Cantonese / JyùtJyú / 粵語

Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a language that originated in the vicinity of Canton (i.e. Guangzhou) in southern China, and is often regarded as the prestige dialect of Yue Chinese.

In mainland China, it is a lingua franca in Guangdong Province and some neighbouring areas, such as the eastern part of Guangxi Province. Outside mainland China, it is spoken by the majority population of Hong Kong and Macau in everyday life. It is also spoken by overseas Chinese communities in Canada, Peru, Panama, the United States and Australia, as well as throughout Europe and Southeast Asia, being the most widely spoken Chinese dialect and a lingua franca in many of these communities.

While the term "Cantonese" refers narrowly to the prestige dialect described in this article, it is often used in a broader sense for the entire Yue branch of Chinese, including related dialects such as Taishanese.

The Cantonese language is also viewed as part of the cultural identity for the native speakers across large swathes of southern China, Hong Kong and Macau. Although Cantonese shares much vocabulary and grammatical structure with Mandarin Chinese, the two languages are not mutually intelligible largely because of pronunciation differences.[2][3]

[edit] Names

In English, the term "Cantonese" is ambiguous. Cantonese proper is the dialect native to the city of Canton, which is the traditional English name of Guangzhou, and later brought to Hong Kong and Macau;[citation needed] this narrow sense may be specified as "Canton dialect" or "Guangzhou dialect" in English.[4]

However, "Cantonese" may also refer to the primary branch of Chinese which contains Cantonese proper as well as Taishanese and Gaoyang; this broader usage may be specified as "Yue" (粤). In this article, "Cantonese" is used for Cantonese proper.

Chinese speakers use some names that do not correspond exactly with the English terms. Customarily, speakers call their language "Guangzhou Prefecture speech" (Guǎngzhōu huà, 广州话 or 廣州話). In Guangdong province, people also call it "Provincial Capital speech".[5] In Hong Kong and Macau, people usually call it "Guangdong speech" (廣東話). Outside of Guangzhou, people also call it "Baak Waa" (plain speech) (白話).[6]

Due to its status as a prestige dialect, it is often called "Standard Cantonese" (simplified Chinese: 标准粤语; traditional Chinese: 標準粵語; Jyutping: biu1zeon2 jyut6jyu5; Guangdong Romanization：Biu1 zên2 yud6 yu5).

[edit] Cultural role

Spoken Chinese has numerous regional and local varieties, many of which are mutually unintelligible. Most of these are rarely heard outside their native areas, although they may be spoken in homes outside of the country. Since the early 1900s (1909 Qing Dynasty decree), China has promoted Mandarin for use in education, the media and official communication,[7] though a few state television and radio broadcasts are in Cantonese. However, due to the linguistic history of Hong Kong and Macau, and the use of Cantonese in many overseas Chinese communities, international usage of Cantonese has spread far out of proportion to its relatively small number of speakers in China, even though the majority of Cantonese speakers still live in mainland China.[citation needed]

Cantonese is the predominant Chinese language spoken in Hong Kong and Macau. In these areas, political discourse takes place almost exclusively in Cantonese, making it the only variety of Chinese other than Mandarin to be used as the primary language for the official state functions of an area. Because of their use by non-Mandarin-speaking Yue speakers overseas, the Cantonese and Taishanese languages are the primary forms of Chinese that Westerners come into contact with.

Along with Mandarin and Hokkien, Cantonese is one of the few varieties of Chinese with its own popular music, Cantopop. In Hong Kong, Cantonese lyrics predominate within popular music, and many artists from Beijing and Taiwan have learned Cantonese to make Cantonese versions of their recordings.[8] Popular native Mandarin speaking singers, including Faye Wong, Eric Moo, and singers from Taiwan, have been trained in Cantonese to add "Hong Kong-ness" to their performances.[8]

[edit] Phonology

Main article: Cantonese phonology
The de facto standard pronunciation of the Cantonese language is that of Canton (Guangzhou), which is described at the Cantonese phonology article. Hong Kong Cantonese has some minor variations in phonology.

[edit] Hong Kong

Main article: Hong Kong Cantonese
The official languages of Hong Kong are English and Chinese, as defined in the Basic Law of Hong Kong. The Chinese language has many different varieties, of which Cantonese is one. In Hong Kong, Cantonese is the predominantly spoken variety in everyday life. It is the de facto official spoken form of the Chinese language used in the Government. It is also used as the medium of instruction in many schools, alongside with English.

The Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong is mutually intelligible with the Cantonese spoken in the Chinese city of Canton (Guangzhou), although there exists some differences in pronunciation, accent and vocabulary. The Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong is known as Hong Kong Cantonese.

[edit] Written Cantonese

Main article: Written Cantonese
Cantonese has the most developed literature of any form of Chinese after Classical Chinese and Mandarin. It is used primarily in Hong Kong and in overseas Chinese communities, so it is usually written with traditional Chinese characters. Cantonese includes extra characters and characters with different meanings from Standard Written Chinese.

[edit] Romanization

Cantonese romanization systems are based on the accent of Canton and Hong Kong, and have helped define the concept of Standard Cantonese. The major systems are Barnett–Chao, Meyer–Wempe, the Chinese government's Guangdong Romanization, Yale and Jyutping. While they do not differ greatly, Yale is the one most commonly seen in the west today.[citation needed] The Hong Kong linguist Sidney Lau modified the Yale system for his popular Cantonese-as-a-second-language course and is still widely in use today.

[edit] Early Western effort

Systematic efforts to develop an alphabetic representation of Cantonese began with the arrival of Protestant missionaries in China early in the nineteenth century. Romanization was considered both a tool to help new missionaries learn the dialect more easily and a quick route for the unlettered to achieve gospel literacy. Earlier Catholic missionaries, mostly Portuguese, had developed romanization schemes for the pronunciation current in the court and capital city of China but made few efforts at romanizing other dialects.

Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary in China published a "Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect" (1828) with a rather unsystematic romanized pronunciation. Elijah Coleman Bridgman and Samuel Wells Williams in their "Chinese Chrestomathy in the Canton Dialect" (1841) were the progenitors of a long-lived lineage of related romanizations with minor variations embodied in the works of James Dyer Ball, Ernst Johann Eitel, and Immanuel Gottlieb Genăhr (1910). Bridgman and Williams based their system on the phonetic alphabet and diacritics proposed by Sir William Jones for South Asian languages. Their romanization system embodied the phonological system in a local dialect rhyme dictionary, the Fenyun cuoyao, which was widely used and easily available at the time and is still available today. Samuel Wells Willams' Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect (Yinghua fenyun cuoyao 1856), is an alphabetic rearrangement, translation and annotation of the Fenyun. In order to adapt the system to the needs of users at a time when there were only local variants and no standard—although the speech of the western suburbs, xiguan, of Guangzhou was the prestige variety at the time—Williams suggested that users learn and follow their teacher's pronunciation of his chart of Cantonese syllables. It was apparently Bridgman's innovation to mark the tones with an open circles (upper register tones) or an underlined open circle (lower register tones) at the four corners of the romanized word in analogy with the traditional Chinese system of marking the tone of a character with a circle (lower left for "even," upper left for "rising," upper right for "going," and lower right for "entering" tones). John Chalmers, in his "English and Cantonese pocket-dictionary" (1859) simplified the marking of tones using the acute accent to mark "rising" tones and the grave to mark "going" tones and no diacritic for "even" tones and marking upper register tones by italics (or underlining in handwritten work). "Entering" tones could be distinguished by their consonantal ending. Nicholas Belfeld Dennys used Chalmers romanization in his primer. This method of marking tones was adopted in the Yale romanization (with low register tones marked with an 'h'). A new romanization was developed in the first decade of the twentieth century which eliminated the diacritics on vowels by distinguishing vowel quality by spelling differences (e.g. a/aa, o/oh). Diacritics were used only for marking tones. The name of Tipson is associated with this new romanization which still embodied the phonology of the Fenyun to some extent. It is the system used in Meyer-Wempe and Cowles' dictionaries and O'Melia's textbook and many other works in the first half of the twentieth century. It was the standard romanization until the Yale system supplanted it. The distinguished linguist, Y. R. Chao developed a Cantonese adaptation of his Gwoyeu romanization system which he used in his "Cantonese Primer." The front matter to this book contains a review and comparison of a number of the systems mentioned in this paragraph. The GR system was not widely used.

[edit] Cantonese romanisation in Hong Kong

Main article: Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanisation
An influential work on Cantonese, A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced According to the Dialect of Canton, written by Wong Shik Ling, was published in 1941. He derived an IPA-based transcription system, the S. L. Wong system, used by many Chinese dictionaries later published in Hong Kong. Although Wong also derived a romanization scheme, also known as S. L. Wong system, it is not widely used as his transcription scheme.

The romanization advocated by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) is called Jyutping, which solves many of the inconsistencies and problems of the older, favored, and more familiar system of Yale Romanization, but departs considerably from it in a number of ways unfamiliar to Yale users. The phonetic values of letters are not quite familiar to those who have studied English. Some effort has been undertaken to promote Jyutping with some official support, but it is too early to tell how successful it is.

Another popular scheme is Cantonese Pinyin Schemes, which is the only romanization system accepted by Hong Kong Education and Manpower Bureau and Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority. Books and studies for teachers and students in primary and secondary schools usually use this scheme. But there are quite a lot teachers and students using the transcription system of S. L. Wong.

However, learners may feel frustrated that most native Cantonese speakers, no matter how educated they are, really are not familiar with any romanization system. Apparently, there is no motive for local people to learn any of these systems. The romanization systems are not included in the education system either in Hong Kong or in Guangdong province. In practice, Hong Kong people follow a loose unnamed romanisation scheme used by the Government of Hong Kong.

[edit] Cantonese outside China

Historically, the majority of the overseas Chinese have originated from just two provinces, Fujian and Guangdong. This has resulted in the overseas Chinese having a far higher proportion of Fujian and Guangdong languages/dialect speakers than Chinese speakers in China as a whole.

The largest number of Cantonese speakers outside mainland China and Hong Kong are in Canada and the United States; however, speakers of Min dialects predominate among the overseas Chinese in southeast Asia. The Cantonese spoken in Singapore and Malaysia are known to have borrowed substantially from Malay and other languages.

[edit] Canada

For many decades and today, Cantonese continues to be the most common Chinese language spoken among Chinese Canadians. According to Canada 2006 Census, there are 361,450 Canadian residents who reported Cantonese as their mother tongue including 166,655 in Greater Toronto Area and 125,940 in Greater Vancouver to lead the way. The total number of Cantonese speakers in Canada however is expected to be greater than those numbers provided by Statistics Canada considering that 456,705 people who reported a Chinese mother tongue either did not specifically specify which Chinese language they were referring to, or specified a languages outside of Cantonese, Mandarin, Chaochow, Fukien, Hakka, Shanghainese, or Taiwanese. Hence among the 456,705 residents, many of them are Cantonese speakers as well.

The majority of Cantonese speakers came from Hong Kong in bunches in the late 60s to mid 70s during and after the Hong Kong 1967 Leftist riots, and came in masses during the 80s to late 90s in response to the Transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong back to Mainland China in 1997. Immigrants from Guangdong, Vietnam and Southeast Asia also form an integral part of the Cantonese speaker demographics in Canada.

[edit] Malaysia

Cantonese is widely spoken in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, Petaling Jaya and Subang Jaya in Selangor, most districts in Perak, Sibu in Sarawak and Sandakan in Sabah. In general, Cantonese is widely spoken in all part of Malaysia, even though large part of Chinese population are non-Cantonese. Cantonese can be regarded as highly influential among Chinese Malaysians. Unlike Hokkien, with the largest population among Chinese Malaysian, the language has very minimal influence on other dialect groups. Viewers in Malaysia enjoyed the programmes in original soundtrack. Pay TV operator, Astro, on the other hand, do offer viewers a choice - in original soundtrack (Cantonese) and Mandarin (dubbed version) in its prime-time drama series. There are four Chinese radio stations - My FM, one FM, 988 and Ai FM. Of these four, three are private-owned, which broadcast mainly in Cantonese together with Mandarin. Ai FM, however, is a government owned station that broadcast solely in Mandarin. The only Cantonese programme used in Ai FM is the news broadcast.

[edit] Singapore

In Singapore the government has a Speak Mandarin Campaign(SMC)[9] which seeks to actively promote the use of Mandarin over other Chinese languages, such as Min-nan (colloquially known as Hokkien) (41.1%), Teochew (21.0%), Cantonese (15.4%), Hakka (7.9%) and Hainanese (6.7%).

Population Profile of Singapore Chinese Language Groups[10]
Dialect Group 1990 2000
Hokkiens 42.1% 41.1%
Teochews 21.9% 21.0%
Cantonese 15.2% 15.4%
Hakkas 7.3% 7.9%
Hainanese 7.0% 6.7%
Foochows (Min Dong) 1.7% 1.9%
Henghua (Puxian/Putian) 0.9% 0.9%
Shanghainese 0.8% 0.9%
Hockchia (Fuqing) 0.6% 0.6%
Others 2.4% 3.7%
This was seen as a way of creating greater cohesion among the ethnic Chinese. In addition to positive promotion of Mandarin, the campaign also includes active attempts to dissuade people from using other Chinese languages.

Most notably,all non-Mandarin Chinese programmes on TV and radio were stopped after 1979.[11] The prime minister then, also stopped giving speeches in Hokkien to prevent giving conflicting signals to the people.[11]

Hong Kong (Cantonese) and Taiwanese drama series are not available in their original languages on TV although Japanese and Korean drama series are available in their original languages. Cantonese drama series on non-cable TV channels are dubbed in Mandarin and broadcast without the original Cantonese soundtrack. Supporters of non-Mandarin Chinese languages who feel that dubbing causes the series to lose its natural flavor often buy original DVDs and VCDs from Taiwan and Hong Kong to keep in touch with their mother tongues.

An offshoot of SMC is the Pinyinisation of certain terms which originated from southern Chinese languages. For instance, dim sum is often known as dianxin in Singapore's English language media, though this is largely a matter of style, and most Singaporeans will refer to dim sum when speaking English. However, Cantonese is still spoken in large proportion of Cantonese family compared to other dialect groups. The situation is very different in nearby Malaysia (especially in Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh), where even most non-Cantonese speaking Chinese can understand the language to a certain extent through exposure to the language.[citation needed]

[edit] United Kingdom

The majority of Cantonese speakers in the UK have origins from the former British colony of Hong Kong and speak the Canton/Hong Kong dialect, although many are in fact from Hakka-speaking families and are bilingual in Hakka. There are also Cantonese speakers from south east Asian countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, as well as from Guangdong in China itself. Today an estimated 300,000 British people have Cantonese as a mother tongue, this represents 0.5% of the total UK population and 1% of the total overseas Cantonese speakers.[12]

[edit] United States

For the last 150 years, Guangdong Province has been the place of origin of most Chinese emigrants to Western countries; one coastal county, Taishan (or Tóisàn, where the Sìyì or sei yap dialect of Yue is spoken), alone may have been the home to more than 60% of Chinese immigrants to the US before 1965. As a result, Yue dialects such as Siyi (the dialects of Taishan, Enping, Kaiping and Xinhui Districts) and Cantonese (with a heavy Hong Kong influence) have been the major Yue dialects spoken abroad, particularly in the United States.

The Zhongshan dialect of Cantonese, with origins in the Pearl River Delta, is spoken by many Chinese immigrants in Hawaii, and some in San Francisco and in the Sacramento River Delta (see Locke, California); it is a Yuehai dialect much like Guangzhou Cantonese, but has "flatter" tones. Yue is the third most widely spoken non-English language in the United States.[13] Many institutes of higher education, such as Stanford, Duke, and Yale, have Cantonese programs. The currently most popular romanization for learning Cantonese in the United States is Yale Romanization.

This situation is now changing in the United States; recent Chinese emigrants originate from many different areas including mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Recent immigrants from mainland China and Taiwan in the U.S. all speak Standard Chinese (putonghua/guoyu),[14][15] with varying degrees of fluency, and their native local language, such as Min (Hokkien and other Fujian languages), Wu, Mandarin, Cantonese etc. As a result, Mandarin is increasingly becoming more common as the Chinese lingua franca among overseas Chinese.

In some metropolitan areas with large Chinese populations, separate neighborhoods and enclaves segregated by the primary language or dialect spoken have begun to arise. For example, in New York City, Cantonese still predominates in the older historic Chinatown in Manhattan, while the newer Chinatowns in Queens and Brooklyn have large numbers of Mandarin and Fukienese speakers respectively.

[edit] Vietnam

In Vietnam, Cantonese is widely spoken amongst the ethnic-Chinese (Hoa) community, however many have been influenced by Vietnamese, hence speak it with a slight Vietnamese accent.

[edit] Loanwords

Main article: Hong Kong Cantonese
Life in Hong Kong is characterised by the blending of Asian (mainly south Chinese) and Western influences, as well as the status of the city as a major international business centre. Influences from this territory are widespread in foreign cultures. As a results, many loanwords are created and exported to China, Taiwan and Singapore. Some of the loanwords are even more popular than their Chinese counterparts. At the same time, some new words created are vividly borrowed by other languages as well.

[edit] See also

China portal
Languages portal
Chinese language
Yue Chinese
Controversy over use of Cantonese by Guangzhou Television
Cantonese people
[edit] Footnotes

^ Official Language Division, Civil Service Bureau, Government of Hong Kong
^ Cantonese: a comprehensive grammar, p.5, Stephen Matthews and Virginia Yip, Routledge, 1994
^ Cantonese as written language: the growth of a written Chinese vernacular, p. 48, Donald B. Snow, Hong Kong University Press, 2004
^ Ramsey and Ethnologue, respectively
^ simplified Chinese: 省城话; traditional Chinese: 省城話; Jyutping: Saang2seng4 waa2
^ simplified Chinese: 白话; traditional Chinese: 白話; Jyutping: baak6waa2
^ Minglang Zhou, Hongkai Sun (2004). Language Policy in the People's Republic of China: Theory and Practice Since 1949. Springer. ISBN 1402080387, 9781402080388. http://books.google.com.au/books?id=Z4O3bcRUwKQC.
^ a b Donald, Stephanie; Keane, Michael; Hong, Yin (2002). Media in China: Consumption, Content and Crisis. RoutledgeCurzon. p. 113. ISBN 0700716149.
^ "Speak Mandarin Campaign". Mandarin.org.sg. http://www.mandarin.org.sg. Retrieved 2010-10-07.
^ Edmund Lee Eu Fah, "Profile of the Singapore Chinese Language Groups", Social Statistic Section, Singapore Department of Statistics (2000)
^ a b http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/ ... 81/1/.html
^ Cantonese speakers in the UK
^ Lai, H. Mark (2004). Becoming Chinese American: A History of Communities and Institutions. AltaMira Press. ISBN 0759104581. need page number(s)
^ Mandarin Use Up in Chinese American Communities
^ As Mandarin language becomes standard, Chinatown explores new identity

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese

Yue
粵語/粤语
廣東話/广东话

Yuht Yúh/Jyut6 jyu5 (Yue) written in Chinese characters
Spoken in China, Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, Kota Kinabalu), Vietnam, Indonesia (Medan), United States, Canada, United Kingdom and other countries where Cantonese migrants have settled.
Region in China: the Pearl River Delta (central Guangdong; Hong Kong, Macau); the eastern and southern Guangxi; parts of Hainan;
Total speakers 56 million in 1984[1]
Language family Sino-Tibetan
Sinitic
Chinese
Ping-Yue
Yue
Dialects
Yuehai (Cantonese)
Siyi (Taishanese)
Gao-Yang
Yong-Xun
Goulou
Luo-Guang
Qin-Lian
Wu-Hua
Hainan Yue
Writing system Traditional Chinese

Official status
Official language in Hong Kong and Macau (de facto, though officially referred to as "Chinese"; Cantonese and occasionally Mandarin are used in government). Recognised regional language in Suriname.
Regulated by No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1 zh
ISO 639-2 chi (B) zho (T)
ISO 639-3 yue

Yue / Cantonese
Traditional Chinese 粵語
Simplified Chinese 粤语
Cantonese Jyutping Jyut6 jyu5
Cantonese Yale Yuht Yúh
Hanyu Pinyin Yuè Yǔ
[show]Transcriptions
Commonly known as
Traditional Chinese 廣東話
Simplified Chinese 广东话

Yue,[note 1] commonly known as Cantonese,[note 2] is a primary branch of Chinese spoken in southern China.

The issue of whether Yue is a language in its own right or a dialect of a single Chinese language depends on conceptions of what a language is. Like the other branches of Chinese, Yue is considered a dialect for ethnic, political, and cultural reasons, but it is also considered a distinct language because of linguistic reasons. Spoken Cantonese is mutually unintelligible with other varieties of Chinese, though intelligible to a certain degree in its written form.

The areas of China with the highest concentration of speakers are the provinces of Guangdong and (eastern) Guangxi and the regions of Hong Kong and Macau. There are also substantial Cantonese- and Taishanese-speaking minorities overseas in Southeast Asia, Canada, Australia, and the United States.[2]

[edit] Names

The prototypical use of the name "Cantonese" in English is for the Guangzhou (Canton) dialect of Yue,[3] but it is commonly used for Yue as a whole. To avoid confusion, academic texts may call the primary branch of Chinese Yue,[4][5] following the Mandarin pinyin spelling, and either restrict "Cantonese" to its common usage as the dialect of Guangzhou, or avoid the term "Cantonese" altogether and distinguish Yue from Canton or Guangzhou dialect.

In Chinese, people of Hong Kong, of Macau, and Cantonese immigrants abroad[clarification needed] usually call the Yue language Gwóngdùng wá [kʷɔ̌ːŋ tʊ́ŋ wǎː] (廣東話) "speech of Guangdong".[note 3] People of Guangdong and Guangxi do not use that term, but rather Yuht Yúh [jỳt jy̬ː] (粵語) "Yue language". They also use baahk wá [pàːk wǎː] (白話) on its own to refer to the Guangzhou dialect. It is also used to refer to Yue dialects in Guangxi,[6] as for example in an expression like "南宁白话", which means the baak waa of Nanning.

[edit] History

[edit] Relation to Classical Chinese

Since the pronunciation of all modern varieties of Chinese are different from Old Chinese or Middle Chinese, characters that once rhymed in poetry may no longer do so today. Some linguists agree to some extent that Cantonese is closer to classical Chinese in its pronunciation and some grammar.[7] Many poems that don't rhyme in Mandarin do so in Cantonese.[7] Cantonese retains a flavour of archaic and ancient Chinese, and this has been used to study ancient Chinese culture.[7]

[edit] Qin and Han

In the Qin Dynasty Chinese troops moved southward and conquered the Baiyue territories, and many Han people began settling in the Lingnan area. This migration led to the Chinese language being spoken in the Lingnan area. After Zhao Tuo was made the Duke of Nanyue by the Qin Dynasty and given authority over the Nanyue region, many Han people entered the area and lived together with the Nanyue population, consequently affecting the lifestyle of the Nanyue people as well as stimulating the spread of the Chinese language.

[edit] Sui

Before Emperor Yang Jian or Sui wendi of Sui Dynasty reunited ancient China ~581AD , Northern China was in a warring states for ~380 years during and after the end of Han dynasty ~220AD. To avoid wars and hardships, mass migration of Han Chinese started moving South. As a result, the population in Southern China (or Lingnan ) rose dramatically. The Han Chinese in the south intermixed with the locals and exemplified further during the latter Tang and Sung dynasties; their language/ culture, predominantly of ancient Han's with some local variations were quite well preserved and not so much influenced by the Mongolians/Manchurians rulers as compared to their counterparts in the North.

[edit] Tang

Yue pronunciation and vocabulary are quite similar to the official language of the Tang dynasty.[8] Dialectologists believe that migrants and exiled officials from the heart of the Tang brought their dialect to Guangdong.[8] Remoteness and inefficient transport to Guangdong created an environment in which the language remained largely intact after it arrived.[8]

[edit] Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing

In the Song Dynasty, the differences between central Chinese and Yue became more significant, and the languages became more independent of one another. This trend continued during the Yuan and Ming dynasties.

[edit] Mid to late Qing

In the late Qing, the dynasty had gone through a period of maritime ban under the Hai jin. Guangzhou remained one of the few cities that allowed trading with foreign countries, since the trade chamber of commerce was established there.[9] Therefore, some foreigners learned Cantonese and some Imperial government officials spoke the Cantonese dialect of Yue, making the language very popular in Cantonese-speaking Guangzhou. Also, European control of Macau and Hong Kong had increased the exposure of Cantonese to the world.

[edit] 20th century

In 1912, shortly after the fall of the Qing dynasty, revolutionary leaders including Sun Yat-sen met to choose a new national language to replace Classical Chinese. Mandarin Putonghua was then a northern dialect spoken by the Manchurian officials. Many perceived it as an 'impure form' of Chinese. Cantonese is said to have lost out by a small margin of the vote to Putonghua, though some historians dispute this.[7]

The popularity of Cantonese-language media, Cantopop and the Hong Kong film industry, has since led to substantial exposure of Cantonese to China and the rest of Asia. On the Mainland, the national policy is to promote Putonghua. While the government does not prevent people from promoting local Cantonese language and culture, it does not support them. Occasionally there are news reports of children being punished for speaking Cantonese in schools.[8]

[edit] Dialects

The Yue language includes several dialects. In the classification of J.M. Campbell,[10] they are:

Cantonese proper, Guangfu (廣府話) or Yuehai (粵海話), which includes the language of Guangzhou and the surrounding areas of Zhongshan, Wuzhou, and Foshan, as well as Hong Kong and Macau;
Sìyì (四邑話 Seiyap), exemplified by the Taishan dialect (台山話), also known as Taishanese, which was ubiquitous in American Chinatowns before ca 1970;
Gao–Yang (高陽話), spoken in Yangjiang;
Wu–Hua (吳化話 Ngfaa), spoken mainly in western Guangdong;
Gou–Lou (勾漏話 Ngaulau), spoken in western Guangdong and eastern Guangxi, which includes the dialect of Yulin, Guangxi;
Yong–Xun (邕潯話 Jungcam), spoken mainly in Guangxi and its capital Nanning;
Qin–Lian (欽廉話 Jamlim), spoken in southern Guangxi, which includes the Beihai dialect;
Danzhou (儋州話), which includes the dialect of Changjiang
Haihua (海話), the dialect of Lianjiang

The Yue dialects spoken in Guangxi Province are mutually intelligible with the Canton dialect. For instance, Wuzhou is about 120 miles upstream from Guangzhou, but its dialect is more like Cantonese spoken in Guangzhou, than is that of Taishan which is 60 miles southwest of Guangzhou and separated by several rivers from it.[5] Formerly Pinghua (廣西平話), which is not mutually intelligible with the Canton dialect spoken in central Guangxi, was classified as Yue in China, but it was designated a separate primary branch of Chinese by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in the 1980s,[11] a classification generally followed in the west.

The Canton/Guangzhou dialect of Yuehai is the prestige dialect and social standard of Yue, and historically the word "Cantonese" has referred specifically to this dialect.

Mandarin is the medium of instruction in the state education system in Mainland China but in Chinese schools in Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese is the oral language of instruction. It is used extensively in Cantonese-speaking households, Cantonese-language media (Hong Kong films, television serials, and Cantopop), isolation from the other regions of China, local identity, and the non-Mandarin speaking Cantonese diaspora in Hong Kong and abroad give the language a unique identity. Most wuxia films from Canton are filmed originally in Yue and then dubbed or subtitled in Mandarin, English, or both.

[edit] Cantonese dialect

Main article: Cantonese
The Cantonese dialect is the prestige dialect of Guangdong province, and along with English an official language of Hong Kong. It is the most widely spoken dialect of Yue, spoken in Canton (Guangzhou), Hong Kong, and Macau, and is the lingua franca of not only Guangdong province, but of overseas Cantonese emigrants, though in many areas abroad it is numerically second to the Taishanese dialect of Yue.

[edit] Phonology

See Cantonese phonology for the sounds of the Guangzhou–Hong Kong dialect, and Taishanese for the phonology of that dialect.

[edit] Yue development and usage

[edit] Usage

By law, Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua 普通话 or guoyu 国语) is the standard language of mainland China and Taiwan and is taught nearly universally as a supplement to local languages such as Cantonese in Guangdong. Yue is the de facto official language of Hong Kong (along with English) and Macau (along with Portuguese), though legally the official language is just "Chinese". Yue is also one of the main languages in many overseas Chinese communities including Australia, Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe. Many of these emigrants or their ancestors originated from Guangdong. In addition, these immigrant communities formed before the widespread use of Mandarin, or they are from Hong Kong where Mandarin is not commonly used. The prestige dialect of Yue is the Guangzhou dialect. In Hong Kong, colloquial Cantonese often incorporates English words due to historical British influences.

[edit] Development

Yue is in some respects a more conservative language than Mandarin. For example, Yue has retained ancestral consonant endings that have been lost in Mandarin. Putonghua has 23 syllable rimes, while Cantonese has 59, leading Putonghua to rely heavily on compounding and context for meaning.[8] For example, because of the larger number of syllable finals, the Cantonese Yue transcription of David Beckham's family name uses two characters (碧咸 bik1haam4), while Putonghua's uses four (貝克漢姆 bèikèhànmǔ).[8] On the other hand, Yue has lost distinctions in the initial and medial consonants which Mandarin has retained, and Wu Chinese has preserved the three series of stop consonant initials from Middle Chinese that both Mandarin and Yue have reduced to two.

[edit] Variations

The Taishan dialect, which in the U.S. nowadays is heard mostly spoken by Chinese actors in old American TV shows and movies (e.g. Hop Sing on Bonanza), is more conservative than Cantonese. It has preserved the initial /n/ sound of words, whereas many post-World War II-born Hong Kong Cantonese speakers have changed this to an /l/ sound ("ngàuh lām" instead of "ngàuh nām" for "beef brisket" 牛腩) and more recently drop the "ng-" initial (so that it changes further to "àuh lām"); this seems to have arisen from some kind of street affectation as opposed to systematic phonological change[citation needed]. The common word for "who" in Taishan is "sŭe" (誰), which is the same character used in Mandarin, whereas Cantonese uses the classical word "bīn go" (邊個), meaning which one.

[edit] Sound

Yue sounds quite different from Mandarin, mainly because it has a different set of syllables. The rules for syllable formation are different; for example, there are syllables ending in non-nasal consonants (e.g. "lak"). It also has different tones and more of them than Mandarin. Canton dialect is generally considered to have 6 romanization tones, as reflected in most romanization schemes such as Jyutping, Yale, Cantonese Pinyin. According to other analyses, the number of tones may also be 7 or 8. The choice mainly depends on whether a traditional distinction between a high-level and a high-falling tone is observed; the two tones in question have largely merged into a single, high-level tone, especially in Hong Kong Cantonese, which has tended to simplify traditional Chinese tones.[citation needed] Many (especially older) descriptions of the Cantonese sound system record a higher number of tones, 9. However, the extra tones differ only in that they end in p, t, or k; otherwise they can be modeled identically.[12]

Yue preserves many syllable-final sounds that Mandarin has lost or merged. For example, the characters 裔, 屹, 藝, 憶, 譯, 懿, 誼, 肄, 翳, 邑, and 佚 are all pronounced "yì" in Mandarin, but they are all different in Yue (Cantonese jeoih, ngaht, ngaih/ngaaih, yìk, yihk, yi, yìh, yih, ai, yap, and yaht, respectively). Like Hakka and Min Nan, Yue has preserved the final consonants [-m, -n, -ŋ -p, -t, -k] from Middle Chinese, while the Mandarin final consonants have been reduced to [-n, -ŋ]. The final consonants of Yue match those of Middle Chinese with very few exceptions. For example, lacking the syllable-final sound "m"; the final "m" and final "n" from older varieties of Chinese have merged into "n" in Mandarin, e.g. Cantonese "taahm" (譚) and "tàahn" (壇) versus Mandarin tán; "yìhm" (鹽) and "yìhn" (言) versus Mandarin yán; "tìm" (添) and "tìn" (天) versus Mandarin tiān; "hàhm" (含) and "hòhn" (寒) versus Mandarin hán. The examples are too numerous to list. Nasals can be independent syllables in Yue words, e.g. Cantonese "ńgh" (五) "five", and "m̀h" (唔) "not", even though such type of syllables did not exist in Middle Chinese.

Differences also arise from Mandarin's relatively recent sound changes. One change, for example, palatalized [kʲ] with [tsʲ] to [tɕ], and is reflected in historical Mandarin romanizations, such as Peking (Beijing), Kiangsi (Jiangxi), and Fukien (Fujian). This distinction is still preserved in Yue. For example, 晶, 精, 經 and 京 are all pronounced as "jīng" in Mandarin, but in Yue, the first pair is pronounced "jīng", and the second pair "gīng".

A more drastic example, displaying both the loss of coda plosives and the palatization of onset consonants, is the character (學), pronounced *ɣæwk in Middle Chinese. Its modern pronunciations in Yue, Hakka, Hokkien, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese are "hohk", "hók" (pinjim), "ha̍k" (Pe̍h-ōe-jī), học (although a Sino-Vietnamese word, it is used in daily vocabulary), 학 hak (Sino-Korean), and gaku (Sino-Japanese), respectively, while the pronunciation in Mandarin is xué [ɕɥɛ̌].

However, the Mandarin vowel system is somewhat more conservative than that of Yue, or at least the Cantonese dialect of Yue, in that many diphthongs preserved in Mandarin have merged or been lost in Yue. Also, Mandarin makes a three-way distinction among alveolar, alveolo-palatal, and retroflex fricative consonants, distinctions that are not made by modern Cantonese. For example, jiang (將) and zhang (張) are two distinct syllables in Mandarin or old Yue, but in modern Cantonese Yue they have the same sound, "jeung1". The loss of distinction between the alveolar and the alveolopalatal sibilants in Cantonese occurred in the mid-19th centuries and was documented in many Cantonese dictionaries and pronunciation guides published prior to the 1950s. A Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect by Williams (1856), writes: “The initials "ch" and "ts" are constantly confounded, and some persons are absolutely unable to detect the difference, more frequently calling the words under "ts" as "ch", than contrariwise.” A Pocket Dictionary of Cantonese by Cowles (1914) adds: “s initial may be heard for sh initial and vice versa.”

There are clear sound correspondences in the tones. For example, a fourth-tone (low falling tone) word in Yue is usually second tone (rising tone) in Mandarin. This can be partly explained by their common descent from Middle Chinese (spoken), still with its different dialects. One way of counting tones gives Cantonese nine tones, Mandarin four, and Late Middle Chinese eight. Within this system, Mandarin merged the so-called "yin" and "yang" tones except for the Ping (平, flat) category, while Yue not only preserved these, but split one of them into two over time. Also, within this system, Yue and Wu are the only Chinese languages known to have split a tone, rather than merge two or more of them, since the time of Late Middle Chinese.

[edit] See also

Sidney Lau romanisation
Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanisation
Cantonese Pinyin
Jyutping (LSHK)
Yale Romanization
Written Cantonese
Cantonese grammar
Written Chinese
Chinese input methods for computers
[edit] Notes

^ General Chinese: Yuet-qiuu. Pronounced /ˈjuːeɪ/ or /juːˈeɪ/ in English. ("Yueh", Webster's Third International Dictionary)
^ In English, the name "Cantonese" generally refers specifically to the dialect of Guangzhou (Canton), which has spread to Hong Kong and Macau and emerged as the prestige dialect of Yue. "Cantonese" in this sense is frequently contrasted with other Yue dialects such as Taishanese, and that convention will be followed in this article.
^ 廣東話: Yale Gwóngdùng wá, Jyutping Gwong2 dung1 waa2, Mandarin pinyin Guǎngdōng huà

[edit] References

^ More recent data not available. "Ethnologue: Chinese, Yue". http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=yue. Retrieved 2010-08-08.
^ Lau, Kam Y. (1999). Cantonese Phrase Book. Lonely Planet. ISBN 0864426453.
^ "Cantonese". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 2nd ed. 1989.
^ Ethnologue: "Yue Chinese"; "Yue" or older "Yüeh" in the OED; ISO code yue
^ a b Ramsey, S. Robert (1987). The Languages of China. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-671-06694-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=2E_5nR0SoXoC.
^ http://baike.baidu.com/view/57525.htm Chinese article on Yue
^ a b c d South China Morning Post. [2009] (2009). 06, October. "Cantonese almost became the official language", by He Huifeng.
^ a b c d e f South China Morning Post. [2009] (2009). 11, October. "Linguistic heritage in peril". By Chloe Lai.
^ Li Qingxin. The Maritime Silk Road. trans. William W Wang. China Intercontinental Press. ISBN 7508509323.
^ Yue Dialects Classification at Glossika
^ 现代汉语 "Modern Chinese" ISBN 7-04-002652-X page 15
^ [|Tan Lee]; Kochanski, G; Shih, C; Li, Yujia (16–20 September 2002). "Modeling Tones in Continuous Cantonese Speech". Proceedings of ICSLP2002 (Seventh International Conference on Spoken Language Processing). Denver, Colorado. http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/lee02modeling.html. Retrieved 2007-08-20.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yue_Chinese