Standard Cantonese

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Standard Cantonese is a variant of Cantonese, generally considered the prestige dialect. It is spoken natively in and around the cities of Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau in southern China. Standard Cantonese is the official Chinese spoken language of Hong Kong and Macau, and a prestige dialect and lingua franca in Guangdong province and some neighbouring areas. It is also spoken by many overseas Chinese, especially those of Cantonese descent, in Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, United States, Australia, Europe, and elsewhere. Traditionally, Cantonese was the lingua franca of overseas Chinese communities in the Western world, although that situation has changed with the increasing importance of Mandarin in the Chinese-speaking world as well as immigration from other provinces.

In popular speech, Standard Cantonese is often known simply as Cantonese, though in academic linguistics the name can also refer to the broader category to which it belongs, Cantonese language or Yuet6yue5; (TC:粵語 / SC:粤语, pinyin: Yuèyǔ). Standard Cantonese is also known as the Gwongfu wa or Government of Canton speech (Gwong2fu2 Wa2, TC: 廣府話, SC: 广府话).

Contents 1 Phonology 1.1 Initials 1.2 Finals 1.3 Tones 1.4 Current Phonological Shift 2 Romanization 3 Written Cantonese 4 Cultural role 5 Loanwords 5.1 Imported loanwords 5.2 Exported loanwords 6 Cantonese versus Mandarin 7 See also 8 External Links

Phonology

Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Like any dialect, the phonology of Standard Cantonese varies among speakers. Unlike Standard Mandarin, there is no official agency to regulate Standard Cantonese. Below is the phonology accepted by most scholars and educators, the one usually heard on TV or radio in serious broadcast like news reports. Common variations are also described.

It is interesting to note that there are about 630 different sounds formed by the combinations of initials and vowels (before tones are taken into account). Though some of them, such as e6/ei6(欸), bung6(埲), gwing1(扃) are not really used any more; and some such as gwik1/kwik1(隙) or gwaang2/gang2(梗) which has traditionally had two equally correct pronunciations are beginning to be pronounced with only one particular way uniformly by its speakers (and this usually happens because the "unused" pronunciation is almost unique to that word alone) thus making the "unused" sounds effectively disappear from the language; while some such as kwok3(擴), pui1(胚), jeoi1(錐), ge1(痂) have alternative (sometimes incorrect) pronunciations which have become mainstream (as kwon3, bui1, zeoi1 and ke2 respectively) again making some of the sounds disappear from the everyday use of the language; and yet others such as faak3(謋), fang4(揈), dap1(耷) have now become popularly (but erroneously) believed to be made-up/borrowed words to represent sounds in modern vernacular Cantonese when they have in fact been retaining that sounds before these vernacular usage became popular.

On the other hand, there are new words in Cantonese circulating in Hong Kong which uses sounds which never appeared in Cantonese before, such as get1 (note: this is non standard usage as 'et' was never an accepted/valid final for sounds in Cantonese, though the final sound 'et' has appeared in vernacular Cantonese before this, pet6 - notably in describing the unit/"measure word"(量詞) of sticky substances such as mud, glue, chewing gum etc), the sound is borrowed from the English word "gag" to mean the act of amusing others by a (possibly practical) joke.

Initials

Initials (or onsets) are initial consonants of possible syllables. The following is the inventory for Standard Cantonese as represented in IPA:

	Labials	Coronals	Sibilants	Palatals	Velars	Labial-Velars	Glottals
Unaspirated Stops	p	t	ts		k	( kw )	( ʔ )
Aspirated Stops	pʰ	tʰ	tsʰ		kʰ	( kʰw )
Nasals	m	n			ŋ
Fricatives	f		s				h
Approximants		l		( j )		( w )

Notice the aspiration contrast and the lack of phonation contrast for stops. The sibilant affricates are grouped with the stops for compactness in displaying the chart.

Some linguists prefer to analyze /j/ and /w/ as part of finals to make them analogous to the /i/ and /u/ medials in Standard Mandarin, especially in comparative phonological studies. However, since final-heads only appear with null initial, /k/ or /kʰ/, analyzing them as part of the initials greatly reduces the count of finals at the cost of only adding four initials. Some linguists analyze a /ʔ/ (glottal stop) when a vowel other than /i/, /u/ or /y/ begin a syllable.

The position of the coronals varies from dental to alveolar, with /t/ and /tʰ/ more likely to be dental. The position of the sibilants /ts/, /tsʰ/, and /s/ are usually alveolar ([ts], [tsʰ], and [s]), but can be postalveolar ([tʃ], [tʃʰ], and [ʃ]) or alveolo-palatal ([tɕ], [tɕʰ], and [ɕ]), especially before the /iː/, /ɪ/, or /yː/ vowels.

Some native speakers cannot distinguish between /n/ and /l/, and between /ŋ/ and the null initial. Usually they pronounce only /l/ and the null initial. See the discussion on phonological shift below.

Finals

Finals (or rhymes) are the remaining part of the syllable after the initial is taken off. There are two kinds of finals in Cantonese, depending on vowel length. The following chart lists all possible finals in Standard Cantonese as represented in IPA:

ɑː

ɛː

iː

ɔː

uː

œː

yː

Long

Short

Long

Short

Long

Short

Long

Short

Long

Short

Long

Short

Long

Short

-i / -y

ɑːi

ɐi

ei

ɔːi

uːi

ɵy

-u

ɑːu

ɐu

ɛːu

iːu

ou

-m

ɑːm

ɐm

ɛːm

iːm

-n

ɑːn

ɐn

iːn

ɔːn

uːn

ɵn

yːn

-ŋ

ɑːŋ

ɐŋ

ɛːŋ

ɪŋ

ɔːŋ

ʊŋ

œːŋ

-p

ɑːp

ɐp

ɛːp

iːp

-t

ɑːt

ɐt

iːn

ɔːt

uːt

ɵt

yːt

-k

ɑːk

ɐk

ɛːk

ɪk

ɔːk

ʊk

œːk

Syllabic nasals: /m̩/ /ŋ̩/

Comments to be added later, including alternative interpretion of short vowels.

Tones

Standard Cantonese has nine tones in six distinct tone contours.

Tone name	Yīn Píng (陰平)	Yīn Shàng (陰上)	Yīn Qù (陰去)	Yáng Píng (陽平)	Yáng Shàng (陽上)	Yáng Qù (陽去)	Shàng Yīn Rù (上陰入)	Zhōng Yīn Rù (中陰入)	Yáng Rù (陽入)
Contour	55 / 53	35	33	21 / 11	13	22	55	33	22
Number	1	2	3	4	5	6	7 (1)	8 (3)	9 (6)

For purposes of meters in Chinese poetry, the first and fourth tones are traditionally grouped in the "flat category" (平聲), while the rest are "oblique" (仄聲).

In Hong Kong, the first tone can be either high level or high falling without affecting the meaning of the words being spoken. Most Hong Kong speakers are in general not consciously aware of when they use and when to use high level and high falling. In Guangzhou the high falling tone is more usual.

It is interesting to note that there are not actually more tone levels in Standard Cantonese than in Standard Mandarin (three if one excludes the Cantonese low falling tone, which begins on the third level and needs somewhere to fall), only Cantonese has a more complete set of tone courses.

Standard Cantonese mostly preserves the tones in Middle Chinese in the manner shown in the chart below.

Middle Chinese		Standard Cantonese
Tone	Initial	Central Vowel	Tone Name	Tone Contour	Tone Number
Ping	V–		Yin Ping	55 / 53	1
	V+		Yang Ping	21 / 11	4
Shang	V–		Yin Shang	35	2
	V+		Yang Shang	13	5
Qu	V–		Yin Qu	33	3
	V+		Yang Qu	22	6
Ru	V–	Short	Shang Yin Ru	55	7 (1)
		Long	Zhong Yin Ru	33	8 (3)
	V+		Yang Ru	22	9 (6)

V– = voiceless initial consonant, V+ = voiced initial consonant. The voice distinction was found in Middle Chinese and has been lost in Cantonese, preserved only by tone differences.

Comments to be added later.

Current Phonological Shift

Like other languages, Cantonese is constantly undergoing sound changes, processes where more and more native speakers of a language change the pronunciations of certain sounds. In Hong Kong, younger native speakers are unable to distinguish between certain phoneme pairs and merge one sound into another. Although that is often considered as substandard and is denounced as being "lazy sounds" (懶音), it is gaining popularity and is influencing other Cantonese-speaking regions. These are the observed shifts:

• Merging of /n/ initial into /l/ initial
• Merging of /ŋ/ initial into null initial
• Merging of /kw/ and /kʰw/ initial into /k/ and /kʰ/ when followed by /ɔː/
• Merging of /ŋ/ ending into /n/ ending, eliminating contrast between these pairs of finals: /ɑːn/-/ɑːŋ/, /ɐn/-/ɐŋ/, and /ɔːn/-/ɔːŋ/.
• Merging of /k/ ending into /t/ ending analogously.
• Merging of the two syllabic nasals, /ŋ̩/ into /m̩/, eliminating contrast between 五 (five) and 唔 (not).
• Merging of some /tsʰ/ into /j/, accepting jang3 as an alternative for cang3 (撐).

Today in Hong Kong, people still make an effort to avoid those merges in serious broadcasts and in education. Older people usually do not speak like that, but the majority of the younger generation does. Following the sound changes, the name of Hong Kong's Hang Seng Bank in Jyutping romanization, hoeng1 gong2 hang4 sang1 ngan4 hong4 (香港恆生銀行), becomes hoen1 gon2 han4 san1 an4 hon4, sounding like "Hon' Kon' itchy body (han4 san1 痕身) bank". The name of the Cantonese language itself should be gwong2 dung1 waa2 ("Guangdong speech"), despite the fact that gong2 dung1 waa2 (sounding like "speak eastern speech") and gon2 dung1 waa2 (sounding like "chase away eastern speech") are overwhelmingly popular.

The shift even affects the way some Hong Kong people speak English. This is especially evident in the pronunciation of certain English names. "Nicole" becomes li col, and "Leonardo" becomes leo la do.

Prescriptivists who try to correct these "lazy sounds" often end up introducing hypercorrections. For instance, in an attempt to ensure that people continue to pronounce the initial /ŋ/, words that historically should have a null initial end up being pronounced with /ŋ/. One of the most prominent examples is the word 愛, meaning "love." Even though the correct pronunciation should be oi3 (/ɔːi/), it ends up being pronounced ngoi3 (/ŋɔːi/).

Romanization

There are several major romanization schemes for Cantonese: Barnett-Chao, Meyer-Wempe, and Yale. While they do not differ greatly, Yale is the one most commonly seen in the west today. The Hong Kong linguist Sidney Lau modified the Yale system for his popular Cantonese-as-a-second-language course, so that is another system used today by contemporary Cantonese learners. The one advocated by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) is called jyutping, which solves many of the inconsistencies and problems of the older, favored, and more familiar system of Yale Romanization, but departs considerably from it in a number of ways unfamiliar to Yale users. Some effort has been undertaken to promote jyutping, but it is too early to tell how successful it is.

However, learners may feel frustrated that most native Cantonese speakers, no matter how educated they are, really are not familiar with any romanization system. Apparently, there is no motive for local people to learn any of these systems. The romanization systems are not included in the education system neither in Hong Kong nor in Guangdong province.

Written Cantonese

Main article: Written Cantonese

Cantonese is usually referred to as a spoken dialect, and not as a written dialect. Spoken vernacular Cantonese differs from written Chinese. Written Chinese spoken word for word sounds overly formal and distant in Cantonese. As a result, the necessity of having a written script which matched the spoken verse increased over time. This resulted in the generation of additional Chinese characters to complement the existing characters. Many of these represent phonological sounds not present in Mandarin. A good source for well documented Cantonese words can be found in drama and opera (dai hay) scripts.

With the advent of the computer and standardization of character sets specifically for Cantonese, many printed materials in predominantly Cantonese spoken areas of the world are written to cater to their population with these written Cantonese characters. As a result, mainstream media such as newspapers and magazines have become progressively less conservative and more colloquial in their dissemination of ideas. Generally speaking, some of the older generation of Cantonese speakers regard this trend as a step "backwards" and away from tradition. This tension between the "old" and "new" is a reflection of a transition that is being undergone by the Cantonese speaking population.

Cultural role

The economic pre-eminence of Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangdong province, as well as its predominance in many overseas Chinese communities, has given Standard Cantonese a reach far beyond its comparatively small homeland. As the usual spoken variety of Chinese in Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese is the only Chinese variety to be used in official contexts other than Standard Mandarin, which remains the official dialect of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan; as a predominant language of the Chinese diaspora, Cantonese is also the main form of Chinese that many Westerners come into contact with. Together with Mandarin and Taiwanese, Cantonese is also one of the few Chinese spoken varieties to produce its own popular music (Cantopop). The prevalence of Cantonese popular culture has in fact spurred some Mandarin speakers to learn Cantonese, unique among the varieties of Chinese.

The contrast is especially clear with other Chinese varieties, such as Wu. Wu has more speakers than Yue (the wider Cantonese group), it is spoken in an area that is approximately equally wealthy, and Shanghainese, one of the prestige dialects of Wu, is spoken in Shanghai, arguably the economic center of Mainland China. However, Shanghainese is not used in official contexts, nor is it a usual subject of study among other Chinese people. Shanghainese does not produce its own popular music, and is virtually unknown in the West. However, spurred on by the success of Cantonese, some Wu speakers have begun to promote their home language.

Cantonese enjoys a standing slightly inferior to Mandarin but much superior to other varieties of Chinese in China. This is seen in Guangzhou where announcements in the public transport are made in both Mandarin Chinese and the local lingua franca Cantonese (though announcements in Cantonese in the metro have been cancelled). Not even Shanghainese enjoys this privilege in Shanghai, the largest and arguably the wealthiest city in China. Some teachers in the Guangdong province continue to teach in Cantonese, as most Cantonese feel affinity with their own language much more than they do Mandarin Chinese, though doing so is against the national language policy. It has even caused some dissatisfaction amongst immigrants from other provinces who usually do not speak Cantonese.

Loanwords

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

Imported loanwords

English

• 巴士 (bus)
• 的士 (taxi)
• 拜拜 (bye bye)
• 朱古力 (chocolate)
• 三文治 (sandwich)

Japanese

• 卡拉OK (カラオケ)
• 老世 (世帶主) [Usually miswritten as "老細"]
• 車長 (車掌)

Arab

• 摩囉 (Moormen)

Exported loanwords

English

• chow mein (炒麵)
• dim sum (點心)
• kung fu (功夫)
• kumquat (柑橘)
• wonton (雲吞)
• bok choy (白菜）
• kowtow (叩頭)
• typhoon (颱風／大風)

Putonghua

• 大減價 (大減價)
• 買單 (埋單)
• 搭檔 (拍檔)

Guoyue

• 無厘頭 (無厘頭)
• 亮仔/靚仔 (靚仔)
• 拍拖 (拍拖)
• 很正 (好正)

Japanese

• ヤムチャ (kanji:喫茶) (飲茶)

Cantonese versus Mandarin

The so-called "Battle between Cantonese and Mandarin" started in Hong Kong in the mid-1980s, when a large number of mainland Chinese people started crossing the border into Hong Kong during Deng Xiaoping's Reform & Opening Period. At that time, Hong Kong and Macau were still under British and Portuguese rules respectively, and Mandarin was not often heard in those territories. Businesspeople from the mainland and the colonies shared a mutual dislike and distrust of one another, and in magazines in China in the mid-1980s, they would publish polemics against the other's language - thus Cantonese became known on the mainland as "British Chinese" -and Mandarin became known as "Liu Mang Hua" - which literally means, "outlaw speak."

In Singapore, the government has had a Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC), actively promoting the use of Mandarin Chinese at the expense of Cantonese and other Chinese dialects. This was seen as a way of creating greater cohesion among the ethnic Chinese. Some believe that the Singaporean Government has gone too far in its endeavour. Some Taiwanese songs in some Taiwanese entertainment programmes have been singled out and censored. Japanese and Korean drama series are available in both languages on TV to the viewers, but Hong Kong drama series are always dubbed in Mandarin and the original Cantonese track is not available, causing the series to sound very unnatural and lose much of its flavour. Korean and Japanese have a better standing than the local dialects of Singapore itself. Up till now, television programmes from Hong Kong are dubbed into Mandarin, although now Singapore residents can watch them in the original Cantonese on cable. One offshoot of this campaign is the curious Pinyinisation of certain terms which originated from southern Chinese languages. For instance, Dim Sum is known as Dianxin in Singapore's English language media. The campaign has made most of the young Singaporeans unable to even understand Cantonese, let alone speak. The situation is very different in nearby Malaysia, where even most of the non-Cantonese speaking Chinese can understand the dialect to a certain extent (and some very proficient). A Hong Kong tourist who has been to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore once commented: "I do not feel that KL (Kuala Lumpur) is very much different from HK since I can use Cantonese extensively. But I can tell my secrets in Cantonese rather openly in Singapore since most of the Singaporeans do not even understand what I am saying." In other words Singaporeans are now quite deprived of their opportunities to learn Chinese dialects. A good news is that while most non-Cantonese Singaporeans do not speak their own dialects at home, many of the Cantonese in Singapore still speak Cantonese as their mother tongue. The SMC and its consequences are to fend off influences of dialects on Mandarin, but it has been noticed that some Singaporean Chinese do not even speak Mandarin Chinese as well as their Malaysian counterparts, who usually have a more varied vocabulary and are mostly proficient in several other dialects as well.

See also

• List of Chinese dialects
• Cantonese (linguistics)

External Links

Wikicities has a wiki about Standard Cantonese: Cantonese

• The Chinese University of Hong Kong Research Centre for Humanities Computing: Chinese Character Database: With Word-formations Phonologically Disambiguated According to the Cantonese Dialect
• Research on Cantonese, HKU

Chinese: spoken varieties
Categories:	Gan | Hakka | Hui | Jin | Mandarin | Min | Pinghua | Xiang | Wu | Yue Danzhouhua | Shaozhou Tuhua | Xianghua
Subcategories of Min:	Min Bei | Min Dong | Min Nan | Min Zhong | Pu Xian | Qiong Wen | Shao Jiang
Note: The above is only one classification scheme among many. The categories in italics are not universally acknowledged to be independent categories.
Comprehensive list of Chinese dialects
Official spoken varieties:	Standard Mandarin | Standard Cantonese
Historical phonology:	Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Proto-Min | Proto-Mandarin | Haner
Chinese: written varieties
Official written varieties:	Classical Chinese | Vernacular Chinese
Other varieties:	Written Vernacular Cantonese

Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.