Written Cantonese / 粵語書面語 / 漢字粵文

Cantonese has the most well-developed written form of all Chinese varieties apart from the standard varieties of Mandarin and Classical Chinese. Standard written Chinese is based on Mandarin, but when spoken word for word as Cantonese, it sounds unnatural because its expressions are ungrammatical and unidiomatic in Cantonese. As a result, modern Cantonese speakers have developed their own written script, sometimes creating new characters for words that either do not exist or have been lost in standard Chinese.

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 Yue Ou 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.

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. As a result, mainstream media such as newspapers and magazines have become progressively less conservative and more colloquial in their dissemination of ideas. Generally speaking, some of the older generation of Cantonese speakers regard this trend as a step backwards and away from tradition. This tension between the traditional and colloquial is a reflection of a transition that is taking place in the Cantonese-speaking population.

[edit] 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 standardized as Vernacular Chinese. Because they had the largest number of speakers, Mandarin was chosen as the basis for the new standard.

The standardization and adoption of written Mandarin pre-empted the development and standardization of vernaculars based on other varieties of Chinese. No matter which dialect one spoke, one still wrote in standardized Mandarin for everyday writing. However, Cantonese is unique among 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 have to 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. Although most foreign movies and TV shows are subtitled in Standard Chinese, some, such as The Simpsons, are subtitled in written Cantonese. Some tabloids like Apple Daily are written largely in Cantonese, other newspapers (e.g. Hong Kong Economic Journal) may have editorials or columns that contain Cantonese discourses, and Cantonese characters are increasing in popularity on advertisements and billboards. Written Cantonese remains limited outside Hong Kong, even in other Cantonese-speaking areas (including Guangdong, China, where the language originated from).

[edit] Cantonese characters

Written Cantonese contains many characters not used in standard written Chinese in order to transcribe words not present in the standard lexicon. 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 for use in electronic communication, there is still significant disagreement about which characters are "correct" in written Cantonese.

[edit] Synonyms

Some characters used to represent words in Cantonese are synonyms of words used in standard written Chinese. For example, the character for "not" (不) is the synonym of 唔, the third-person pronoun (他 "he/she") is a synonym of 佢, the plural pronoun marker (們) is the synonym of 哋 and the possessive particle (的) is a synonym of 嘅. For example:

Is it theirs?
Language Characters Romanization Transliteration Literal meaning
Cantonese 係唔係佢哋嘅？ Yale haih m̀h haih keúih deih ge? Be, not be theirs (s/he plural possessive)?
Mandarin 是不是他們的？ Pinyin Shì bú shì tāmen de? Be, not be theirs (s/he plural possessive)?
[edit] Cognates

There are certain words that share a common root with words in standard written Chinese. 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 encourage using the same character for both forms since they are cognates (see Derived characters below).

[edit] Native words

Some Cantonese words have no equivalents in Mandarin-based standard modern Chinese (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 Chinese, is in fact the character 令.[2]

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.

[edit] Loanwords

New characters have been created to represent new concepts or loanwords.

[edit] 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.

咩 - "mē" placed at end of sentence to indicate disbelief
呢 - "nē" placed at end of sentence to indicate question [1]
未 - "meih" placed at end of sentence to ask if action is done yet
嚇 - (more correctly should be 吓) "háh" placed after a verb to indicate a little bit, i.e. "eat a little bit"; "há" used singly, to show uncertainty or unbelief
緊 - "gán" placed after a verb to indicate a progressive, i.e. "I am eating"
咗 - "jó" placed after verb to indicate a completed action, i.e. "I finished eating"
埋 - "maàih" placed after verb to indicate a future tense, i.e. "I will finish eating"
譁/嘩 - "wa" wow!
[edit] Cantonese words

In Chinese, distinction is made between single syllable characters, which may represent either a word, morpheme, or particle, and multi-syllabic words. Characters are generally represented by a unique character, while a word may be composed of two or more characters, which may not be necessarily related in meaning. Thus, some Cantonese words may use existing characters to form words which do not exist or possess different meaning in Mandarin.

Also, some existing Chinese words are used differently in Cantonese than they are in Mandarin. For example, the word for "to eat" in Mandarin is 吃 (e.g. 吃飯 - to eat a meal). However, 吃 is never used in Cantonese. Instead, the word 食 is used in Cantonese to mean "to eat" (e.g. 食飯 - to eat a meal). 食 is also used in Mandarin, but not as a verb; instead, it is a noun mainly meaning "food". So when writing in Cantonese, it is necessary to use the appropriate Cantonese word. Some examples include:

Mandarin: 走 (v. walk) - Cantonese: 行 (as in Classical Chinese)
Mandarin: 吃 (v. eat) - Cantonese: 食 (as in Classical Chinese)
Mandarin: 喝 (v. drink) - Cantonese: 飲(as in Classical Chinese) (Mandarin has since adapted this from Hong Kong.)
Mandarin: 看 (v. look) - Cantonese: 睇 (as in its Classical Chinese counterpart, 睼)
Mandarin: 怎麼 (adv. how) - Cantonese: 點
Mandarin: 像 (v. resemble, adv. like) - Cantonese: 似
Mandarin: 還 (adv. still) - Cantonese: 仲 (zung6; as in Classical Chinese)

[edit] Loanwords

Some Cantonese loanwords are written in existing Chinese characters.

Examples
English word Cantonese Mandarin
bus 巴士 (ba1 si2) 公共汽車
taxi 的士 (dik7 si2) 計程車 / 出租車 (but 的士 is increasingly recognized in Mandarin)
bye bye 拜拜 (bai1 bai3) 再見 (zàijiàn) (Also uses 拜拜 in speech)
chocolate 朱古力 (zyu1 gu1 lik7) 巧克力 (qiǎokèlì)
sandwich 三文治 (saam1 man4 zi6) 三明治 (sānmíngzhì)
see [3] for a list of loan words in Cantonese.

[edit] Cantonese character formation

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

[edit] 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".

[edit] Marked phonetic loans

Many characters used in Cantonese writings are formed by putting a mouth radical (㗎, 口) on the left hand side of another more well known character, 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:

㗎 gaa (function word)
嚇 háah/háa (function word)
吔 yaa/yaah (function word)
呃 ngāak (v. cheat, hoax) Standard Chinese: 騙
噉 gám (function word like this) Standard Chinese: 這樣 e.g. 噉就死喇
咁 gam (function word like this) Standard Chinese: 這麼 e.g. 咁大件
咗 jó (function word past tense) Standard Chinese: 了
咩 mē (function word) 嗎
哂 saai (function word complete e.g. 搬哂 moved all, finished moving) Standard Chinese: 掉, 完
哋 deih (function word; to show plural from of pronoun) Standard Chinese: 們
呢 nī/nēi (adv. this) Standard Chinese: 這
唔 m̀h (adv. not, no, cannot; originally a function word) Standard Chinese: 不
唥 lāang (function word)
啱 ngāam (adv. just, nearly) Standard Chinese: 剛; (adv. correct, suitable) Standard Chinese: 是
啲 dī/dīt (genitive, similar to 's but pluralizing i.e. 呢個this one->呢啲these, 快點=快啲=hurry) Standard Chinese: 的, 些, 點
喐 yūk (v. move) Standard Chinese: 動
喥 douh (adv. there, here) Standard Chinese: 裡
喺 hái (prep.) At, in, during (time), at, in (place) Standard Chinese: 在
嗰 gó (adv. that) Standard Chinese: 那
嘅 ge (genitive, similar to 's; sometimes function word) Standard Chinese: 之,的,底
嘜 māk (n. mark, trademark; transliteration of "mark")
嘞 laak (function word)
喇 laa (function word)
嘢 yéh (n. thing, stuff) Standard Chinese:, 事物
嘥 sāai (v. waste) Standard Chinese: 浪費
嚟 lèih/làih (v. come, sometimes function word) Standard Chinese: 來
嚡 háaih (function word)
嚿 gauh (function word, piece of)
囖 lō/lo (function word)
唞 táu (v. rest)
喊 haam (v. cry) Standard Chinese: 哭
咪 maih/máih (v. not be, contraction of 唔係 m̀h haih, used following 係 in yes-no questions) Standard Chinese: 否, 非; also other uses
吖 aá (final particle expressing consent and denial, liveliness and irritation, etc.) Mandarin: 呀
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 啉, with the mouth radical.

The development of new Cantonese characters is interesting linguistically, because they have never been subject to government standardization, in contrast to Standard Chinese, which has been regulated for over 2000 years[citation needed]. Therefore, a better understanding can be gained of the linguistics of how Chinese writing evolves, and how the script is modelled perceptually by the Chinese reader.

[edit] Derived characters

Further information: Chinese character classification#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:

冇 móuh (v. not have). Originally 無. Standard: 沒有
係 haih (v. be). Standard: 是
佢 kéuih (pron. he/she/it). Originally 渠. Standard: 他
乜 māt (pron. what) often followed by 嘢 to form 乜嘢. Standard: 什麼
仔 jái (n. son, child, small thing). Originally 子.
佬 lóu (n. guy, dude)
畀 béi (v. give) Standard: 給
靚 leng (adj. pretty, handsome). Originally 令. written vernacular Chinese: 漂亮
曬 saai (adv. completely; v. bask in sun)
瞓 fan (v. sleep). Originally 困. Standard: 睏, 睡
攞 ló (v. take, get) Standard: 拿
脷 leih (n. tongue) Standard: 舌
攰 guih (adj. tired) Standard: 累
埞 dehng (n. place) often followed by 方 to form 埞方. Standard: 地方
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, 冇 (móuh) has the same usage, meaning, and pronunciation as 無, except for tone. 冇 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.

[edit] Use

As not all Cantonese words can be found in the current encoding system, or their encoding or input method may be obscure, 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 recent versions of Unicode, but will not display in many browsers due to lack of proper fonts or the browser's failure to use the correct fonts, hence the proxy o架 is often used), homophones (e.g. use 果 as 嗰), and Chinese characters with that 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。" is often written in easier form as "你o係果度好喇, 千祈咪搞佢D野。" (character-by-character, approximately 'you, being, there (two characters), good, (final particle), thousand, pray, don't, mess with, him, (genitive particle), things', translation 'You'd better stay there, and please don't mess with his/her stuff.')

[edit] References

^ [1]

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (April 2009)
Cheung, Kwan-hin; Bauer, Robert S. (2002). The representation of Cantonese with Chinese characters. Journal of Chinese linguistics. Monograph series, no. 18.
Snow, Donald Bruce (1991). "Written Cantonese and the culture of Hong Kong: the growth of a dialect literature", PhD thesis, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International.
——— (1994). "A short history of published Cantonese: what is dialect literature?" in Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 4(3), pp. 127–32.
——— (2004). Cantonese as Written Language: The Growth of a Written Chinese Vernacular Hong Kong University Press, ISBN 962-209-709-X

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