Talk:Cantonese (linguistics)/Archive1

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Toishanese

Those are dialects of the Cantonese language. Canton (Guangzhou) and Hong Kong dialects are also dialects of Cantonese.

If you don't feel comfortable with dialects and languages, go with the sub-dialects and dialects pairing.

--Steve

Agree. Cantonese is a general term of all dialects of Cantonese language, including Toishanese(台山話/四邑話), Standard Cantonese(廣府話), Pinghua(平話) and other dialects of Cantonese.59.40.41.129 07:02, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Number of new edits

Having problems inputting 'yuet yu' in Chinese characters on the page, using Safari and Unicode encoding, Big5, GB2312, you name it. . . please someone edumacate me on how to do that.

Sun Yat-sen, it must be noted, was a Cantonese speaker, although he came from Zhongshan, and so too were Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei, scholar-leaders of the failed 1898 reform movement as well as the heads of the largest Chinese overseas political movement of their time, the Baohuanghui. Although of course it is true that the scholarly language and the court language was indeed hanyu.

--Zhongyi

Number of tones

I am sure that there are at least 8 (from some sources I read, there are 10 tones) tones in Cantonese.

I speak Cantonese as my first language. I can sound at least 8 tones and find examples in daily language, but I find it hard to describe them all.

I will try to find out the formal description for the 8(or 10) tones.

---Eternal 10:57, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

To Eternal, the number of tones are six (陰平, 陰上, 陰去, 陽平, 陽上, 陽去), and is counted as nine including the 入聲s (陰入, 中入, 低入) which has the same tone as 陰平, 陰去, 陽去 respectively.
--Steve

Ehh?

"There are seven tones:

  1. a high level tone
  2. a mid rising tone
  3. a mid level tone
  4. a low falling tone
  5. a low rising tone
  6. a low level tone "

Well, which is it, six or seven? If seven, what happened to the last tone??

--Gabbe 04:46 Jan 6, 2003 (UTC)

The seventh tone is a "high falling" tone. In Hong Kong, the "high level" and "high falling" tones are now used interchangeably.

Sorry if I edited this wrong, this is my first time using this. There is 6 (3 more at the same level for clipped) reading tones and there is 12 tones that I can think of if you really specific for colloquial speech. So, I think:

reading tone    desc
1         high level
1         high falling
1         high clipped (clipped sound has -k -p -t endings)
2         high rising
2         high rising clipped (used in tone sandhi)
3         mid level
3         mid clipped
4         low falling
4         very low leveled (a variant of the one before)
5         low rising
6         low level
6         low clipped

Ryan

Ryan, welcome to Wikipedia. Consider creating an account. Read this: Wikipedia:Why create an account? Get yourself familiar with this place. This document may help: Help:Contents. (Next time append your comment to the end. That will usually work.)
Your have made a good observation on Cantonese. I will explain that in Standard Cantonese, the article I have been working on. You may also help in editing it.
-- Felix Wan 22:24, 2004 Oct 30 (UTC)

Cantonese-speaking Taiwanese

It is extremely misleading to say that "It is mainly spoken in...parts of Taiwan." It implies that in parts of Taiwan, there consist of a number of native Cantonese speakers who've been in Taiwan for generations, like the Taiwanese aborigines, Hakka, and Minnan. Ethnologue reports no major amount of native Cantonese speakers in Taiwan. Note that it even reports Costa Rica! Demographics of Taiwan, based on CIA, does not mention this. And none of the other books in English or Chinese mention that Cantonese is a language in Taiwan. --Menchi 04:58 May 9, 2003 (UTC)

REPLY: And yet the Taiwan television network carried here by satellite in the US has a daily Cantonese broadcast, as well as shows in Taiwanese! There were many people who fled to Taiwan after 1949 who are Cantonese speakers. But it is true that it is not a primary language of the people living in Taiwan today. ;-) Who speak Taiwanese dialect, which is a dialect of Min, I believe, or, officially, guoyu/gwokyu/hanyu/Mandarin . . . . and also of course Japanese, as a colonial legacy. ;-)

--Zhongyi

Number of speakers

In all recent sources I've consulted, they say that the number of speaker is around 70 or 71 million. Not 100 million as the article originally stated. --Menchi 04:58 May 9, 2003 (UTC)

Move this Page

This page should be moved to Cantonese Chinese to parallel Mandarin Chinese. Whether Cantonese is a "language" is disputed and not widely accepted. It is best considered a dialect of Chinese. Jiang 23:35 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The inconsistency is bad. I've deleted the "Cantonese Chinese" and you can move now. Take care of other Chinese dialects while you're at it, will ya? --Menchi 23:47 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Revision history

"Cantonese Chinese", as a deleted redirect, has the following hist:

--Menchi 23:47 29 Jun 2003 (UTC)

With Jiang's encouragement, I'd like to hopefully merge the Cantonese page and the Cantonese linguistics page together. Cantonese should be a . . . whateverthingamajiggy page you call a linking page to other pages -- linguistics, Guangdong, cuisine, opera even. . . Zhongyi 02:07, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Tone

It would be great if someone could expand on and explain this sentence in the article - it doesn't mean much to me, not knowing the characters!:

(Tone 1 and 4 are classified as 平 while the other as 仄.)

Thanks, Enchanter 00:13, Dec 22, 2003 (UTC)

Done. I actually never seen the 仄 character. I had to check Mandarin Dictionary (Chinese only). --Menchi (Talk)[[??]] 00:41, 22 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Content to be moved

Much of the content here should be at Yue. Cantonese is a dialect of Yue, as is Taishanese. Taishanese is not a dialect of Guangdonghua. The two are separate. --Jiang 00:37, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What's "Guangdong-hua" in any case? And what's Cantonese -- is it "Yue-yu", or is it "Guangzhou-hua" only? In any case I agree that we need to sort out the content here and in Yue. ran 15:40, May 14, 2004 (UTC)

Guangdonghua is what they speak in Hong kong, Guangzhou, etc. It's synonymous with Cantonese. I believe the larger langauge family is Yue. --Jiang 21:16, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

I think we're seeing the same problem as Mandarin/Putonghua here -- no one can agree to exactly how wide these terms go. In the end we did kind-of decide to make Mandarin be ALL of beifanghua -- completely defying English popular usage, but in line with Ethnologue. A similar thing with the terms here too --- we can agree that Yue = the whole big thing and Guangzhou-hua = just the speech at Guangzhou, but what about "Cantonese"? I tend to lean in thinking that it is synonomous with all of Yue-yu -- otherwise, where does it end? If it covers Guangzhou and Hong Kong, does it over Shenzhen? what about Dongguan? how about Taishan? Perhaps it's the same thing as the term "wide" 廣義 definition of "Mandarin" -- and ethnologue seems to think too that Yue = 廣義Cantonese. Then Guangzhou-hua is just "standard" or "narrowly defined" Cantonese (or 狹義 Cantonese) just as putonghua and guoyu are narrowly defined 狹義 Mandarin. and we'll need a da in the info box. ran 23:55, May 14, 2004 (UTC)

.. Or we can ask everyone in a poll what they think "Cantonese" means. -- ran 00:22, May 18, 2004 (UTC)

We should look at how other encyclopedias are classifying it. --Jiang 04:02, 18 May 2004 (UTC)
Okay, I've done a bit of googling and it seems that encyclopedias like to use Cantonese as if it's the same as Yueyu. Britannica talks about "Standard Cantonese" -- the language of Guangzhou and Hong Kong.
I'm going to go ahead now and reorganize the articles with that assumption in mind. Tell me if you want me to stop. ;) -- ran 10:44, May 18, 2004 (UTC)

Just to add a bit of input here. I'm of the opinion that Cantonese should be considered as merely one of the Yue dialects, rather than the name of the entire Yue family. I don't think Cantonese should be used as a synonym for the Yue dialects here. I know the situation is a bit different with Mandarin being used to refer to an entire group of dialects spread over a wide geographic range, but in most contexts I've seen, Cantonese (Guangdonghua/Gwongdongwa/广东话) refers to the Guangzhou/Hong Kong dialect.

It would be better to classify the dialects as Yue dialects, just like it wouldn't make any sense to classify Suzhouhua, Hangzhouhua, and all the other Wu dialects under "Shanghainese". It would be somewhat inaccurate to refer to all Yue as Cantonese because the Yue dialects aren't homogenous. Not all of the dialects are mutually intelligible with Guangzhouhua/Cantonese. For example, the article refers to Taishanese/台山话 as a dialect of Cantonese, but many or most Cantonese of Hong Kong wouldn't be able to understand Taishanese speech. If Cantonese speakers can't understand Taishanese, then I don't think Taishanese should be classified under Cantonese. On the other hand, Zhongshanhua, despite some differences in accent and vocabulary, IS mutually intelligible with Cantonese, so I would consider that a dialect of Cantonese.

Maybe this scheme like this might be more accurate?

Chinese languages
Yue dialects
Yuehai/Cantonese
Guangzhouhua
Zhongshanhua
Siyi
Gaoyang
Guinan


--Yuje 13:48, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Then make "Cantonese" a disambiguation page. Point one link to "Yue", and say that this is academic usage, and point the other link to "Guangzhou dialect", and say that this is popular usage.
Personally I'd prefer the same treatment for Mandarin: pointing one link to "Beifanghua", and two other links to "Putonghua" and "Guoyu". This would solve the massive confusion surrounding both of these (imprecise) English-language terms. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 16:24, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

Please no disambiguation pages for highly linked articles and commonly used terms! We'll either provide an overview for both or focus on one (likely the popular usage) and point to the other meaning on top. --Jiang 22:45, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

But what if popular usage refers to a completely different concept than academic usage? (Same goes for Mandarin (linguistics)) -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 22:54, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

That calls for one to take precedence over the other. That's what the "Alternative meaning: ..." notice on top of various articles are for. --Jiang

Well, for popular usage, Cantonese logically means "the language of Canton", right? Just like Shanghainese means "the language of Shanghai". Wouldn't it make sense to have two articles, one for Yue, and one specifically for Cantonese? Classifying all of Yue as Cantonese is like having all of Wu under Shanghainese, or all of Minnan under Taiwanese. There's an article for Shanghainese and for Wu languages in general, and there are articles for both Taiwanese and Minnan, so I think it would be consistent to have both an article for the wider Yue family of dialects, and for Cantonese more specifically.

Taken from the Shanghainese page. Shanghainese (上海話; pinyin: Shànghǎihuà) is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai. Wu has 87 million speakers as of 1991, and is the second largest form of Chinese after Mandarin (which has some 800 million speakers).

Can't we have it say something like: Cantonese (廣東話; pinyin: Guangdonghua) is a dialect of Yue Chinese spoken in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau, and many overseas Chinese. Yue has 70 million speakers ......

Taking a page from the Wu article: The Wu (吳方言 pinyin wú fāng yán; 吳語 pinyin wú yǔ) spoken variations of the Chinese language are spoken in the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang; and the municipality of Shanghai. Wu includes Shanghainese, Suzhou, Wenzhou, Hangzhou, Yongkang and Shaoxing dialects. As of 1991, there are 87 million speakers of Wu Chinese, making it the second largest form of Chinese after Mandarin Chinese (which has 800 million speakers).

I can write similarly about Yue: The Yue (粵語 pinyin: yue yǔ spoken varieties of the Chinese language are spoken in the provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi, in the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, and by many overseas Chinese communities. Wu includes Cantonese, Taishan, and etc etc....... --Yuje 03:12, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The situation isn't the same as Shanghainese or Taiwanese. Cantonese is often used to mean all of Yue (weird usage, I know, but it is done); Shanghainese and Taiwanese are not used to refer to all of Wu or Min. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 05:02, Sep 24, 2004 (UTC)
However, I believe most readers expect the "Cantonese (linguistics)" page to describe the dialect spoken in Guangzhou, Macau and Hong Kong, i.e. the Guangzhou dialect. It should be better to keep this page, and then in the beginning of the article, add something like "In academic usage, Cantonese often refers to all the Yue dialects or a group of them" and then link to Yue dialects. Academic information is important, but so is popular usage. Making a popular definition a disambiguation page may not be a good idea.
I think one problem is the "(linguistics)" label that creates the expectation of some academic information. Perhaps we should consider changing it to "Cantonese dialect" or "Cantonese Chinese". We may need some collaboration since the current arrangement of Chinese dialects or Chinese languages (disputed term) is quite inconsistent.
Felix Wan 08:32, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I disagree with Ran on classificaiton. I mean, Cantonese (as commonly understood) is the official langauge of the Hong Kong and Macau SARs, right? So if a dialect isn't mutually intelligible with the language of Hong Kong, then it isn't Cantonese, right? Yue as spoken in Guangzhou is almost identical to that spoken in HK, so it would be Cantonese. However, someone speaking a different Yue dialect like Taishanhua won't be able to pass any school exams or be understood by speakers of Cantonese, so I wouldn't group that as being the same as the HK official language. (That said, many (most?) speakers of Taishanhua are multilingual and do speak Guangdonghua also, since it's a useful lingua franca.)

Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but I support the narrow definition of Cantonese: the language of Canton. I think the current page should be renamed to Yue_(linguistics), and that the Cantonese_(linguistics) page should be about the official form of Cantonese used by Hong Kong and Macau. It's the same convention as Wikipedia uses for Taiwanese and Shanghainese, and following this convention would be more consistent than it currently is.

If in linguistic classificaiton Cantonese=Yue, how about putting a link at the top of the page. Alternative meanings: In linguistics, Cantonese refers not only to the language spoken in Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau, but also to the entire family of Yue dialects which it is a part of. Is that an acceptable compromise? --Yuje 11:48, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Distribution

Does the second paragraph imply that the amount of worldwide expatriates who speak Cantonese exceeds that of Mandarin? If not, then 'the' should be changed to 'a', implying that it constitutes a great whole of the total diasporic lingua franca. --Taoster 00:23, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

To be

On the interesting subject of Cantonese 係, the pronunciation given is "hai6" — but is that Pinyin, reflecting what it would sound like in Mandarin, or is it in one of the Cantonese romanization systems, and if so, which? Or does it work either way? I think we need a note to explain. — Hippietrail 08:16, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No, it isn't in Mandarin. --Menchi 08:19, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It exists in Classical Mandarin. If I am not wrong, it is called xi4. It would sound like Cantonized Mandarin just like how Mandarin is read in Cantonese News Channels in a Mandarinized Cantonese that is not everyday natural vernacular speech, but a sort of official speak. - 194.206.179.4 01:47, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)

Yueyu and Guangzhouhua

After making the List of Chinese dialects I find that it's apparent we need separate articles for Yue (linguistics) and Guangzhou dialect. This current article tries to be both at the same time. Should we split it up in some way? -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 20:55, Oct 19, 2004 (UTC)

I would support moving this current page to Yue (linguistics), because it tries to describe all the Yue dialects in general. Cantonese, the common English name used for HK's official langauge and as taught in school is from the Guangzhou dialect. As a Cantonese speaker, I can't understand some other Yue dialects such as Taishanhua, while both Guangzhou dialect and Hong Kong dialect are perfectly comprehensible to me. Because some Yue dialects fail the mutual intelligibility test, I see justification for splitting off Yue dialects into their own pages.

Change references of Cantonese to Yue, ie "There are at least four major dialect groups of Cantonese:" change to "There are at least four major dialect groups of Yue". Cantonese should either redirect to Guangzhou dialect, or be a Standard Cantonese page to avoid the bias that Guangzhou accent is more proper than Hong Kong accent. The "Cantonese vs Mandarin", "Romanization" and "Written Cantonese" sections all should be moved to the Guangzhou/HK (Cantonese) dialect page, since these apply specifically to Guangzhou/HK (Cantonese) dialect, and not neccessarily to other Yue dialects. "Tones" can stay, while "Dialects of Cantonese" can be kept, renamed as "Dialects of Yue". --Yuje 14:56, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Encarta, Britannica etc. seem to equate Cantonese with Yue though, and refer to the Guangzhou dialect as "Standard Cantonese". How would we sort that out? -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 23:41, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC)

That's a good question. Yue dialects tend to get lumped in with Cantonese a lot in English convention. Dictionary.com gives two definitions for Cantonese, the narrow definition being "The variety of Chinese spoken in and around Guangzhou (formerly Canton), China.", and the broader definition being, "n : the dialect of Chinese spoken in Canton and neighboring provinces and in Hong Kong and elsewhere outside China (syn: Yue, Yue dialect, Cantonese, Cantonese dialect)". However, the dictdef for Yue dialect gives only the broad definition, "n : the dialect of Chinese spoken in Canton and neighboring provinces and in Hong Kong and elsewhere outside China (syn: Yue, Yue dialect, Cantonese, Cantonese dialect)". Thus, I think Yue is probably a more precise term for the regional language group, while Cantonese is more ambiguous and can either refer to the standard version or the area in general. Yue is also more NPOV, since Cantonese implies that all the languages are from Canton, when they in fact are not. However, standard convention is also important. So maybe the Cantonese disambiguation page should provide a link to both the Yue dialect page and modern standard Cantonese? --Yuje 02:11, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 03:11, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)


It sounds like we are arriving at a consensus. Let me propose a detailed procedure here and see if there is any objection. We may then proceed to work.

  1. Ask sysop to delete Yue (linguistics) redirection temporarily.
  2. Move this page, Cantonese (linguistics), to Yue (linguistics). That will result in making Cantonese (linguistics) a redirection to Yue (linguistics).
  3. Create a new page Standard Cantonese.
  4. Update Cantonese disambiguation page to include links to both Yue (linguistics) and Standard Cantonese.
  5. Redistribute relevant content to Yue (linguistics) and Standard Cantonese and add reference to the other page in the beginning of the two articles.
  6. Repair all the current redirections to Cantonese (linguistics) so that they point to either Yue (linguistics) or Standard Cantonese, whichever is more relevant to the context.

One Standard Cantonese page should be enough for the dialects of Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau. Mutual intelligibility among themselves is comparable to that of Putonghua, Guoyu, and Huayu in Standard Mandarin. (Thank ran for your job in cleaning up Mandarin. It is much clearer now.) The usage of Yue and Mandarin and the definition of their standard dialects are consistent with Ethnologue. (See: Language Family Trees: Sino-Tibetan, Chinese)

Notice that steps 1 and 2 are only necessary if we want to move the history of the Cantonese (linguistics) page and its talk page in Yue (linguistics). Otherwise, we can start from step 3, and then change this page to a redirection.

-- Felix Wan 23:50, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Go ahead and start! ;) -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 16:43, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)
I have started working on Standard Cantonese while waiting for further comments on the procedure. -- Felix Wan 01:24, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I've updated the List of Chinese dialects. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 01:30, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
So, when are we going to move this page to Yue (linguistics)? -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 22:29, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Proper titles for articles on Chinese languages/dialects

The page is relocated from Cantonese (linguistics) and Talk:Cantonese (linguistics) to Cantonese language and Talk:Cantonese language, to follow the rule of many other languages on Wikipedia (e.g. English language, German language), and to cope with Wikipedia convention on languages naming.

  • There is no dispute over whether English or German is a language or a dialect. But there is such a dispute over Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, etc. As such we've arrived at this current convention to ensure NPOV. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 16:42, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)
  • That is only a dispute among you guys. Real linguists identify 14 languages under the family of Chinese languages, whereas Seiyap and Sunwui are regarded dialects under Cantonese or Yue. Please refer to Ethnologue for details.
  • Scots is also in dispute for being a language on its own or a dialect of English. But on Wikipedia it is listed according to the definition of the linguists.
  • That is only a dispute among you guys. — this is not entirely true. Not all linguists call the different Chinese varieties "languages". For starters, most scholars in mainland China don't. I have also seen plenty of academic, technical linguistics literature in English that call Wu, Yue, etc. "dialects".
  • There isn't a universally agreed-to standard for telling between "languages" and "dialects". I quote from dialect: There are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, although a number of paradigms exist, which render sometimes contradictory results. The exact distinction is therefore a subjective one, dependent on the user's frame of reference. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 07:33, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
  • Show me the academic linguistic literature referring languages of the Chinese family as dialects.
  • Once I can get to my university library I'll show you more. In the meantime, these are books that I have with me: 现代汉语 (chief editor: 钱乃荣), 汉语方言概要 (by 袁家骅 etc.) and 现代汉语方言概论 (cheif editor: 侯精一). All these are academic works and they all use the word 方言, or "dialect".
  • Would you mind telling which university? Thank you. And would you mind quoting also some sources using "languages"?
  • I understand that in everyday Chinese we tend to refer our languages as 方言s. But then that doesn't mean that they are dialects but not languages linguistically. If they are dialects should 次方言 (say, 上海話, 台山話) be called sub-dialects?
  • As I said, I'll get you English sources once I get back to school. (On Monday or Tuesday, that is). And why would my university matter?
  • Well... just curious to know which library is resourceful in linguistics.
  • Pretty much any major university library would have a wealth of information on all academic subjects.
  • In any case, I did a preliminary look around. Yuenren Chao seems to use "dialects", Karlgren isn't consistent; other authors may use "languages", or "dialects", or they use "dialects" in quotation marks, or they use "dialects" and then put a note saying, "though these may be better referred to as languages", or they use dialects and say, "this is in accordance with the Chinese terminology.
  • These two guys are phonologists... but not experts in language classifications.
  • Uh.... who would be an expert in "language classification" then? As the dialect article clearly states, there is no clear standard for differentiating language and dialect. So who exactly would have the authority to be an "expert" in this?
  • And yes, then dialects are divided into subdialects, and then subsubdialects, and so on and so forth.
  • I quote from the second work:
  • 我們不妨給方言下一個適當的定義：方言是共同語的繼承或支裔，一個方言具有異於其他親屬方言的某些語言特徵，在歷史時期往往從屬於民族的統一標準。......如漢語北方方言，吳方言，湘方言，贛方言，粵方言，閩方言等。......上述定義多少可以幫助我們解決劃分語言間和方言間的區別的困難。比如東斯拉夫語包括俄羅斯語、烏克蘭語和白俄羅斯語三個獨立的語言......因為每個語言是一個獨立民族的語言，雖然彼此間的距離並不很遠，在很大程度上還是能互相瞭解的。......漢語有些方言間的語音差別幾乎像法語和西班牙語的差別那麼大，可是秦漢以來始終隸屬於統一的書面語言，近代以主導的北方方言為基礎正在形成和發展漢民族共同的普通話。...
  • hey come-on... Have you ever heard of mentioning the Slavs as one ethnic group (斯拉夫民族)? In non-academic use such usage is commonly popular as mentioning Bulgarians, Serbians as the one ethnic groups (保加利亞民族, 塞爾維亞民族). This author defined languages based on ethnic groups, but what defines ethnic groups? Very often it's national boundary.. and it remains a political issue. Are Norwegians and Danish (or Bosnians and Croats) two different independent ethnic groups (獨立民族)? That's why it's better to define it according to intellibility among two tongues. If it is highly intellible than they are dialects of the same language, if it's only a little bit intellible, they are two languages, perhaps of the same family.
  • Then we're entering the realm of your point of view. Clearly, if the language vs dialect dispute were only among us, and if all linguists considered Mandarin/Cantonese to be languages, then we should move this page to "Cantonese language". That was your original complaint. However, if it is apparent that some linguists consider Cantonese a dialect (while others consider it a language) for political or other reasons, then we should reflect both views, regardless of how you or me may think.
  • If you stick to those who are affected by political reasons, why don't we stick to those whose classifications are purely academic?
  • I'm not sticking to anyone. Don't you see? This is NPOV. We stick to everyone's views, regardless of their motives. If Taiwanese independence supporters want to call Taiwanese a language (although it's more like a subdialect to Minnan), that's fine, we give Taiwanese a language box! If Chinese unification supporters want to call Chinese a language (although it's more like a language family), that's fine too, we give Chinese a language box too! That's how it works on Wikipedia.
  • When you say, "it's better to do this....", you're trying to rebutt another point of view. You're welcome to add your rebuttal onto the article: Chinese language, where we have an extensive description of this entire debate. But that's the only thing Wikipedia does -- we record the debate, and we don't endorse any one side. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 17:25, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)
  • Should Wikipedia put up all versions, and let users to choose which version they like?
  • There's only one "Cantonese", and one "Mandarin". So we have one "Mandarin" article, and then we explain in it everything the user needs to know to come to his/her own conclusion about whether it's a language or dialect. That's what we've done for a lot of articles; for China, for example, and for People's Republic of China, and for Republic of China, and for Taiwan. We can't endorse one single view.
  • In case you have any doubts, the rest of the book launches into highly technical discussions of the phonologies of the different Chinese languages / dialects. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 16:56, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
  • I don't mind reading.
  • I do mind pasting. Typing that paragraph out above took way longer than I thought. :P
  • By the definition above, they don't. German literature is not written according to English grammar. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 16:56, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
  • English and German grammar are quite alike as they are languages of the same family. Similarly, Cantonese and Mandarin grammar are alike, but not identical. (I speak all these four languages, tho not very fluent in Mandarin and German)
  • Grammatical similarity is not how the above text defined languages / dialects. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 17:25, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)
  • So what's the point of saying "German literature is not written according to English grammar."?
  • Because this is how one camp defines it. If Cantonese newspapers are written according to Mandarin grammar, then (according to them) that's a sign that Cantonese and Mandarin are both dialects of a single language (which they define as "a common written standard"). Clearly this is not the case for English and German. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 19:29, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Instead of "(linguistics)" after each name, why not put "(Chinese)"? Chameleon 08:34, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • Well, Cantonese (Chinese) doesn't tell me that it's about Cantonese speech, not Cantonese people. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 16:58, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
  • How about just Cantonese, with a disambiguation header at the top to deal with those very few cases in which someone intended "Cantonese people"? This (avoiding both "language" and "dialect") is the solution that was arrived at with Valencian. Chameleon 17:19, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Agree. A page Cantonese about the language, with disambiguation header on top of it to take people to Cantonese people, Cantonese cuisine, etc.

I just got an idea, how about Yue (Chinese language), Wu (Chinese language), etc.? I believe that title sounds better than (linguistics), will be informative, yet ambiguious enough to accomodate both the language and dialect views. Could that be an acceptable compromise? Perhaps we should continue this discussion on the talk page for Chinese conventions to involve more people. By the way, will Taiwanese (Chinese language) or Taiwanese dialect be acceptable? -- Felix Wan 18:54, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

  • That's a little bit clumsy I must say.
  • Taiwanese dialect definitely won't work. Taiwanese (Chinese language) may be problematic, but I guess you have to ask a Taiwanese person to be sure. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 19:48, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)
  • No. This just creates more work for us when we have to type in the extra letters. We already use a pipe link for all this. Can you think of something shorter than "linguistics"? We're classifying Taiwanese as a dialect of Min-nan, so shouldnt we call it a dialect on par with the Beijing dialect, etc instead of larger classifications such as Mandarin? But then it's frequently called "taiyu" in addiction to "taiwanhua" and there might be objections due the political reasons. --Jiang 22:22, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Yea. That's too politically sensitive. Vietnamese and Koreans used to write in Chinese scripts, and so do the Japanese. The Jurchens, the Tanguts and the Khitans, and even the Miaos and Zhuangs also used to have written languages based on modified Chinese characters. We already have a romanised version of Taiwanese Wikipedia. Taiwan could be another Vietnam or Korea to leave China. (personally I don't support it, but anywayz)
  • In fact my original preference is this: for all the first level categories of Chinese, call them Mandarin Chinese, Wu Chinese, Yue Chinese, etc. Some titles are more likely to be interpreted as people, like Hakka Chinese, which may need a redirection statement to the ethnic group. I believe that was tried before but discontinued. Where is the discussion log and what was the reason to abandon it?
    If any one can think of a consistent scheme agreeable to most people, not likely to start another round of lengthy discussion, I am very glad to type in the extra letters and use a pipe for links.
    -- Felix Wan 23:43, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Please also read the discussions on Guangzhouhua vs Yueyu. We have come to an agreement to start a page Standard Cantonese to describe the dialect spoken in Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau, and move this page to Yue (linguistics). Cantonese will be an disambiguation page pointing to both. If we are going to drop the (linguistics) label, Yue will not work because it will be too ambiguious, and there is already a page describing the different meanings of "Yue". Yue Chinese appears to be a good alternative, since that phrase will most probably be used in an article. Also, please suggest a consistent scheme to take care of all the dialects and categories in the list of Chinese dialects. -- Felix Wan 17:55, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)


We all have our biases on what constitues a dialect. I personally think that a dialect could be understood. I can understand British English, which is a dialect of English. I understand Cantonese, but I can't understand anything from the toisanese language. The political situation in China made the language more universal, enabling people from a vast amount of area use the same Characters and have a pattern throughout the different dialects. Canton is the political center of Guangzhou, so their language has influence from the people in power above them. Toisan is more isolated, so I think it is older than the Cantonese language with less influence from Mandarin. Whatever you believe in is a matter of politics. Speaking a different language doesn't mean you are from a different ethnic group. All these are socially constructed words. -- (Originally unsigned by Chuy 03:43, 2004 Nov 1 (UTC))


Naming

Now that we have a separate Standard Cantonese page that deals only with the dialect of Guangzhou, how are we going to name this page, the article that deals with Yueyu (Guangzhouhua, Taishanhua, etc.) as a whole? There are a couple of possibilities:

  • Cantonese (linguistics). (see above)
    • No action needs to be taken. However, it remains disputed whether Cantonese is a term that covers all of the Yue dialects, such as Taishanhua and so forth.
  • Cantonese.
    • This would require moving the current Cantonese page to Cantonese (disambiguation). However (as above), it remains disputed whether Cantonese is a term that covers all of the Yue dialects, such as Taishanhua and so forth.

How about we have a poll for this? -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 22:36, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)


I believe we are dealing with two separate issues:

  1. Whether we should remove the "(linguistics)" label from Chinese languages/dialects. And If we do, what is the new structure for the titles? Let's be consistent and do not fix only the Yue dialects.
  2. Whether this page should be named in the line of "Yue" or "Cantonese". The exact name depends on our decision on the first issue.

I think we have not gone through the pros and cons of different solutions for the first issue yet. If we vote now on the second issue, I recommend that we do not move this page until the first issue is settled, no matter what the result is. I do not want to move this page twice, fixing all the redirects after each move. Should we vote now on "Yue" vs "Cantonese" or hold the vote until the first issue is resolved? -- Felix Wan 02:28, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)

Let's vote on the Yue/Cantonese issue now. As for the (linguistics) part, we can't remove it, because Wu, Xiang, Gan, Hakka, and Min (not to mention Taiwanese) will all need it. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 03:22, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

Why don't people get it?

Why do we have to decide whether Cantonese, for example, is a "language" or "dialect"? Why don't people realise that these are just words? Why can't it be both a language and a dialect, depending on how you choose to apply the terms? I see very good reasons to call it one thing or the other. Why can't the title just be Cantonese and the article state the reasons for considering it a language or dialect, without getting partisan? Peace, love and harmony, anyone? Chameleon 21:42, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Your idea is good for Cantonese, but do you get our other concerns? Do you have good suggestions to deal with the list of Chinese dialects? I may have preference, but I can live with all the three choices proposed by Ran, or Cantonese language, Cantonese (language), Cantonese dialect, Cantonese dialects, Cantonese Chinese,... I only hope that once we make up our mind, we do not change the title often. -- Felix Wan 07:56, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)
I appreciate that words such as "Yue", "Mandarin", "Hakka" and "Cantonese" can all refer to people, cuisine, etc. This is why Wikipedia has opted for titles like Spanish language and having Spanish as a disambiguation page. However, I feel that the need to avoid controversy over language/dialect status is sufficient to go against the general trend for language article titles, and instead go for "main topic" disambiguation instead of "equal" disambiguation. That is to say, for all articles on Chinese languages, the most neutral option is to have titles such as Mandarin, Cantonese, etc. with a disambiguation header at the top of each of them pointing towards articles on ethnicity and the like.
Indeed, I believe this would actually be a good idea for other languages. That is to say, if I want to link to an article about Spanish, the most intuitive link is [[Spanish]]. If I just want to link to an article about the people from a country, the most intuitive link is "Salvador Dalí was a [[Spain|Spanish]] painter". This fits in with a general policy of linking from adjectival forms to noun forms, e.g. [[Socialism|socialistic]], [[Size|big]]…. "Spanish" is only a noun when it refers to the language, and so it is appropriate for Spanish to discuss the language, and have disambig links to Spain, Spanish cuisine, etc.
I am not, however, proposing a wiki-wide change of policy on language article titles. I am just making a general argument to back up the idea that the names of languages can stand as article titles without any (language) or (linguistics). I believe that this break from the wiki-norm is desirable when there are doubts as to the status of speech varieties. Already, Latin is about the language. Valencian language was moved to Valencian dialect by me, and then to Valencian by someone else to avoid controversy. This is the way to go: where there is doubt, nothing should tagged on after the name of the language.
As for the finer distinctions between dialects, I believe that "lumping" rather than "splitting" is the best policy. By this I mean that there is not much point in having one article on 北方话 (calling it perhaps "Mandarin") and another on 普通话 (calling it perhaps "Standard Mandarin"), or in having one article on the larger 粤 family of dialects and another specifically on 广东话 (calling it perhaps "Standard Cantonese"). This is because one name can refer simultaneously to both a family of varieties and also the central, most common or standard form of this. For example, as a professional translator, I know that when I am asked to translate from French into English, the French may vary greatly (I often get stuff with Canadian or Belgian dialectalisms that I have to look up), but it is understood that the English I translate into is to be standard. In the same way, when I studied Chinese at Bordeaux university, it went without saying that this Chinese was 北方话, and that this 北方话 was 普通话 in that it was a sort of standardised, nationalised 北京话. I don't know whether you are following me here, but what I am saying is that we can have an article called Mandarin, which is focused on the standard language of China, and then goes on to mention features of variants of it, such as the speech of Sìchuan, which I readily recognise as a weird version of the language I have studied. There can be an article on Cantonese, which focuses on the major variant of that group, and then goes on to mention dialects which are part of the wider Yuè family. This is like having an article on English that focuses on proper English and then goes on to mention that variants of it are spoken in India, South Africa, etc. Chameleon 09:41, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
There's a big reason why we can't arrange Mandarin and Standard Mandarin in the same way we would arrange (say) English and Standard English: because this really is not the way Chinese people think of concept at all. English speakers would recognize that the Irish brogue, Strine, etc. are all English, but a Chinese speaker wouldn't consider (say) Hunan dialect any more or less "Mandarin" than Sichuan dialect. In other words, "Standard Mandarin" is a readily accessible laypeople concept; "Mandarin" is not; people think of Chinese as a pot-pourri of disorganized dialects, classified along highly vague, highly controversial categories, above which is an overarching standard that transcends all of them, not some of them. To arrive at a page about Mandarin (where they would expect to see something about the standard language), and instead see that it's about Beifanghua, which is a vague academic classification at best, is rather counterintuitive.
I don't know whether I'm actually bringing this point out clearly... do you see what I'm saying? -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 15:08, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

I know what Ran is saying and though Ran has been quite annoying to me, Ran is right in this. Mandarin is a group of dialects in itself i.e. Mandarin in itself is French in Paris, French in Avignon with thick Italian accent and French with the Quebecois accent whereas Standard Mandarin is BBC Received Pronuciation of English, no one's mother tongue but it is a Received Standard.

However, I see the frustration with this categories too. I think it is best to translate beifanghua literally as Northern Speech (Mandarin dialects) . Putonghua as Common Speech (Mandarin-Received Pronunciation), Guoyu as National Language (Mandarin-Received Pronunciation), Beijinghua or Jingyu as Beijing Speech or Imperial Tongue (Mandarin, prestige-variant). - 194.206.179.4 01:47, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)01:42, Apr 27, 2005

Every scheme has its pros and cons. We may not find the perfect system. We are just aiming at finding a system acceptable to most people, and use redirect links and introductory redirection instructions to fill in the gaps. I find the current arrangement for Mandarin and Standard Mandarin acceptable. I really like the idea of Chameleon in dropping the language or dialect label for all tongues with language/dialect controversy. But for first level Chinese categories, Yue, Min, Wu may not work because intuitively they refer to geographic locations. They should be Yue Chinese, Min Chinese, Wu Chinese, etc. -- Felix Wan 16:40, 2004 Oct 27 (UTC)

Please bring this discussion to Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese) since it involves far more than this article. --Jiang 19:07, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The following comment was made by 194.206.179.4 at 01:47, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC):

It is ALL about politics. Cantonese is the purest dialect left from the Song dynasty and Mandarin the most corrupted by the Northern non-Chinese barbarians the Manchus. However, Mandarin speaking populations are in the MAJORITY and they control Beijing and the rest of China. And as we know, POWER WINS, not truth. Check out the rise of America and bastardised US English. It is now more prestigious to speak American English and than British English. Plus the problem of secession arises, if Cantonese decides to call itself a language and not a dialect, it could be encouraged by foreign powers with ulterior motives into independence and then as China tears apart with Taiwan following suit, Uigher all tearing apart, like the Soviet Union it will collapse and the foreign powers in Europe and Japan will invade and conquer and victimise China again. Yet, in a population with 1 billion, government is not easy. Living with conformity is not easy either. We are all special human beings with diversity and being made to conform to a standard is unrealistic. Technically everyone should be bilingual, speaking Mandarin and their own vernacular but it is harder to do it. This is the great CHINESE problem. How to unify, understand each other and remain strong without too much difficulty adjusting to a new standard. Same problem in European Union now. Which language should they use as a lingua franca? German or France and further the Europeans Union into a humongous state to be dominated by German or French expansionist ideas or to keep a democratic union with no one understanding each other but which incurrs high translation costs. The Communists don't get the idea that things have to happen naturally through time now. As long as mass technology is exposed to everyone and mass transit across China is allowed everyone, soon a type of language that is neither Mandarin nor Cantonese nor any other vernacular will emerge naturally and everyone will speak the same. This is because history shows that in America, nothing has affected the conformity of speech so much as MEDIA. With the widespread use of TV, all the young generation start speaking EXACTLY ALIKE with the same ACCENT cos everyone wants to imitate a glamorous lifestyle. In fact, today, you can hear American English in places where people have never been to America but have American TV. To unite China, we need T.V.

Middle Chinese Influence

I was wondering what is the V+ and the V- in Middle Chinese mean or where it came from. I have done research on Minnan hua and they don't seem to always map to Cantonese in a few tones, perhaps they are confused by the different tones. In some ways, I think Vietnamese is even closer to Cantonese than Minnan in terms of tones. It almost maps to each one exactly. The 2nd tone in Cantonese usually has the ? accent in Vietnamese and the 5th tone always have the ~ tone on top of the vowel.

Also, Vietnamese preserved some of the NG initials that seem to be dropped from Cantonese, eg. ren2 (mandarin) -> jan4(cantonese), but it has the ng inital in Hakka, Toisanese, and Vietnamese.

Cantonese doesn't distinguish between teacher/lion and poem.

hakka/viet su (sai in minnan i think) teacher/lion and si poem

But there's closer tongue curling relationship between Vietnamese and Mandarin. (Possible tongue curling in older Chinese? or Manchu influence?)

  • shi goes to th, su
  • and all si go to t or s
  • zh goes to chi, tr
  • z goes to t or ty
  • chi goes to xi, tr, si (no real pattern)
  • (c usually t but some exceptions to tu or thu

Also, it seems that most (if not all) 2nd tone x, zhi, z initials in Mandarin has a hard ending (-k -p -t) in Cantonese.

The hard endings -k -p -t is an element from older Chinese. -h also in Minnan.

--(Originally unsigned by Chuy 04:09, 2004 Nov 1 (UTC))

Correction: Cantonese to Vietnamese exactly only in tones 2 and 5 (Mandarin 3rd tone) -- (Originally unsigned by Chuy 04:14, 2004 Nov 1 (UTC))

V+ and V- refer to voiced or voiceless initials in ancient Chinese. This has been lost in Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, and Min, but are preserved in the tones. So all the Yin tones come from voiceless initials ("teacher", "history", "attempt") and all the Yang tones come from voiced initials ("time", "city", "matter"). Cantonese is the most clearcut in this; Minnan mixes the "history" and "city" tones (I believe), and Mandarin mixes "attempt", "city", and "matter".
And as for zh-, z- Mandarin initials in second tone: that generally also applies to b- d- g- j-. Basically the second tone in Mandarin has two origins: from ancient voiced initials, in which case they go to p-, t-, k-, ch-, c-, q-, or from ancient entering tones (those are the ones ending in -p -t -k) in which case they go to b-, d-, g-, zh-, z-, j-. There are also the ones in s-, f-, l-, m-, n-, etc., those are mixed together and you can't tell which is which. So if you see a second tone and it's b-, d-, g-, zh-, z-, j-, then it's likely to end in -p -t -k in ancient Chinese.
I don't know anything about Vietnamese so you'll need someone else to figure that out with. :) -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 23:29, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

Romanization

Have somebody actually seen Penkyamp romanization used?? Cantonese doesn't have set standard that everybody uses and be happy with. I have personally seen 4 romanizations in books and jyutping online.

The tones in some romanizations have a "o" for high level at the top left after the character. There is 6 different tone schemes from "A Chinese Syllabary Prounounced Accourding To The Dialect of Canton" I will probably post it up some other time.

Felix, I think you are looking for this chart since it has eight romanizations that I've compiled from various sources (and Penkyamp is not one of them). I recommend looking at the GIF file because most computers can't display IPA symbols with my htm file.

http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~chewwy/jyutping.htm http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~chewwy/jyutping.gif http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~chewwy/jyutping.xls

I have also found 5 additional romanizations Williams (year 1856), Ball (1910), Eitel (1883), Tipson (1917), Jones (??? probably just the tone scheme). I can post those up too if requested and if I have time.

(Originally unsigned by Chuy 03:52, 2004 Nov 8)

Thank you Chuy for the information. Yes, I intend to overhaul articles on Cantonese in this site, including adding the more commonly used Romanization schemes. I have the book you mentioned. Your chart is very useful. Meanwhile I am busy doing a project at work. I will contact you when I have more time on Wikipedia projects. I have never seen Penkyamp either before coming to Wikipedia, but now I am talking to one of its advocates. You may want to join my discussion forum at Yahoo: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cantonese_script/ -- Felix Wan 16:37, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

Modern Evolution of Standard Cantonese (26 December 2004)

How would everyone feel about adding a section to Standard Cantonese called Modern Evolution (or some other name like that)?

All languages change over time. And one of the cool things about Cantonese, is that it appears to be undergoing such a change right now! I propose that this section talk about some of the shifts in pronunciation happening to Standard Cantonese.

Some examples (using LSHK's jyutping transcription scheme):

-the shift from N to L as an initial sound:

  You 你: nei5 -> lei5, Male 男: naam4 -> laam4, Female 女: neoi5 -> leoi5

-the elimination of ng as an initial sound:

  I 我: ngo5 -> o5, Eye 眼: ngaan5 -> aan5

-the shift from gwo to go as a initial sound:

  Country 國: gwok3 -> gok3, Cantonese: 廣東話: gwong2 dung1 waa6 --> gong2 dung1 waa6

I think that many people who speak Cantonese as their first langauge probably don't even notice the change, but if stopped to think about it, will notice it. And some Cantonese speakers will probably even mix the pronunciations. I hope I've provided good examples. I think it's a very interesting phenomenon.

--Wang123 Sunday, December 26, 2004 at 12:25:04 (UTC)

I removed one remark on this phenomena that seemed to be out of place from this article:
However, sometimes native Cantonese speak 'lazy' cantonese. As example of "ngo5' (I/Me), the 'n' sound is often missed.
I added a section called "Current Phonological Shift" to Standard Cantonese to deal with it in a more NPOV way.
--Felix Wan 20:44, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)

Was there a shift between "M" and "W" as well? I've noticed the tendency of some older Cantonese to pronounce Mong Kok in as "wong gok". --Yuje 20:18, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, that district is currently pronounced as "wong gok" by all Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong. Mong Kok is a transliteration of the older name of the district. See its entry in Chinese Wikipedia. -- Felix Wan 22:42, 2004 Dec 30 (UTC)

Making the article NPOV

I have just reverted an edit by anon (131.6.84.67). See [1]. While the edit did make some important points, it was overdone to reflect the other extreme view by discounting the importance of Cantonese too much. I hope that we may collaborate and see which changes should be made to make the article sound more neutral. -- Felix Wan 22:51, 2005 Jan 21 (UTC)

Wow, Felix Wan, your comment (above) is sooooo politically correct. :-) That is a good thing though. If I may express my opinion, the edits made by the anonymous user really bashed the Cantonese language. In addition, it had some factual inaccuracies. But, I agree, these things should be worked out through collaboration and discussion. I am also in favor if making and keeping the article neutral. Perhaps the article sounded too pro-Cantonese to that user. Wang123 22:39, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

January 24, 2005 - I just reverted many of the edits made by anonymous user 172.165.227.178, and made a few small revisions of my own if it wasn't too hard. I think that his/her edits amounted to a net loss in the quality of the article. Please feel free to help me try to improve this article, and feel free to comment or debate on my changes and reverts. I didn't revert all of anon's edits for various reasons depending on each individual edit, but that doesn't mean I approve of all of them. It could have been because I didn't have a better alternative or because I didn't think the prior version was that great either. Although, there were a few edits that I didn't mind. Anyway, my point is, feel free to revert or change other edits by anon if they should be reverted or changed. Wang123 14:15, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Here is a list of my reverts/revisions and an explanation for each: -- Wang123

is one of the dialects of the Chinese language. It is mainly spoken in the south-eastern part of Mainland China, [[Hong I reinserted the word “major” because Yue is actually one of the major Chinese languages.

It is mainly spoken in the south-eastern part of Mainland China, such as Hong Kong and Macau, This edit is not a good edit in my opinion. Hong Kong and Macau are islands, and it is very common to refer to Hong Kong and Macau separately from the mainland. So I reverted this part to the way it was previously.

Its name is derived from Canton, a former Westernized pronounciation of Guangzhou, I revised this edit because “Canton” is not just a former Westernized pronunciation, but it actually was the former English name of Guangzhou. Canton is the name that was used in many older authoritative texts written in English.

For the last 150 years, Guangdong Province, with slower economic growth, provided most of the Chinese emigrants I reverted this part because the edit concerning slower economic growth is vague and not based on any facts. But I reverted it to the previous version for lack of a better version at the moment. The original version said that Guangdong province has been the origin of most Chinese emigrants for the past 150 years. Though this may have been true in the past, I think that over time it will become less accurate because of the opening up of the rest of China. When I was young, I only encountered Cantonese Chinese. Now, I see many Chinese immigrants that are not from the Guangdong area. I’m thinking of rewording this sentence later after I do some research.

as well as Mandarin in increasing numbers from Taiwanese and Northern mainland immigrants. I reverted this edit back to the prior version because all of mainland China speaks Mandarin as a common language. Northern mainland immigrants are not the only immigrants to speak Mandarin.

Putonghua, which is official standard Mandarin, spoken in official occasions, used in acadamia, international and national politics, commerce and science, I reverted this edit because it was too POV.

and Hakka, the language of the Hakka minority, with whom the Cantonese- and Min-speaking majority (or bendi, natives) fought bloody tribal feuds during the Qing Dynasty Here, rather than reverting to the original, I deleted the part about wars/tribal feuds because it is superfluous and, in my opinion, doesn’t belong in an article on Cantonese (linguistics).

In some ways, Cantonese is a more archaic dialect than Mandarin. Okay, this edit is definitely POV. I reverted it to the prior version.

Cantonese preserved many syllable-final sounds that Mandarin has dropped or merged. In this sentence, I reverted “dropped” to keep the wording consistent with the wording used in the sentence two sentences later. And I reverted “preserved” because “preserves” sounds better in this sentence after reverting dropped.

However, Mandarin's vowel system is somewhat more traditional than Cantonese Here I reverted “traditional” back to “conservative” to make it match the wording used to describe the more “conservative” aspects of Cantonese. I’m a little annoyed that the anonymous user chose to describe Cantonese’s conservative aspects as “archaic”, yet describe Mandarin’s conservative aspects as “traditional.”

Due to the popularity of Cantonese only in certain Southern regions of China and given the officially plus internationally accepted status of Mandarin, most universities in the US do not and have not historically taught Cantonese, though the University of Hawaii is an exception. I reverted this sentence to the original version because the original version makes a point that I’d like to include in the article. But the point of the anonymous user in this sentence concerning Mandarin’s official status is valid, so I made edits to the paragraph to reflect that point more clearly than the original version.

Rather, they teach Mandarin, which is used officially by both the People's Republic of China and Republic of China, and formerly in Imperial China as the court dialect and by most of its populace in the north. I deleted the addition of "and by most of its populace in the north". Things (in this case: dialects) are made official by governing bodies, not by the populace.

However, written colloquial Cantonese does exist; it is used mostly for transcription of speech in tabloids, in some broadsheets, for some subtitles, and in other informal forms of communication in the Southern regions. I reverted this sentence because it’s obvious that written colloquial Cantonese will only be used as a form of informal communication between Cantonese speakers. And in this case, not necessarily in the "Southern regions."

Wang123 14:15, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thank Wang123 for the edits and the comprehensive explanatory note above. You did the job that I wanted to do but did not have time. I hope that the anon user can see this discussion page and understand "NPOV", the key culture of Wikipedia, and start to collaborate. -- Felix Wan 23:00, 2005 Jan 24 (UTC)

too much slant towards the "single Chinese language" view

There is too much slant towards the "single Chinese language" view right now. I read the earlier discussion. I added:

Like other major varieties of Chinese , linguists generally consider Cantonese a language in its own right, with government considering it a dialect ; both views are found among the Cantonese-speaking public (see Is Chinese a language or a family of languages? ).

Ran reverted with the comment "not true that all linguists use the same definition of "language" and "dialect". also, statement seems to suggest that the "dialect" opinion is a gov't-concocted idea for political purposes".

Erauch: changed the language on language vs. dialect. but almost no serious linguist would consider there to be a single "Chinese Language" including Cantonese:

Like other major varieties of Chinese , Cantonese is often considered a dialect of a single Chinese Language for cultural or nationalistic reasons; most linguists consider Cantonese a separate language in the sense that they use the term (see Is Chinese a language or a family of languages? ).

Ran then reverted again.

The words "most" nods towards the smaller number of linguists in mainland China that hold to the cultural rather than linguistic definition of language, and "in the sense that _they_ use the term" allows for differing definitions of "language". So this sentence belongs in the article for reasons of neutrality. If you are going to change it, do not simply revert again, but introduce a way to acknowledge the linguistic consensus (outside of some in the People's Republic where scholars are not completely independent in choosing their definition of language) that the varieties of Chinese are languages. --Erauch 17:02, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I recommend that we write something in the line of this (from zh:):
在语言学分类上国内外有分歧，中国学者多数主张将粤语归为一种汉语方言，而国外学者多数则主张将它跟官话汉语（以普通话为代表）并列划分为独立的一种语言。
The difference is ususally on the line of whether the linguist is from PRC. I hope that Ran can agree on that.
-- Felix Wan 23:13, 2005 Feb 27 (UTC)


Moving material to Standard Cantonese

All the material in Cantonese vs Mandarin, Romanization, and Written Cantonese should be moved to the page on Standard Cantonese, unless anyone objects to it. This page is supposed to be a page about all the Yue dialects, not just Standard Cantonese. The things on these sections largely apply only to Standard Cantonese. Phonetics and vocabulary for other branches like Siyi (Taishanese) are different and Cantonese romanization and characters don't apply to them. I'll wait for some replies before taking any actions.--Yuje 03:12, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Agree, however I think at least some statement on how Cantonese in general is different from Mandarin (such as syntax or phonology that apply to all the Cantonese dialects) should be left on the article. Specific examples that pertain to Standard Cantonese only should be moved to Standard Cantonese. -- Umofomia 10:21, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Agree. I have added those section titles back to the Standard Cantonese article. Go ahead to add relevant information over there first, then we can remove irrelevant information from here. -- Felix Wan 00:03, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)

By the way, consider moving "Written Cantonese", which is long enough and has potential to grow, to a new article as a parallel to zh:粵語白話文 and write a summary in both Standard Cantonese and Cantonese (linguistics). -- Felix Wan 00:11, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)

If written Cantonese will be its own article, should we consider adding it to the Template:Chinese language template as well? We should probably tidy up the article first before doing so though otherwise some objections among other wikipedians will probably arise. --Umofomia 00:19, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I agree that we should tidy up the article first. Adding it to the template is something to consider later. We may want to add information from these nice tables to the article. [2] [3] The author explicitly said to release all copyrights (in Chinese). -- Felix Wan 02:23, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)

Material to be translated

The Chinese Wikipedia article contains more specific information on the differences between different dialects and varieties in the Yue family. The information should be ported over the the English article. Unfortunately, my translating ablities are rather bad. Are there any better translaters here who can merge the information from the Chinese article with this one? --Yuje 03:12, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Let me try to do the translation while you are writing the three new sections in Standard Cantonese. -- Felix Wan 00:05, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)
I have started translating portions of the Chinese article at User:Felix Wan/Draft/Cantonese (linguistics). However, I found the information disproportional among different varieties, and I am not sure if an English speaker will be interested in so much detail. -- Felix Wan 02:27, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)
I think this is interesting enough for this article. --Erauch 03:37, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Felix: List of Chinese dialects currently has the following classification for Yue:

  • Yue Hai division
  • Siyi division (Sei-yup)
    • Enping dialect
    • Jiangmen dialect
    • Kaiping dialect
    • Taishan dialect (Toishanese)
    • Xinhui dialect
  • Gaoyang division
    • Maoming dialect
    • Yangjiang dialect
  • Guinan division
    • Beihai dialect
    • Wuzhou dialect
So as you write your translation, we should probably try to make the two pages display the same classification scheme, either by modifying the scheme in List of Chinese dialects or by modifying your translation. -- Umofomia 05:08, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
You are right. Thank you for posting the information here. I once tried to do the translation and copy-editing at the same time, but later found it too frustrating. So I decided to do a straight translation first instead. I will take care of the discrepancies when merging the content into the main article. -- Felix Wan 22:19, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)

Regarding the level of interest of a direct translation of the material in the ZH wiki -- I would be very happy to have the material in the chinese version of the wiki available in English to read. Novacatz 10:35, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Written Cantonese

Here's a draft of the article on Written Cantonese that I started: User:Yuje/drafts/Written_Cantonese. Feel free to make changees, edits, or improvements on it. It's still far from being a complete article.--Yuje 07:08, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I've finished doing a considerable writing and update on the Written Cantonese draft article. It can be found here User:Yuje/drafts/Written_Cantonese. I'd still like some review and comment on the content and structure of the article. Also, a lot of my romanizations may not be correct, and I don't know all the correct tones for the characters. Also, some of the characters are a bit hard to explain without also writing and explaining about Cantonese grammar. --Yuje 00:39, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The article structure looks pretty good after a quick cursory view. I'll have more time to look though it more thoroughly tonight. Do you mind if I make direct edits in it? --Umofomia 00:48, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Actually, I think the article is already good enough to post in the main article namespace if you want to do that. That way we can start doing more collaboration on it directly. --Umofomia 00:51, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
One more thing... If you do decide to post it in the the main article namespace, I suggest doing an article move rather than copy-paste. This way the edit history will be preserved. --Umofomia 00:52, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I can't move the page. Currently, Written Cantonese redirects to Cantonese (linguistics). I've posted a request for a move here. For now, you may make edits directly on the draft page.--Yuje 01:08, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Okay... I'm going to start reviewing the article now and make changes as I deem necessary. I'll post comments on its discussion page. --Umofomia 06:55, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Kumquat

I would like to recruit a Cantonese speaker or two to answer a simple question at Talk:Kumquat. I think there is a mistake in the article, but don't know enough Cantonese to be sure. Your help would be appreciated. — Pekinensis 21:13, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation samples needed

I've submitted Chinese language for Peer Review and there's been a request for samples of pronunciation. There's already a sample of the four tones of Standard Manddarin and we've managed to record our own samples of Standard Mandarin, Beijing dialect and Hangzhou dialect. A fourth sample in Cantonese would just about do it. If there any speakers of Cantonese with proper recording equipment, please check out the talk page for the current samples and the proposed sentence to be used.

Your help will be much appreciated. Peter Isotalo 11:04, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

I've posted a Cantonese sample there. --Umofomia 06:41, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Verb Object Subject

Is it correct to say that Cantonese is sometimes Verb Object Subject? Thanks. — Instantnood 07:32, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

I don't think so. Cantonese is still predominantly SVO like the other Chinese languages. The VOS order sometimes occurs due to dislocation because speakers have afterthoughts or because they want to emphasize something, but this is a feature in many languages, including English (i.e. "Editing Wikipedia, I am." -- of course, you end up sounding like Yoda though :D ). --Umofomia 07:50, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It happens in Mandarin too. I suspect (just a guess) that it's possible for any Chinese dialect to relocate the topic of the sentence to the back, e.g. 来了吗，他？-- ran (talk) 08:13, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

From what I recognise it's quite common for Cantonese speaker to speak in that order. Is it like there is some influence from the Baiyue, or the Austroasiatic, Hmong-Mien and Tai-Kadai languages? — Instantnood 09:32, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

This seems like a plausible phenomenon and a plausible reason, but it should have for more concrete evidence than just personal observation, since Wikipedia is supposed to be a secondary or tertiary source, and we're talking about a statistical trend rather than any kind of hard rule.
My feeling is that it is quite common in Mandarin, significantly more than in English, although both do exhibit the phenomenon. For a long time I've thought that the most beautiful sentence I've ever heard in any language, for pure sound rather than meaning, was spoken to me by a Beijing bus attendant when I failed to give exact change: "有两毛吗你?"
Pekinensis 15:23, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Even though it appears at the surface to be VOS, that does not make it VOS. It is still SVO at the deep structure level, and it's because of movement and the dropping of pronouns that the sentence appears to be VOS. I expanded the Dislocation (syntax) article to show what happens in a pro-drop language like Cantonese. --Umofomia 17:52, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Requested move User:Yuje/drafts/Written_Cantonese -> Written Cantonese

A Requested page move was posted to wikipedia:Requested move on 14 Apr 2005.

User:Yuje/drafts/Written_Cantonese -> Written Cantonese. The current page is a redirect to Cantonese (linguistics), and I want to move my draft, along with the entire history to the redirect page. --Yuje 01:05, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation and sign your vote with ~~~~
  • Support Keep the page history since more than one person has worked on the draft (so far me and Yuje, but there may be others) and we want to keep the attributions straight. In addition, this page notes: The "move page" function keeps the entire edit history of the article, before and after the move, in one place, as if the article were always named that way. So, it's preferable to use this method over just cutting text out of one article and pasting it into a new one; old revisions, notes, and attributions are harder to keep track of it you do that. --Umofomia 08:27, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Support for the same reasons as Umofomia. --Yuje 21:05, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Will the page get moved? There's been no opposition to the proposed move so far.--Yuje 11:26, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

I've moved this now. violet/riga (t) 16:26, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

As it is a move of a page from user space into the encyclopaedia, why not just cut and past it? Why do you want to keep the history of a page to date? --Philip Baird Shearer 08:17, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ethnologue Data

I wonder how reliable the Ethnologue data is. Can we rely on it as a true measure of how many speakers there are, and how did they census the population to achieve those results? Dylanwhs 07:04, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the overall reliability of the data, but at least for the Mandarin statistic (which I assume you're referring to since that was what I cited in the comment of the last edit to the article), it appears to basically match the figures listed by the World Almanac and the CIA World Factbook (see here). --Umofomia 07:58, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Confusion between Guangzhouhua and Yueyu

For four weeks, this article began by introducing Cantonese as 廣州話 (Guangzhou dialect), even though both the disambiguation at the top and the rest of the article makes it clear that the Guangzhou dialect is described elsewhere, namely, at Standard Cantonese.

Imagine if something like this had been done for Standard Mandarin. Imagine if Mandarin (linguistics) was introduced as 普通話 (Putonghua) or 北京話 (Beijing dialect). Imagine if Chinese language was introduced this way. (The Chinese language (北京話, or 中文) is the official language of China. It has 4 tones and syllables can end in a vowel, -n, or -ng. Also, final -r is a common suffix.) There would probably be an uproar, especially among Cantonese speakers, and the offending sloppiness would quickly be removed. And yet the Cantonese article is allowed to have this type of sloppiness, which is clearly unfair to the speakers of non-Guangzhou Yue dialects.

The way that I see it, the only way this can be solved is if Cantonese (linguistics) is moved to Yue (linguistics). This will help reinforce the idea that Yue is a category that includes not just Guangzhou dialect, but also the Seiyup dialects, and so forth.

-- ran (talk) 23:57, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

I've been in favor of such a view all along. It is indeed unfair to other Yue dialects, and would be as if all Wu languages were called Shanghainese. I think the misconception arrises because Cantonese is very commonly called 廣東話, and Standard Cantonese is very often simply labeled as 粵. What's confusing is that Cantonese is being used for various different definitions which differ in breadth. This is my understanding of the situation (from highest to lowest):
  • The entire grouping of all Yue dialects, some of which have low levels of mutual intelligibility (粵語?)
  • The Cantonese dialect continium (Yuehai?), which are mutually intelligible, but can vary a bit. For example, Zhongshan dialect is quite understandable, but sounds a bit different than Guangzhou (北京 bakgung instead of bakging, I think), and has some different vocabulary. This would be the language spoken in a wide region of Guangdong. (廣東語/Cantonese?)
  • The more specific standard used in media and education. The standardized form that the romanization system is based on. Media, news broadcasts, movies, and education would use this. How to explain? My analogy would be the English taught in classroms in the US. The Texan drawl is a regional variation of English, but isn't taught in education or used in dictionary pronuncation guides. For example, certain Cantonese pronuncations, as in English, are regarded as more "proper" than others, (leading to some HK pronuncations being called "lazy speech"). (Standard Cantonese?)
  • A very specific regional speech, say the language as spoken only in Canton. (廣州語?)

The English word "Cantonese" seems to be used interchangably with all the above. Maybe an explanation needs to be added to clarify that. My attempts at equating the English names with the Chinese ones are just tentative though. The English definition has never been very clear. Maybe some Siyi speakers might object to their group being excluded from Cantonese and 廣東語. --Yuje 01:08, Jun 27, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Yuje. In English the word "Cantonese" is used to things related to Guangdong, the language, the culture, etc. Although in many respects, such as culture, cuisine, language, it does not cover Hakka and Teochew, its usage is not only limited to Guangzhou, which was called Canton. In English "Cantonese" is an all encompassing term to refer to this umbrella of dialects. — Instantnood June 28, 2005 09:00 (UTC)
the term "Guangdonghua"(Guangdong dialect) is not very precise, I personally believe this term should not be use any more and clarification is needed for non-Chinese readers. Because this term is usually used to describe who you guys call "Standard Cantonese", which is only spoken in the middle part of Guangdong Province. --Eternal 17:51, 5 September 2005 (UTC)


That is not the only problem. The section on written Cantonese seems to be more applicable to Standard Cantonese, simply because Hong Kong/Macau is the locus of most Cantonese written texts. Having a section on 'written Cantonese' seems strange when, for instance, it is doubtful how much writing goes on in places like Guangxi.

I wonder if the informal description 白话 does not more closely fit the area covered by this article? After all, Guangxi speakers describe themselves as speaking 白话 even if they do not think of themselves as 'Cantonese speakers'.

Bathrobe


I don't think the term is frequently used in this regard, at least not in Hong Kong. We tend to restrict the use of "白話" to refer to the the reform of the written Chinese from "文言" (Classical Chinese?). "口語" is the term we would use, and is appropriately translated to spoken language.

Speaking of "白話" movement, there seems to be a similar undertaking in Hong Kong. Phrases that are formerly used in speech only are making their way into written materials. That is despite the resistant of some scholars.

I choose to differ in opinion. Cantonese is Guangzhou dialect not Guangdong dialect despite the term 廣東話 mentions guangdong. In Hong Kong and Canton, when people refers to 廣東話 or 粵語, they actually means 廣府話, which refers to Canton, the capital, not Guangdong the province. The English translation (Cantonese) is more accurate than the Chinese usage (廣東話) itself. It is wrong to lumps all the dialects in guangdong and label them as Cantonese. The English word "Canton" though sound more like guangdong, it actually means guangzhou, the capital, not the province. Kowloonese 22:42, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Origin of 'Canton'

This footnote appears in the article:

It is also suggested that the name Canton is derived from the Latin for "song,"

It sounds like the most unlikely thing in the world to me: if no-one else can verify it then I suggest that it be removed. Jogloran 23:27, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, this footnote is based on conjecture. More likely, the english word Canton comes from a "sound alike" translation of the Cantonese name for their homeland. (Sloman 13:30, 12 November 2005 (UTC))
Certainly needs documentation. Sounds almost impossible. --Dpr 13:44, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia in Cantonese language

Is there a Wikipedia in Cantonese? Or is there no need for a Cantonese wikipedia, as there already is zh.wikipedia.org? I heard Cantonese and Standard Mandarin have differences in grammar and word constellation, therefore it would make sense if there was a Cantonese wikipedia.

By the way, zh.wikipedia.org seems to be written with simplified characters - is there a Chinese Wikipedia that uses traditional characters?

Could someone comment on my questions? Thanks! --Abdull 20:06, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Hello Abdull. In modern times most Cantonese speakers write in modern written Chinese (báihuàwén), the modern writing standard, as a result the only Wikipedia in Chinese is using that standard. Zh.wikipedia.org can be edited with either simplified or traditional characters. Readers can choose which set of characters to be displayed, and the wiki software can, in most cases, convert automatically. — Instantnood 20:30, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
There was an unsuccessful attempt to start a Cantonese wikipedia. Please read the following articles for details:
-- Felix Wan 01:58, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Sounds interesting. By the way, I recently came across an article on zh.wikipedia.org that had a spoken version in Cantonese. — Instantnood 06:18, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Cantonese Wikipedia OUT NOW! Please visit [4] --Winkin 09:42, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Is Cantonese language replacing the Teochew language?

Is Cantonese language replacing the Teochew language and other min-nan languges in Guangdong Province? I heard that the children in Shanwei are no longer speaking their local dialect but speak a creolized form of Cantonese now. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sonic99 (talk • contribs) . 16:38, February 19, 2006 (UTC)

For your up-to-date information, Mandarin has already replaced the Shanghainese dialect. Hardly anyone speaks Shanghainese in Shanghai now. Only the older generation Shanghaineses still speak their dialect.KingL 02:34, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Cantonese versus Mandarin, 2000-year history of Cantonese?

Quote: Although Mandarin (or putonghua) is the standard and official language in mainland China, it has only been around for about 700 or 800 years, compared to the 2000-year history of Cantonese. Cantonese, not Mandarin, is the dominant language in overseas Chinese communities. This comes from the fact that, around the world, the largest flow of Chinese immigrants originates from Hong Kong.

I think this is just wrong, the Cantonese language didn't exist 2000 years ago . LDHan 12:51, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

What is correct is that Cantonese inherited much more elements from middle and ancient Chinese. Many elements of Cantonese has now been considered archaic in other spoken variants, and in the standard written language shared by all these spoken variants. — Instantnood 17:43, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
All the current Chinese dialects today developed from Old and Middle Chinese, it is inaccurate to say that Cantonese has a history of 2,000 years. All the Chinese dialects have developed and changed in different ways, Cantonese has lost some features which have been retained by other dialects from Old and Middle Chinese. So the idea that Cantonese somehow has a longer history or is more like the “original Chinese language” is linguistically and historically wrong.
Quote The standard written language shared by all these spoken variants.
The standard written language is not "shared" by all these spoken variants, all the spoken variants use one standard written language, which is based on Standard Mandarin (Putonghu/Guoyu), a standardised form of one the Mandarin dialects. LDHan 12:33, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
I'd say modern written Chinese is more influenced by modern Mandarin (sub)dialects, than the (sub)dialects of other languages/dialects; rather than modern written Chinese is based on Putonghua/Kuo-yü. There are elements from non-Mandarin (sub)dialects in modern written Chinese, and apparently no non-Mandarin Chinese speakers considers themselves to be writing in another language that they don't speak. As a matter of fact, Putonghua is, by definition, based on the grammar, syntax, etc., of modern written Chinese, and the pronunciation in the Beijing (sub)dialect. — Instantnood 16:09, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
I wrote all the spoken variants use one standard written language, actually what I meant and should have written is "all the spoken variant speakers use one standard written language".
It seems the development of modern written Chinese and Putonghua is closely related, and both are largely based on the Mandarin languages/dialects, but I think to say that modern written Chinese is more influenced by modern Mandarin dialects than other dialects is understating the facts. Whilst there are some elements from non-Mandarin languages/dialects, I think it is fair to say they are relatively minor. Although linguisticly incorrect, a common Chinese view is that written Chinese is primary and that spoken Chinese are various spoken regional/local versions of the written language. As non-Mandarin Chinese speakers read and write written Chinese with regional/local pronunciations, although it will seem very formal and different to the spoken language, they will view modern written Chinese to be just the Chinese language, understood and used by all literate Chinese. Perhaps this is similar to how Classical Chinese was used in the past. LDHan 19:12, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

The Cantonese language does have a longer history. Why do the Cantonese still use many ancient chinese words(唔, 冇, etc) in their speech? Also spoken Cantonese speaks shorter sentences than spoken Mandarin. If you disagree, then watch some Cantonese historical and contemporary drama series with Mandarin subtitles. Cantonese may have more tones than Mandarin but Cantonese speaks shorter sentences. Sonic99 23:39, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

The characters 唔 and 冇 are not necessarily ancient; I do believe, in fact, that they're Canton-created, improvised. And the larger use of single-character words doesn't indicate an older age, but a younger age. Mandarin, or Beijing dialect, uses fewer single-character words because it's evolved into fewer lexical tones, and thus greater chance of two syllables sharing pronunciation but not meaning. -spetz-68.44.195.34 23:27, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Universiities offering Cantonese courses

From the article, it says that UH, San Jose State and Brighmam Young offer Cantonese courses. Are there other univerisities? BEcause I really want to study this language, and I want a bigger range of colleges I can choose from. Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 131.216.107.15 (talk • contribs) 21:42, April 12, 2006 (UTC).

It would be quite a challenge to list ALL university/post secondary institution that offers Cantonese courses. Besides accreditation among these programs are not necessary universally recognised. So there is really no point to list them all. --Kvasir 06:49, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Yueyu/Guangdonghua

Is the language name "Yueyu" intelligible to Mandarin speakers (i.e. people from Beijing or Shanghai)? I've always referred to it as "Guangdonghua" when it's come up in conversation and everyone knows what I'm talking about. But now with this discussion of "Yueyu" (which I haven't heard used to refer to this language in conversation), I wonder if I should be using this term in conversation to more properly refer to the Cantonese language. Badagnani 16:33, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

It would be great if someone with expertise in this subject would provide me some assistance with this query. Badagnani 00:35, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Although I'm not exactly sure why myself, people tell me that "Yueyu" is the proper name for the Cantonese dialect. The only time I've ever seen it used is occasionally in reference to Cantonese cuisine and in the subtitle option of many movie DVDs. --Mewarmo990 06:42, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Please see the intro in Standard_Cantonese for the distinction between the different names of Cantonese. "Yue" is the traditional "abbreviation" for the province of Guangdong. Sounds silly that a province with a 2-character name needs an abbreviation, but like most other provinces that have abbreviated names they derived from the historical region/country name that once occupied that area. In short, Yue = Guangdong. Therefore the terms means the same thing in conversation. "Yueyu" tends to be the formal term as Mewarmo990 said, more likely to be encountered in writing. Also from my observation, one SPEAKS guangdonghua, but not yueyu. But one can USE either guangdonghua or yueyu. While it's not technically wrong to mix up the terms it just sounds awkward when it is done. Very fine distinction there. --Kvasir 06:45, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Number of speakers

The number of cantonese speakers is 100 million http://www.oclc.org/languagesets/educational/languages/asia.htm --—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.12.17.101 (talk • contribs).

That is not a reliable source, the section under "Difference between Mandarin and Cantonese" is copied from an older version of the wiki articles about Cantonese. The usual accepted number for the Yue group is 60-70 million, c. 6% of all Han speakers. LDHan 15:04, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

History of Cantonese

This section added by User:Toubunshin appears to be a mish mash of repeated old myths and stuff that appears to be made up by somebody off the top of their heads, with no references cited. Unless the relevant references can found, I think it needs to be removed or if someone can rescue it, a complete re-write. LDHan 19:18, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree - the tone is inconsistent with that of a proper encyclopedia entry, sources are not cited, there is POV in some areas, and some of is made up of unverifiable rumors. I don't think the section should be removed outright, but someone with more knowledge in this area needs to edit or completely rewrite it. I would, but my knowledge of Cantonese's history is only a little better than the previous editor's. --Mewarmo990 06:26, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Spam link removed

There are likely more of them left, but I removed the external link "A Dictionary of Cantonese Slang: The Language of Hong Kong Movies, Street Gangs and City Life" under the "Other Links" category. It was just a link to order a book. --Mewarmo990 06:26, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

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