Speak Not by James Griffiths

Author:James Griffiths [Griffiths, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury

PART THREE

Cantonese

Gwóngdūng wá

Language family

Sino-Tibetan

— Sinitic

— Yue

— Cantonese

— Mandarin

— Putonghua

Cantonese is a Sinitic, or Chinese, language of the Yue family. Like other major branches of Chinese, including Mandarin and Wu, Yue is descended from Middle Chinese, a language spoken during the fourth century. Today, all three branches have diverged significantly, and are not mutually intelligible. While many Chinese languages are often described as ‘dialects’ in English, this is a mistranslation of the Chinese term fangyan, literally ‘language of a place’ or topolect. Cantonese is not a dialect any more than Mandarin is, rather both are languages within the Chinese family. Confusion arises as many actual dialects, such as different varieties of Mandarin, have large speaker bases in China, and because for political reasons, only the official tongue of Putonghua is given the descriptor ‘language’ by the Chinese government.

Speakers

Hong Kong: ~7 million

Worldwide: ~73 million (primarily in Guangdong, China; Hong Kong; Macao; Malaysia; Canada)

Writing system

Standard Written Chinese (, syūmihnyúh), using traditional Chinese characters and a grammar closer to Putonghua than spoken Cantonese. Vernacular Cantonese is also written in both Chinese characters and the Latin alphabet.

Distinctive features

Cantonese has six tones compared to Putonghua’s four, and also preserves the yahp sīng, or checked tone, where words end in plosive consonants, a feature not seen in Putonghua and other Mandarin dialects. Examples are the numbers yāt (1), luhk (6), chāt, (7), and baat (8), where the final consonant is clipped, similar to the middle letters of ‘butter’ when said in a Cockney English accent: ‘bu’er’. Grammatically, spoken Cantonese also differs from Putonghua, for example in the use of direct object–indirect object word order rather than indirect object–direct object, ‘give water me’ in Cantonese, instead of ‘give me water’ in Putonghua.

Examples

I’m a Hong Konger, I speak Cantonese.

Ngóh haih Hēung Góng yàhn, ngóh sīk góng Gwóngdūng wá.

Where is the toilet?

Chisó hái bīndouh a?

How much is this egg tart?

Nī go daahn tāat géi chìhn a?

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