Can people who speak Cantonese understand Mandarin?
List of diglossic regions
Literate Chinese speakers can read and write in the Mandarin-based standard written language. However, because the graphemes in Chinese's logographic writing system are not directly linked to pronunciation (though there are quasi-phonetic hints), Cantonese speakers who do not speak Mandarin will read aloud the characters in Cantonese pronunciation only. The resulting speech is Mandarin-based grammar and vocabulary pronounced word-by-word in Cantonese. If the same sentence were to be spoken using regular colloquial Cantonese, it might be quite different. Here is an example:
Cantonese grammar
The following Cantonese grammatical points are not found in Mandarin Chinese.
Mandarin Chinese
The national language is now used in education, the media and formal occasions in both the PRC and the ROC but not in Hong Kong and Macau. This standard can now be spoken intelligibly by most younger people in Mainland China and Taiwan with various regional accents. In Hong Kong and Macau, because of their colonial and linguistic history, the sole language of education, the media, formal speech and everyday life remains the local Cantonese. Mandarin is now common and taught in many schools but still has yet to gain traction with the local population. In Mandarin-speaking areas such as Sichuan and Chongqing, the local dialect is the native tongue of most of the population. The era of mass education in Standard Chinese has not erased these regional differences, and people may be either diglossic or speak the standard language with a notable accent.
Shenzhen
Mandarin native speakers, whose majority are out-of-province immigrants are found unwilling to learn Cantonese, Hakka or Teochew, due to the perceived complexities of learning the dialects as well as Mandarin's official use, educational priority, and use as a lingua franca. However, in recent years multilingualism is on the rise as descendants of immigrants begin to assimilate into the local culture through friends, television and other media.
Cantonese (disambiguation)
Cantonese is a language originating in Guangzhou City, Southern China
Cantonese
Although Hokkien is the most spoken variety of Chinese and Mandarin is the medium of education at Chinese-language schools, Cantonese is largely influential in the local Chinese-language media and is used in commerce by Chinese Malaysians.
Language and overseas Chinese communities
In New York City in 2002, Mandarin was spoken as a native language by only 10% of Chinese speakers, but was used as an auxiliary language among the greatest number of them and was predicted to replace Cantonese as their lingua franca. Although Min Chinese or Fuzhounese, the majority of Min Chinese, is spoken natively by a third of the Chinese population there, it is not used as a lingua franca because speakers of other dialect groups do not learn Min.
Written Chinese
The variation in vocabulary among dialects has also led to the informal use of "dialectal characters", as well as standard characters that are nevertheless considered archaic by today's standards. Cantonese is unique among non-Mandarin regional languages in having a written colloquial standard, used in Hong Kong and overseas, with a large number of unofficial characters for words particular to this language. Written colloquial Cantonese has become quite popular in online chat rooms and instant messaging, although for formal written communications Cantonese speakers still normally use Vernacular Chinese. To a lesser degree Hokkien is used in a similar way in Taiwan and elsewhere, although it lacks the level of standardization seen in Cantonese. However, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China is currently releasing a standard character set for Hokkien, which is to be taught in schools and promoted amongst the general population.
Southwestern Mandarin
Modern Southwestern Mandarin was formed by the waves of immigrants brought to the regions during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Because of this comparatively recent move, these dialects show more similarity to modern Standard Mandarin than to other varieties of Chinese like Cantonese or Hokkien. For example, like most southern Chinese dialects, Southwestern Mandarin does not possess the retroflex consonants (zh, ch, sh, r) of Standard Mandarin, but nor does it retain the checked tone, as most southern dialects do. The Chengdu-Chongqing and Hubei dialects are believed to reflect aspects of the Mandarin "lingua franca" spoken during the Ming. However, some scholars believe its origins may be more similar to Lower Yangtze Mandarin.
Though part of the Mandarin group, Southwestern Mandarin has many striking and pronounced differences with Standard Mandarin such that, until 1955, it was generally categorized alongside Cantonese and Wu Chinese as a branch of Chinese varieties.
Chinese Canadians in the Greater Toronto Area
In 2006, according to Statistics Canada, there were 166,650 in the Greater Toronto Area who had Cantonese as their native language, while there were 62,850 persons who had Mandarin as their native language. By 2009 Mandarin was becoming the dominant variety of Toronto's Chinese community.
De-Sinicization
Language differences also play a major role in separating Hong Kong identity from mainland Chinese identity. While Mandarin is the official variety of Chinese in Mainland China, the regionally traditional Cantonese variant has long been used in Hong Kong. The increasing presence of Mandarin-speakers in the territory since 1997, and expectations of mainland Chinese for Hong Kong residents to speak Mandarin, has caused conflicts and defensive measures by citizens to protect Cantonese against the encroachment of Mandarin. Such actions include stigmatizing Mandarin as a language of communism, while Cantonese is perceived as a language of democracy; reflecting the political differences between Hong Kong and China. This political linguistic view has also spread among Overseas Chinese communities, the majority of which are historically Cantonese-speaking.
Regional discrimination in China
People from the provinces and autonomous zones outside Guangdong Province, who are predominantly Mandarin-speaking and have no knowledge of indigenous languages such as Cantonese, Teochew, or Hakka, are called "北佬" or "北姑" (literally, "Northern guys" or "Northern sluts"). In particular, in the early 1980s, Guangdong saw a massive influx of out-of-province workers who did not have the habit of taking showers on a regular basis, who were especially socially distanced. Also, they were seen as not really Cantonese people or "punti", as many of them considered it unnecessary to learn Cantonese and so did not bother. Differences on issues related to Hong Kong and Guangdong has also triggered ethnic tensions.
Hong Kong English
Cantonese English, locally referred to as Chinglish, in theory, refers to the accent and characteristics of English spoken by native Hong Kongers and other Cantonese people. Overall, it is primarily spoken by native Hong Kong language (Cantonese) speakers. Therefore, although it is called "Hong Kong English", it is not only spoken in Hong Kong. People who come from Macau, Guangzhou, or whose first language is Cantonese speak it.
Sinophone
Mandarin is the official language of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan); one of the official languages of Singapore as well as one of six official languages of the United Nations. Cantonese is the official language of Hong Kong and Macau. Sizeable Overseas Chinese communities exist in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Mauritius, Brazil, Peru and Venezuela, although the variant(s) of Chinese used usually differs.
Cantonese people
The English name "Canton" derived from Portuguese ' or ', a muddling of dialectical pronunciations of "Guangdong" (e.g., Hakka "Kóng-tûng"). Although it originally and chiefly applied to the walled city of Guangzhou, it was occasionally conflated with Guangdong by some authors. 
Within Guangdong and Guangxi, Cantonese is considered the prestige dialect and is called "baahk wá" () which means "vernacular". In historical times, it was known as "Guangzhou speech" or Guangzhounese (廣州話; 广州话; Gwóngjāu wá) but due to Guangzhou's prosperity it has led people to conflate it with all Yue languages and many now refer to "Guangzhou speech" as simply "Guangdong speech" (廣東話; 广东话; Gwóngdūng wá). Similar cases where entire Chinese language families are thought to be a single language occur with non-specialists, conflating all Wu Chinese languages as just Shanghainese and its different forms, as it is the prestige dialect (although historically Suzhounese was), or that Mandarin only refers to the Beijing-based Standard Chinese and that it is a single language rather than a large group of related varieties.
Mandarin Chinese
However, the varieties of Mandarin cover a huge area containing nearly a billion people. As a result, there are pronounced regional variations in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, and many Mandarin varieties are not mutually intelligible.
Shantou
Most residents are linguistically Teochew. Teochew dialect is a variant of Min Nan (Hokkien-Taiwanese) spoken in the neighbouring Southern Fujian and Taiwan. There are also Hakka, popularly known as Half-Hakka (), living mainly in Chaoyang District and Chaonan District, although they speak Teochew on a daily basis and practise Teochew culture. Thanks to the Mandarin-medium education system, most people, especially the younger generations, can speak Mandarin fluently. Thanks to Cantonese dialect TV and labor migrations to the Pearl River Delta, Cantonese is widely spoken as a third language by the younger generations.
Cantonese
Spoken Chinese has numerous regional and local varieties, many of which are mutually unintelligible. Most of these are rare outside their native areas, though they may be spoken outside of China. Many varieties also has Literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters for newer standard reading sounds. Since a 1909 Qing dynasty decree, China has promoted Mandarin for use in education, the media, and official communications. The proclamation of Mandarin as the official national language, however, was not fully accepted by the Cantonese authorities in the early 20th century, who argued for the "regional uniqueness" of their own local language and commercial importance of the region. Unlike other non-Mandarin Chinese varieties, Cantonese persists in a few state television and radio broadcasts today.
Móng Cái
Many languages are spoken in Mong Cai. Everyone speaks Vietnamese as the native language. Cantonese is widely spoken in the Center Market and English is becoming the second language of the younger generation. Mandarin Chinese is also spoken here, especially in commercial areas.
Language secessionism
Among Chinese speakers, Cantonese, Hokkien and other varieties of Chinese are often referred to as dialects (), instead of languages (), despite the fact that those languages/dialects are hard to understand for Mandarin speakers who are the majority of Chinese speakers unless they write things down. There are debates over whether those varieties of the Chinese language should be separate languages.
Min Chinese
When using Chinese characters to write a non-Mandarin form, standard practice is to use characters that correspond etymologically to the words being represented, and to invent new characters for words with no evident ancient Chinese etymology or in some cases for alternative pronunciations of existing characters, especially when the meaning is significantly different. Written Cantonese has carried this process out to the farthest extent of any non-Mandarin variety, to the extent that pure Cantonese vernacular can be unambiguously written using Chinese characters. Contrary to popular belief, a vernacular written in this fashion is not in general comprehensible to a Mandarin speaker, due to significant changes in grammar and vocabulary and the necessary use of large number of non-Mandarin characters.
Cantonese
In Malaysia, Cantonese is widely spoken amongst the Malaysian Chinese community in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur and the surrounding areas in the Klang Valley (Petaling Jaya, Ampang, Cheras, Selayang, Sungai Buloh, Puchong, Shah Alam, Kajang, Bangi and Subang Jaya). The dialect is also widely spoken as well in the town of Sekinchan in the district of
Sabak Bernam located in the northern part of Selangor state and also in the state of Perak, especially in the state capital city of Ipoh and its surrounding towns of Gopeng, Batu Gajah and Kampar of the Kinta Valley region plus the towns of Tapah and Bidor in the southern part of the Perak state, and also widely spoken in the eastern Sabahan town of Sandakan as well as the towns of Kuantan, Raub, Bentong and Mentakab in Pahang state and they are also found in other areas such as Sarikei, Sarawak and Mersing, Johor.
Standard Chinese
In both China and Taiwan, the use of Mandarin as the medium of instruction in the educational system and in the media has contributed to the spread of Mandarin. As a result, Mandarin is now spoken by most people in mainland China and Taiwan, though often with some regional or personal variation from the standard in terms of pronunciation or lexicon. However, the Ministry of Education in 2014 estimated that only about 70% of the population of China spoke Standard Mandarin to some degree, and only one tenth of those could speak it "fluently and articulately". There is also a 20% difference in penetration between eastern and western parts of China and a 50% difference between urban and rural areas. In addition, there are still 400 million Chinese who are only able to listen and understand Mandarin and not able to speak it. Therefore, in China's 13th Five Year Plan, the general goal is to raise the penetration rate to over 80% by 2020.
Chinatown, Manhattan
As a result, it has influenced many Fuzhou people to learn the Cantonese language as well to maintain a job and to be able to bring more Cantonese customers as additional contributions to their businesses, especially large businesses like the Dim Sum restaurants on what is known as Little Fuzhou on East Broadway (小福州), the center of Fuzhou culture. Due to many Fuzhou immigrants having the most interaction with Cantonese people out all of the other Non-Cantonese Chinese people, the Fuzhou immigrants that mastered the Cantonese language constitute the vast majority of Chinese people who are not native Cantonese speakers, but learned to speak Cantonese in NYC. Linguistically, however, in the past few years, the Cantonese dialect that has dominated Chinatown for decades is being swiftly uprooted by Mandarin Chinese, the national language of China and the lingua franca of most of the latest Chinese immigrants.
Cantonese
A similar situation also exists in neighboring Macau, where Chinese is an official language alongside Portuguese. As in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the predominant spoken variety of Chinese used in everyday life and is thus the official form of Chinese used in the government. The Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong and Macau is mutually intelligible with the Cantonese spoken in the mainland city of Guangzhou, although there exist some minor differences in accent, pronunciation and vocabulary.
Chinese Canadians in Greater Vancouver
Historically Cantonese was the dominant Chinese variety of Greater Vancouver. Cantonese was the variety used in radio and television programming involving that community. As of 1964 the Hakka people spoke both Hakka and Cantonese. As of 1970 there were fewer than 100 Hakka Chinese speakers in Vancouver. By 2003, Mandarin began to have a presence, including in the media, due to an increase in immigrants from mainland China. By 2012 Mandarin was displacing Cantonese in Greater Vancouver.
Cantonese
In Northern California, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, Cantonese has historically and continues to predominate in the Chinatowns of San Francisco and Oakland, as well as the surrounding suburbs and metropolitan area, although Mandarin is now also found in Silicon Valley. In contrast, Southern California hosts a much larger Mandarin-speaking population, with Cantonese found in more historical Chinese communities such as that of Chinatown, Los Angeles, and older Chinese ethnoburbs such as San Gabriel, Rosemead, and Temple City.
Cantonese
In Vietnam, Cantonese is the dominant language of the ethnic Chinese community, usually referred to as "Hoa", which numbers about one million people and constitutes one of the largest minority groups in the country. Over half of the ethnic Chinese population in Vietnam speaks Cantonese as a native language and the variety also serves as a lingua franca between the different Chinese dialect groups. Many speakers reflect their exposure to Vietnamese with a Vietnamese accent or a tendency to code-switch between Cantonese and Vietnamese.
Languages of the European Union
There are large Chinese communities in France, the UK, Spain, Italy, and other countries. Some countries have Chinatowns. Old and recent Chinese migrants speak a number of Chinese varieties, in particular Cantonese and other southern Chinese varieties. However, Mandarin is becoming increasingly more prevalent due to the opening of the People's Republic of China.
Cantonese
Cantonese has traditionally been the dominant Chinese language of the Chinese Australian community since the first ethnic Chinese settlers arrived in the 1850s. It maintained this status until the mid-2000s, when a heavy increase in immigration from Mandarin-speakers largely from Mainland China led to Mandarin surpassing Cantonese as the dominant Chinese dialect spoken. Cantonese is the third most-spoken language in Australia. In the 2011 census, the Australian Bureau of Statistics listed 336,410 and 263,673 speakers of Mandarin and Cantonese, respectively.
Cantonese
A similar identity issue exists in the United States, where conflicts have arisen among Chinese-speakers due to a large recent influx of Mandarin-speakers. While older Taiwanese immigrants have learned Cantonese to foster integration within the traditional Chinese American populations, more recent arrivals from the Mainland continue to use Mandarin exclusively. This has contributed to a segregation of communities based on linguistic cleavage. In particular, some Chinese Americans (including American-born Chinese) of Cantonese background emphasise their non-Mainland origins(e.g. Hong Kong, Macau, Vietnam, etc.) to assert their identity in the face of new waves of immigration.
Varieties of Chinese
Due to the variety in Chinese speech, Mandarin speakers from each area of China are very often prone to fuse or "translate" words from their local language into their Mandarin conversations. In addition, each area of China has its recognizable accents while speaking Mandarin. Generally, the nationalized standard form of Mandarin pronunciation is only heard on news and radio broadcasts. Even in the streets of Beijing, the flavor of Mandarin varies in pronunciation from the Mandarin heard on the media.
Cantonese
Despite the cession of Macau to Portugal in 1557 and Hong Kong to Britain in 1842, the ethnic Chinese population of the two territories largely originated from the 19th and 20th century immigration from Guangzhou and surrounding areas, making Cantonese the prominent Chinese language in the territories. On the mainland, Cantonese continued to serve as the "lingua franca" of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces even after Mandarin was made the official language of the government by the Qing dynasty in the early 1900s. Cantonese remained the dominant and influential language in southeastern China until the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and its promotion of Standard Chinese as the sole official language of the nation throughout the last half of the 20th century, although its influence is still remaining strong within the region.
Guangzhou
Most of Guangzhou's population is Han Chinese. Almost all of the local Cantonese people speak Cantonese as their first language, while most migrants speak forms of Mandarin. In 2010, each language was the native tongue of roughly half of the city's population, although minor but substantial numbers speak other varieties as well. In 2018, He Huifeng of the "South China Morning Post" stated that younger residents have increasingly favored using Mandarin instead of Cantonese in their daily lives, causing their Cantonese-speaking grandparents and parents to use Mandarin to communicate with them. He Huifeng stated that factors included local authorities discouraging the use of Cantonese in schools and the rise in prestige of Mandarin-speaking Shenzhen.
Cantonese
Cantonese is spoken by ethnic Chinese in Portugal who originate from Macau, the most established Chinese community in the nation with a presence dating back to the 16th century and Portuguese colonialism. Since the late-20th century, however, Mandarin- and Wu-speaking migrants from mainland China have outnumbered those from Macau, although Cantonese is still retained among mainstream Chinese community associations.
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin is by far the largest of the seven or ten Chinese dialect groups, spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area, stretching from Yunnan in the southwest to Xinjiang in the northwest and Heilongjiang in the northeast. This is generally attributed to the greater ease of travel and communication in the North China Plain compared to the more mountainous south, combined with the relatively recent spread of Mandarin to frontier areas.
Languages of the United States
In New York City in 2002, Mandarin was spoken as a native language among only 10% of Chinese speakers but was predicted to replace Cantonese as the lingua franca among Chinese speakers.
Guangzhou Television Cantonese controversy
In elementary and secondary schools, the medium of instruction is mandated by law to be Mandarin. Use of Mandarin is also ubiquitously promoted in schools. In contrast, few, if any, local schools offer classes on Cantonese, although this is not explicitly forbidden by law.
Yue Chinese
Cantonese 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".
It is the oral language of instruction in Chinese schools in Hong Kong and Macau, and 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. Colloquial Hong Kong Cantonese often incorporates English words due to historical British influences.
Mersing
The Chinese community in Mersing mainly belongs to the Cantonese dialect group and speak Cantonese, however, many locals, especially business owners have no issue conversing in Mandarin.
Cantonese
Along with Mandarin and Hokkien, Cantonese has its own popular music, Cantopop, which is the predominant genre in Hong Kong. Many artists from the Mainland and Taiwan have learned Cantonese to break into the market. 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.
Taishanese
Standard Cantonese functions as a "lingua franca" in Guangdong province, and speakers of other Chinese varieties (such as Chaozhou, Minnan, Hakka) living in Guangdong may also speak Cantonese. On the other hand, Standard Mandarin Chinese is the standard language of the People's Republic of China and the only legally-allowed medium for teaching in schools throughout most of the country (except in minority areas), so residents of Taishan speak Mandarin as well. Although the Chinese government has been making great efforts to popularize Mandarin by administrative means, most Taishan residents do not speak Mandarin in their daily lives, but treat it as a second language, with Cantonese being the lingua franca of their region.
Cantonese
Nevertheless, the place of local Cantonese language and culture remains contentious. A 2010 proposal to switch some programming on Guangzhou television from Cantonese to Mandarin was abandoned following massive public protests, the largest since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. As a major economic center of China, there have been recent concerns that the use of Cantonese in Guangzhou is diminishing in favour of Mandarin, both through the continual influx of Mandarin-speaking migrants from impoverished areas and strict government policies. As a result, Cantonese is being given a more important status by the natives than ever before as a common identity of the local people.
Chinese Canadians in British Columbia
Historically Cantonese was the dominant language in Greater Vancouver. Cantonese was the language used in radio and television programming involving that community. As of 1970 there were fewer than 100 Hakka Chinese speakers in Vancouver. By 2003, Mandarin began to have a presence, including in the media, due to an increase in immigrants from mainland China. By 2012 Mandarin was displacing Cantonese in Greater Vancouver. Cantonese and Mandarin are commonly spoken in Richmond.
Chinese as a foreign language
Other than Standard Mandarin, Cantonese is the only other variant of Chinese that is widely taught as a foreign language. It is the official language of Hong Kong and Macau and has traditionally been the dominant language among most Overseas Chinese communities. A number of universities outside Hong Kong and Macau offer Cantonese within their Chinese-language departments as well, especially in the UK and North America.
History of the Chinese language
This situation changed with the creation (in both the PRC and the ROC, but not in Hong Kong and Macau) of an elementary school education system committed to teaching Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin). As a result, Mandarin is now spoken by virtually all people in mainland China and on Taiwan. At the time of the widespread introduction of Mandarin in mainland China and Taiwan, Hong Kong was a British colony and Mandarin was never used at all. In Hong Kong, Macau, Guangdong and sometimes Guangxi, the language of daily life, education, formal speech and business remains in the local Cantonese. However, Mandarin is becoming increasingly influential, which is seen as a threat by the locals, fearing that their native language might face a decline leading to its death.
Cantonese
The overwhelming majority of Chinese speakers in the United Kingdom use Cantonese, with about 300,000 British people claiming it as their first language. This is largely due to the presence of British Hong Kongers and the fact that many British Chinese also have origins in the former British colonies in Southeast Asia of Singapore and Malaysia.
Cantonese
Cantonese spoken in Malaysia often exhibits influences from Malay and other Chinese varieties spoken in the country, such as Hokkien and Teochew.
Written Cantonese
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.
Languages of Canada
A portmanteau language which is said to combine English and French syntax, grammar and lexicons to form a unique interlanguage, is sometimes ascribed to mandatory basic French education in the Canadian anglophone school systems. While many Canadians are barely conversant in French they will often borrow French words into their sentences. Simple words and phrases like "c'est quoi ça?" (what is that?) or words like "arrête" (stop) can alternate with their English counterparts. This phenomenon is more common in the eastern half of the country where there is a greater density of Francophone populations. Franglais can also refer to the supposed degradation of the French language thanks to the overwhelming impact Canadian English has on the country's Francophone inhabitants, though many linguists would argue that while English vocabulary can be freely borrowed as a stylistic device, the grammar of French has been resistant to influences from English and the same conservatism holds true in Canadian English grammar, even in Quebec City.
Cantonese people
The term "Cantonese language" is sometimes used to refer to the broader group of Yue Chinese languages and dialects spoken in Guangdong and Guangxi, although it is used more specifically to describe "Gwóngjāu wah" (廣州話), the prestige variant of Cantonese spoken in the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton). "Gwóngjāu wah" is the main language used for education, literature and media in Hong Kong and Macau. It is still widely used in Guangzhou, despite the fact that a considerable proportion of the city's population is made up by migrant workers from elsewhere in China that speak non-Cantonese variants of Chinese and Standard Mandarin. Though in recent years it is slowly falling out of favour with the younger generation prompting fears in Cantonese people that the language may die out. Cantonese language's erosen in Guangzhou is due to a mix of suppression of the language and the mass migration of non-Cantonese speaking people in to the area.
Cantonese
Cantonese is widely used as the inter-communal language among Chinese Cambodians, especially in Phnom Penh and other urban areas. While Teochew speakers form the majority of the Chinese population in Cambodia, Cantonese is often used as a vernacular in commerce and with other Chinese variant groups in the nation. Chinese-language schools in Cambodia are conducted in both Cantonese and Mandarin, but schools may be conducted exclusively in one Chinese variant or the other.
Douglas Vakoch
Vakoch's cross-cultural research on the perception of tonal languages with Yuh-Shiow Lee and Lee Wurm suggests that native speakers of tonal languages are better able to discriminate tonal differences than speakers of non-tonal languages, finding "that English listeners had difficulty discriminating Cantonese and Mandarin tones; these authors also found that speakers of the two tone languages were better at discriminating tone contrasts of their own language than of the other language (although they were still better than the English listeners)."
Written Cantonese
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, ("without") is normally pronounced "mòuh" in literature. In spoken Cantonese, ("móuh") has the same usage, meaning, and pronunciation as , except for tone. represents the spoken Cantonese form of the word "without", while represents the word used in Classical Chinese and Mandarin. However, is still used in some instances in spoken Cantonese, such as ("no matter what happens"). Another example is the doublet , which means "come". (lòih) is used in literature; (lèih) is the spoken Cantonese form.
Guangzhou Television Cantonese controversy
Responses to the CPPCC Guangzhou Committee's proposal were generally negative, especially those from local citizens and netizens; only a minority of reactions were positive. In response to media interviews, local citizens expressed concerns about the possibility of Cantonese being lost, particularly in the younger generations, although there were also more optimistic and neutral opinions.
Netizens created artworks that satirized the proposal and promoted Cantonese. Some made a sarcastic poster mimicking that of the movie "Echoes of the Rainbow". The title of the poster, "Echoes of the Cantonese" (, literally "The Cantonese Stealer"), has the same pronunciation as that of the movie in both Cantonese and Mandarin. Some others made a poster taking the style of propaganda posters that were popular before the 1990s, with text reading "Cantonese speak Cantonese, if you can't understand Cantonese, go home".
Taishanese people
Taishanese is a Yue Chinese language that is distinguished from Standard Cantonese but non-specialists often use "Cantonese" in a broader sense for the entire Yue subgroup of Chinese rather than specifically the language of Guangzhou. Cantonese and Taishanese are mutually unintelligible. Cantonese speakers often find Taishanese difficult to understand and have an average intelligibility of only 30%, this is also true for other Yue Chinese variants such as the Goulou dialects.
Cantonese phonology
The alveolo-palatal sibilants occur in complementary distribution with the retroflex sibilants in Mandarin, with the alveolo-palatal sibilants only occurring before , or . However, Mandarin also retains the medials, where and can occur, as can be seen in the examples above. Cantonese had lost its medials sometime ago in its history, reducing the ability for speakers to distinguish its sibilant initials.
Varieties of Chinese
Within mainland China, there has been a persistent drive towards promoting the standard language (); for instance, the education system is entirely Mandarin-medium from the second year onward. However, usage of local dialect is tolerated and socially preferred in many informal situations. In Hong Kong, colloquial Cantonese characters are never used in formal documents other than quoting witnesses' spoken statements during legal trials, and within the PRC a character set closer to Mandarin tends to be used. At the national level, differences in dialect generally do not correspond to political divisions or categories, and this has for the most part prevented dialect from becoming the basis of identity politics. Historically, many of the people who promoted Chinese nationalism were from southern China and did not natively speak the national standard language, and even leaders from northern China rarely spoke with the standard accent. Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yat-sen were also from southern China, and this is reflected in their conventional english names reflecting Cantonese pronunciations for their given names, and differing from their Mandarin pinyin spellings and . One consequence of this is that China does not have a well-developed tradition of spoken political rhetoric, and most Chinese political works are intended primarily as written works rather than spoken works. Another factor that limits the political implications of dialect is that it is very common within an extended family for different people to know and use different dialects.
Guangzhou Television Cantonese controversy
Also contributing to the decline is the influx of migrant population into Guangzhou as a result of the city's economic and developmental advantages in the country. The migrant worker population in China is estimated to be a huge 250 million, with most of them in big cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. Guangdong is the major destination of migrant workers in China, there is estimated to be over 20 million migrant workers. According to authorities, a big part of the migrant workers in Guangdong province come from Hunan. Increase of non-Cantonese-speaking population in the city leads to an increased number of non-Cantonese-speaking teachers in schools, forcing students to speak Mandarin on more occasions than Cantonese. Non-Cantonese speakers' name-callings online during debates, such as calling Cantonese as language for "barbarian", "uncivilized", "uneducated" people etc., has further deepened the hostility between the two groups.
Chinese Singaporeans
Today, the Cantonese dialect is still preserved amongst ethnic Chinese of Cantonese descent, although most younger generations tend to speak more Mandarin and English due to language reforms (while learning other official and national languages such as Tamil and Malay as supplementary languages for communication), but still widely used as the main lingua franca for connecting both the older and the younger generations when communicating to one another as well.
Chinese language
In mainland China and Taiwan, diglossia has been a common feature. For example, in addition to Standard Chinese, a resident of Shanghai might speak Shanghainese; and, if he or she grew up elsewhere, then he or she is also likely to be fluent in the particular dialect of that local area. A native of Guangzhou may speak both Cantonese and Standard Chinese. In addition to Mandarin, most Taiwanese also speak Minnan, Hakka, or an Austronesian language. A Taiwanese may commonly mix pronunciations, phrases, and words from Mandarin and other Taiwanese languages, and this mixture is considered normal in daily or informal speech.
Cantonese people
The Cantonese people (, also ) are subgroup of the Han Chinese people native to and/or originating from the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi (collectively known as Liangguang), in southern mainland China. Although more accurately, "Cantonese" refers only to the people from Guangzhou and its satellite cities and towns and/or native speakers of Standard Cantonese, rather than simply and generally referring to the people of the Liangguang region. The Cantonese people share a common native culture, history, ancestry and language. The term "Cantonese people" is often synonymous with the Punti people (). They are also referred to as "Hoa" in Vietnam, "Kongfu" in Malaysia and "Konghu" in Indonesia.".
Written Cantonese
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 localist 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.
Cantonese
As Guangzhou became China's key commercial center for foreign trade and exchange in the 1700s, Cantonese became the variety of Chinese interacting with most with the Western World. Around this period and continuing into the 1900s, the ancestors of most of the population of Hong Kong and Macau arrived from Guangzhou and surrounding areas after they were ceded to Britain and Portugal, respectively. After the Xinhai Revolution of 1912, Cantonese almost became the official language of the Republic of China but lost by a small margin.
Malaysian Chinese
In East Malaysia, Cantonese is also the lingua franca spoken among the Chinese in Sandakan and Sarikei. The only district dominated by Cantonese in Johor is Mersing.
Chinese Australians
Before the end of the twentieth century, Chinese Australian were historically of predominately Cantonese and Hakka descent from Hong Kong and Guangdong province, and Cantonese was the dominant language. Due to more recent immigration from other regions of Mainland China and Taiwan, Mandarin has surpassed Cantonese by a wide margin by number of speakers. At the 2016 census, 596,711 persons declared that they spoke Mandarin at home (the most common language spoken at home in Australia after English at 2.5%), followed by Cantonese at 280,943 (the third most common after English at 1.2%). In total, there were 927,944 people who spoke a Chinese language at home, a figure which includes Mandarin, Cantonese and other Chinese languages such as Hokkien and Hakka. Second or higher generation Chinese Australians are often either monolingual in English or bilingual to varying degrees with Chinese.
Cantonese
Despite the efforts to standardize Cantonese romanization, those learning the language may feel frustrated that most native Cantonese speakers, regardless of their level of education, are unfamiliar with any romanization system. Because Cantonese is primarily a spoken language and does not carry its own writing system (written Cantonese, despite having some Chinese characters unique to it, primarily follows modern standard Chinese, which is closely tied to Mandarin), it is not taught in schools. As a result, locals do not learn any of these systems. In contrast with Mandarin-speaking areas of China, Cantonese romanization systems are excluded in the education systems of both Hong Kong and the Guangdong province. In practice, Hong Kong follows a loose, unnamed romanization scheme used by the Government of Hong Kong.
Cantonese Wikipedia
Cantonese flourishes in the southern provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, as well as in Hong Kong and Macau where it is listed as one of their official languages. Some Cantonese speakers are native to Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Canada, the United States and United Kingdom.
Guangzhou Television Cantonese controversy
Guangxi, the neighbor province, used to be a Cantonese-speaking area, especially in the capital Nanning. Since the promotion of Putonghua from the 1990s, the number of Cantonese speakers has been dropped to less than 30% according to an unofficial statistic years later, most of who are the elder generations.
Besides the decline of Cantonese in Guangzhou, there is also fear of Cantonese declining in Hong Kong. Stephen Matthews, an associate professor of linguistics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong commented that "It is difficult to calculate the timing but in the medium- to long run, Cantonese is an endangered language". He added "It might survive for 50 years or so but after 50 years it may well be on its way out". Thomas Lee, professor of linguistics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong doesn't believe the situation is as stark, but maintains that Cantonese needs to stay in the mainstream education or it will end up like Shanghainese, now spoken by less than 50% of the Shanghainese people.
Even as far away as overseas, the Chinatowns have seen Cantonese being pushed out by Mandarin, reflecting different immigration patterns. Peter Kwong, professor of Asian American studies at Hunter College in New York City commented that "Mandarin's ascent comes with the realignment of power in Chinese-American communities, where the recent (non-Cantonese) immigrants are gaining economic and political clout".
Chinese in New York City
However, the different Chinese cultural and language groups as well as socioeconomic statuses are often subdivided among different boroughs of New York City. In Queens, the Chinatowns are very diverse, composed of different Chinese regional groups mainly speaking Mandarin although speaking other dialects as well, and who are more often middle- or upper-middle class. As a result, the Mandarin lingua franca is primarily concentrated in Queens. However, since Manhattan's Chinatown and Brooklyn's Chinese enclaves still hold large Cantonese speaking populations, who were the earlier Chinese immigrants to arrive into New York City with the popularity of Hong Kong Cantonese cuisine and entertainment being widely available, the Cantonese dialect and culture still hold a large influence, and Cantonese is still a lingua franca in those enclaves.
Chinese Filipino
Due to the relatively small population of Chinese Filipinos who are Cantonese, most of them, especially the new generation, never learned Cantonese.
Cantonese Wikipedia
Cantonese, a major of the Chinese language originating in Guangzhou, is the lingua franca in the southern provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, and is one of the official languages of Hong Kong and Macau. Cantonese has the most well-developed written form of all Chinese varieties apart from the standard-Mandarin variety and Classical Chinese.
Guangzhou Television Cantonese controversy
Han Zhipeng, a member of the CPPCC Guangzhou Committee, expressed his opposition after release of the proposal, saying, "Cantonese is the carrier of Lingnan culture, and the mother tongue of Guangdong people; it is also a bond connecting overseas Chinese, for most of them speak only Cantonese." He further suggested introducing a new Mandarin channel instead of reducing Cantonese programming.
People's Park (Guangzhou)
On 1 August 2010, during the Guangzhou Television Cantonese controversy, hundreds of people gathered in the park to protest the proposal to increase Mandarin programming at the expense of Cantonese. The government considered the demonstration illegal and arrested more than 20 people for "questioning". The government eventually backed down from the proposed restriction in Cantonese broadcasting.
Cantonese phonology
Like other Chinese dialects, Cantonese uses tone contours to distinguish words, with the number of possible tones depending on the type of final. While Guangzhou Cantonese generally distinguishes between high-falling and high level tones, the two have merged in Hong Kong Cantonese and Macau Cantonese, yielding a system of six different tones in syllables ending in a semi-vowel or nasal consonant. (Some of these have more than one realization, but such differences are not used to distinguish words.) In finals that end in a stop consonant, the number of tones is reduced to three; in Chinese descriptions, these "checked tones" are treated separately by diachronic convention, so that Cantonese is traditionally said to have nine tones. However, phonetically these are a conflation of tone and final consonant; the number of phonemic tones is six in Hong Kong and seven in Guangzhou.
Chinatown, Manhattan
Despite the more recently emerged large Fuzhou population, many of the Chinese businesses in Chinatown are still Cantonese owned and because of still the large Cantonese population on the Lower East Side, Cantonese still carries a strong presence in Chinatown including to the additional large influx of Cantonese speaking customers coming from other places to neighborhood on the weekends to do shopping and eat in restaurants even though Mandarin Chinese is rapidly sweeping Cantonese aside as the lingua franca of Chinatown, allowing Cantonese to continue to exert a significant level of influence upon the cultural standards and economic resources of Manhattan's Chinatown. The Cantonese dominated western section of Chinatown also continues to be the main busy Chinese business district.
Chinese as a foreign language
Many online courses in Standard Mandarin, Standard Cantonese and some other varieties are available through commercial, governmental and nonprofit websites catering to speakers of English and over a hundred other languages. Free and Paid-for courses are also offered via podcasts. Software is also available to help students pronounce, read and translate Chinese into English and other languages.
Language planning and policy in Singapore
Excerpted from a speech made by then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong during the 1991 Speak Mandarin Campaign:
Although Chinese literature, idioms and proverb can be translated into English, their full meaning may be lost in the process. A Chinese Singaporean who does not know Chinese- either Mandarin or dialect- runs the risk of losing the collective wisdom of the Chinese civilization.
Non-Mandarin Chinese language speakers have complained that their children have to study two foreign languages — English and Mandarin. This is contrasted to a possible alternative policy of English and their native language, and that the emphasis on Mandarin threatens family ties, as older generations are often not conversant in Mandarin (unless it is their native tongue). Some critics include that the Mandarin education system's goal of promoting cultural identity has left many younger generations of Mandarin speakers unable to communicate with their non-Mandarin Chinese language-speaking grandparents.
Shanghainese
Shanghainese-speakers also cannot understand Cantonese, Southern Min (such as Hokkien-Taiwanese), and any other language in any other group of Chinese.
Betty Liu
Liu is fluent in Mandarin, and speaks some Cantonese.
Cantonese
Thailand is home to the largest overseas Chinese community in the world, numbering over 9 million individuals. Cantonese is the fourth most-spoken variety of Chinese in Thai Chinese households after Teochew, Hakka and Hainanese. However, within the Thai Chinese commercial sector, it serves as a common language alongside Teochew or Thai. Chinese-language schools in Thailand have also traditionally been conducted in Cantonese. Furthermore, Cantonese serves as the lingua franca with other Chinese communities in the region.
Cantonese people
Historically centered on and predominating the Pearl River Basin shared between Guangdong and Guangxi, the Cantonese people are also responsible for establishing their native language's usage in Hong Kong and Macau during the early migrations within the British and Portuguese colonial eras respectively. Today, Hong Kong and Macau are the only regions in the world where Cantonese is the official spoken language, with the mixed influences of English and Portuguese respectively. Cantonese is traditionally and remains today a majority language in Guangdong and Guangxi, despite the increasing influence of Mandarin. There are currently around 9 million Cantonese speakers(or descendents) overseas.
Malaysian Cantonese
Malaysian Cantonese () is a local variety of Cantonese spoken in Malaysia. It is the "lingua franca" among Chinese throughout much of the central portion of Peninsular Malaysia, being spoken in the capital Kuala Lumpur, southern Perak, Pahang, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan, it is also widely understood to varying degrees by many Chinese throughout the country, regardless of their ancestral dialect.
Chinese Singaporeans
There are also distinctive recognisable differences between the Singaporean Mandarin and mainland Chinese Mandarin accents. Colloquially, many Singaporean Chinese also speak a creole of Singlish and Singdarin or code switch between English and Mandarin or a dialect. Many of the local Chinese dialects in Singapore, such as Hokkien, Teochew, or Cantonese, have also been largely acculturated and differ from what is spoken in China.
Language and overseas Chinese communities
Regardless of location, however, younger generations are educated in the Malaysian standard of Mandarin at Chinese-language schools. Also, most Chinese Malaysians can speak both Malaysian (the national language) and English, which is widely used in business and at tertiary level. Furthermore, Cantonese is understood by most Malaysian Chinese as it is the prevalent language used in local Chinese-language media, although many are unable to speak it fluently.
Teochew dialect
Because of the strong influence of Hong Kong soap operas, Guangdong provincial television programs and Cantonese pop songs, many young Chaoshan peoples can understand quite a lot of Cantonese even if they cannot speak it in certain degrees of fluency.
Cantonese
Cantonese vowels tend to be traced further back to Middle Chinese than their Mandarin analogues, such as M. /aɪ/ vs. C. /ɔːi/; M. /i/ vs. C. /ɐi/; M. /ɤ/ vs. C. /ɔː/; M. /ɑʊ/ vs. C. /ou/ etc. For consonants, some differences include M. /ɕ, tɕ, tɕʰ/ vs. C. /h, k, kʰ/; M. /ʐ/ vs. C. /j/; and a greater syllable coda diversity in Cantonese (such as syllables ending in "-t", "-p", or "-k").
List of territorial entities where Chinese is an official language
In China, the public usage of varieties other than Standard Mandarin ("Putonghua") is officially discouraged by the government and nearly all education and media is conducted in the standard variant, with a notable exception being Cantonese in Guangdong media and public transportation. As a result, younger populations are increasingly losing knowledge of their local dialects. However, in recent years, there has been limited activity in reintroducing local dialects at schools through cultural programs and broadcasting restrictions on dialects have been somewhat slightly uplifted.
General Chinese
The medial is used for syllables which have a palatalizing medial in Mandarin, but no medial in Yue. That is, in Mandarin should be read as , with the same effect on consonants as has, whereas in Cantonese it is silent. In Shanghainese both situations occur: is equivalent to in reading pronunciations, as or , but is not found in colloquial speech.
Guangdong
The central region, which is also the political and economic center, is populated predominantly by Yue Chinese speakers, though the influx in the last three decades of millions of Mandarin-speaking immigrants has slightly diminished Cantonese linguistic dominance. This region is associated with Cantonese cuisine. Cantonese opera is a form of Chinese opera popular in Cantonese speaking areas. Related Yue dialects are spoken in most of the western half of the province.
British National (Overseas) passport
Upon crossing the Hong Kong-Mainland China border, those illegal immigrants were easily detected by Hong Kong immigration officers, since the Mandarin-speaking immigrants invariably failed to understand or respond to officers when communicating in Cantonese, the first language among Hong Kong's native population.
Cantonese phonology
The depalatalization of sibilants caused many words that were once distinct to sound the same. For comparison, this distinction is still made in modern Standard Mandarin, with most alveolo-palatal sibilants in Cantonese corresponding to the retroflex sibilants in Mandarin. For instance:
Even though the aforementioned references observed the distinction, most of them also noted that the depalatalization phenomenon was already occurring at the time. Williams (1856) writes:
History of Modern Standard Chinese
In both mainland China and Taiwan, the use of Mandarin as the medium of instruction in the educational system and in the media has contributed to the spread of Mandarin. As a result, Mandarin is now spoken fluently by most people in mainland China and in Taiwan. However, in Hong Kong and Macau, due to historical and linguistic reasons, the language of education and both formal and informal speech remains Cantonese but Mandarin is becoming increasingly influential.
List of loanwords in Chinese
Loanwords have entered written and spoken Chinese from many sources, including ancient peoples whose descendants now speak Chinese. In addition to phonetic differences, varieties of Chinese such as Cantonese and Shanghainese often have distinct words and phrases left from their original languages which they continue to use in daily life and sometimes even in Mandarin. Similarly, northern dialects include relatively greater numbers of loanwords from nearby languages such as Mongolian and Manchu.
Written Cantonese
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 (leng), meaning "pretty" in Cantonese but also "looking into the mirror" in Mandarin, is in fact the character .
Tourism in China
Some form of Chinese is virtually universal in China, with Mandarin as the standard form and many other varieties also in use; some, like Cantonese and Shanghainese, have tens of millions of speakers. Although the vast majority of Chinese do not speak English, due to the educational system, many Chinese near and in urban areas can read and write it, even though they may have difficulty with spoken English.
Vocabulary development
Culture and context in infants’ linguistic environment shape their vocabulary development. English learners have been found to map novel labels to objects more reliably than to actions compared to Mandarin learners. This early noun bias in English learners is caused by the culturally reinforced tendency for English speaking caregivers to engage in a significant amount of ostensive labelling as well as noun-friendly activities such as picture book reading. Adult speech provides children with grammatical input. Both Mandarin and Cantonese languages have a category of grammatical function word called a noun classifier, which is also common across many genetically unrelated East Asian languages. In Cantonese, classifiers are obligatory and specific in more situations than in Mandarin. This accounts for the research found on Mandarin-speaking children outperforming Cantonese-speaking children in relation to the size of their vocabulary.
Guangdong
Mandarin is the language used in education and government and in areas where there are migrants from other provinces, above all in Shenzhen. Cantonese maintains a strong and dominant position in common usage and media, even in eastern areas of the province where the local languages and dialects are non-Yue ones.
Colloquial Cantonese in Hong Kong
Cantonese is spoken in Hong Kong, Guangdong and Macao. As part of the larger group of Chinese varieties, Colloquial Cantonese in Hong Kong is a special system of spoken language used by locals in Hong Kong. Hong Kong-style colloquial Cantonese has evolved from the different cultural backgrounds from Guangdong province and Macao.
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin (; ) is a group of related varieties of Chinese spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of Standard Mandarin or Standard Chinese. Because Mandarin originated in North China and most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is sometimes referred to as the Northern dialects (). Many local Mandarin varieties are not mutually intelligible. Nevertheless, Mandarin is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers (with nearly a billion).
Cantonese
Nevertheless, there have been recent attempts to minimize the use of Cantonese in China. The most notable has been the 2010 proposal that Guangzhou Television increase its broadcast in Mandarin at the expense of Cantonese programs. This however led to protests in Guangzhou, which eventually dissuaded authorities from going forward with the proposal. Additionally, there are reports of students being punished for speaking other Chinese languages at school, resulting in a reluctance of younger children to communicate in their native languages, including Cantonese. Such actions have further provoked Cantonese speakers to cherish their linguistic identity in contrast to migrants who have generally arrived from poorer areas of China and largely speak Mandarin or other Chinese languages.