Katana VentraIP

Cantonese

Cantonese (traditional Chinese: 廣東話; simplified Chinese: 广东话; Jyutping: gwong2 dung1 waa2; Cantonese Yale: Gwóngdùng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. It is the traditional prestige variety of the Yue Chinese group, which has over 82.4 million native speakers.[1] While the term Cantonese specifically refers to the prestige variety, it is often used to refer to the entire Yue subgroup of Chinese, including related but partially mutually intelligible varieties like Taishanese.

For other uses, see Cantonese (disambiguation).

Cantonese is viewed as a vital and inseparable part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swaths of southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as in overseas communities. In mainland China, it is the lingua franca of the province of Guangdong (being the majority language of the Pearl River Delta) and neighbouring areas such as Guangxi. It is also the dominant and co-official language of Hong Kong and Macau. Cantonese is also widely spoken among Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia (most notably in Vietnam and Malaysia, as well as in Singapore and Cambodia to a lesser extent), the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.


Although Cantonese shares much vocabulary with Mandarin and other varieties of Chinese, these Sinitic languages are not mutually intelligible, largely because of phonological differences, but also due to the differences in grammar and vocabulary. Sentence structure, in particular the verb placement, sometimes differs between the two varieties. A notable difference between Cantonese and Mandarin is how the spoken word is written; both can be recorded verbatim, but very few Cantonese speakers are knowledgeable in the full Cantonese written vocabulary, so a non-verbatim formalized written form is adopted, which is more akin to the written Standard Mandarin.[2][3] However, it is only non-verbatim with respect to vernacular Cantonese as it is possible to read Standard Chinese text verbatim in formal Cantonese, often with only slight changes in lexicon that are optional depending on the reader's choice of register.[4] This results in the situation in which a Cantonese and a Mandarin text may look similar but are pronounced differently. Conversely, written (vernacular) Cantonese is mostly used in informal settings like social media and comic books.[2][3]

Cantonese

Gwóngdùng wá

Guǎngdōnghuà

Guǎngdōnghuà

ㄍㄨㄤˇ ㄉㄨㄥ ㄏㄨㄚˋ

Kuang3-tung1-hua4

Guǎngdong-huà

Gwóngdùng wá

Gwong2 dung1 waa2

Gwóngjàu wá

Guǎngzhōuhuà

Guǎngzhōuhuà

ㄍㄨㄤˇ ㄓㄡ ㄏㄨㄚˋ

Kuang3-chou1-hua4

Guǎngjhou-huà

Gwóngjàu wá

Gwong2 zau1 waa2

Merging /ŋ/ initial into null initial

Merging /ŋ/ and /k/ codas into /n/ and /t/ codas respectively, eliminating contrast between these pairs of finals (except after /e/ and /o/): /aːn/-/aːŋ/, /aːt/-/aːk/, /ɐn/-/ɐŋ/, /ɐt/-/ɐk/, /ɔːn/-/ɔːŋ/ and /ɔːt/-/ɔːk/.

Merging the rising tones (陰上 2nd and 陽上 5th).

[83]

Cantonese grammar

Cantonese profanity

Cantonese slang

Cantonese nationalism

Languages of China

List of English words of Cantonese origin

List of varieties of Chinese

Protection of the Varieties of Chinese

Benoni, Lanctot (1867). . San Francisco: A. Roman & Company. OCLC 41220764. OL 13999723M.

Chinese and English Phrase Book: With the Chinese Pronunciation Indicated in English

Bridgman, Elijah Coleman (1841). . Macao: S. Wells Williams. OCLC 4614795. OL 6542029M.

A Chinese Chrestomathy in the Canton Dialect

Matthew, W. (1880). . Stawell: Thomas Stubbs. OL 13996959M.

The Book of a Thousand Words: Translated, Annotated and Arranged So As to Indicate the Radical Number and Pronunciation (in Mandarin and Cantonese) of Each Character in the Text

(1828). Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect: Chinese Words and Phrases. Macao: Steyn. hdl:2027/uc1.b4496041. OCLC 17203540.

Morrison, Robert

(1856). Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in The Canton Dialect. Canton: Chinese Repository. OCLC 6512080. OL 14002589M.

Williams, Samuel Wells

Zee, Eric (1991). . Illustrations of the IPA. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 21 (1): 46–48. doi:10.1017/S0025100300006058.

"Chinese (Hong Kong Cantonese)"

(in Chinese). The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

"Multi-function Chinese Character Database" 漢語多功能字庫

Cantonese-English Online Dictionary

(archived 22 May 2011)

Hong Kong Government site on the HK Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS)

Cantonese Tools

. GitHub.

粵語/廣東話參考資料 Yue References by wordshk – GitHub Pages