mandarin (e.g., 乜, 係, 俾; etc.) For example,

你 喺 嗰 喥 好 喇, 千 祈 咪 搞 佢 啲 嘢。
Gross you being there good (final particle), thousand pray don't mess with him (genitive particle) things/stuff.
Translation You'd better stay there, and under no circumstances mess with his/her stuff.

is often written using the better-known standard Chinese characters with a little modification, "你o係果度好la, 千祈咪搞佢D野。".

See also

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Mair, Victor. "How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language".
  2. 1 2 3 4 Snow, Cantonese as Written Language: The Growth of a Written Chinese Vernacular, p. 49.
  3. ↑ cantonese.org.cn
  4. ↑ ctcfl.ox.ac.uk
  5. ↑ A list compiled by lbsun
  6. ↑ Wikipedia:粵語本字表 - 維基百科，自由嘅百科全書
  7. ↑ Zhifu Yu. 粵講粵過癮[100601][細路]. Foshan TV. Retrieved 3 September 2013.

Further reading

Cantonese edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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