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What is Cantonese?
The most publicized Chinese dialect spoken in the Chinese province of Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Aomen and parts of Hainan Island. (map). It also enjoys wide currency in Chinese communities in Malaysia, Canada, Australia and North America. Cantonese has gained by far the highest profile of all Chinese dialects thanks to the aggressive expansion of Hong Kong's entertainment industry -- kungfu movies, TV series based on ancient Chinese novels, Canto-pop, teen idols.
Official status During the British administration in Hong Kong Cantonese acquired the official status there -- in sheer contrast with any other Chinese-speaking area where, including even Singapore and Taiwan, Mandarin (Modern Standard Chinese) is the official language. Hong Kong is the only place in China where Cantonese is used as the medium of instruction in schools and universities. Even in Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) all education is implemented in Standard Chinese.
With the total world number of Cantonese speakers approximating 60 million, it comes as no surprise that Cantonese courses are offered in a number of universities around the world. A list of programs in Cantonese is maintained by the Cantonese Language Association (CLA).
Sounds and tones
Cantonese
retains many features of Ancient Chinese lost by now in Mandarin. It has fewer
initial consonants than Modern Standard Chinese but more vowels and final consonants.
Also, the nasals "m" and "ng" occur as syllables without a vowel, like in 唔閡 "m4
ngoi6" (thanks) or 五 "ng5" (five).
Tones
(pitches) are the main obstacle for foreigners when studying Cantonese. The
number of tones depends on classification: while the Yale system recognizes
only six tones (mid level,
low level, high falling, low falling, high rising, low rising) occurring in
syllables with no final consonants or with ending in m, n, y, w, ng , other
systems include also the additional three tones (high departing, mid departing,
low departing) in syllables ending in -p, -t, and -k. There is no neutral
tone (輕聲) and little tonal sandhi -- tonal alteration, like in Mandarin
你好 ni3 hao3 "hello" where the first syllable takes the 2nd tone instead of its
original 3rd because the second syllable is pronounced with the 3rd tone.
Altogether, there are more than 2,200 different syllables in Cantonese, or
almost twice as many as in Mandarin.
Cantonese grammar and usage are also distinctively
different from Mandarin.
Vernacular characters
Some characters used for writing Cantonese words do not exist in Mandarin and vice versa. Most of them represent auxiliary words or colloquial usage. One such case is 冇(mou5) "not have", in which the two horizontal lines in 有 (yau5) "have" were removed to form "not to have". While written Cantonese as it appears in official documents of SAR Hong Kong would be perfectly understandable in Beijing's corridors of power, vernacular Cantonese used in such popular Hong Kong newspapers as Apple Daily and Singtao may puzzle a Northern Chinese. This can sometimes pose problems when using Chinese word-processors that do not recognize the additional 400 Cantonese characters.
Perspective
While hardly likely to fade away as the language of daily life, Cantonese is being gradually phased out by Mandarin as the langue d`Etat in Hong Kong. Beijing's educational policy is oriented towards further proliferation of Mandarin as the standard means of communication. There is no point to lament it, since this process is an unavoidable part of any national state's evolution.
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