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A native Mandarin speaker who has never be exposed to Cantonese cannot understand Cantonese at all.
But, if a native Mandarin speaker is to be trained for merely a couple of months, he will probably understand most of Cantonese conversations. However, the prounciation is weird and most won't acquire adeqaute Cantonese speaking skill in short time.
Shanghaiese(wu dialect) is similar. If you believe Cantonese is a distinct language, there are gonna be hundreds of local languages in China.
As a Mandarin speaker, I don't speak Cantonese but I understand Cantonese news on TV simply because I kept listening to it for a while.
It is definitely NOT a different language. I will never understand Japanese that way.
A native Mandarin speaker who has never be exposed to Cantonese cannot understand Cantonese at all.
But, if a native Mandarin speaker is to be trained for merely a couple of months, he will probably understand most of Cantonese conversations. However, the prounciation is weird and most won't acquire adeqaute Cantonese speaking skill in short time.
Shanghaiese(wu dialect) is similar. If you believe Cantonese is a distinct language, there are gonna be hundreds of local languages in China.
Not true. Two months is not enough time for a native Mandarin speaker to understand Cantonese or Shanghainese. If the person were to move to Shanghai or Guangzhou/HK, and fully immerse, they could probably get the gist of a conversation after a year or so, certainly two. These dialects are mutually unintelligible with Mandarin.
Basically true, but you are overstating the case. It is not a given that a Mandarin speaker can read HK newspapers 'easily', because there are a LOT of different characters, slangs, etc. It takes time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kyh
Sorry, but I think you're the one confused here. I meant, the words used to construct sentences can be said as (almost) IDENTICAL in Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese etc. It's not merely the use of the same script, because Japanese kanji also derived their script from Chinese. I might as well say Japanese is a Chinese dialect, but truth is it is no where close to it.
It's like "I want to eat chicken." - It's as if these words are spelled the EXACT same way and constructed in a sentence in the EXACT same manner in English, German, and Dutch, but pronounced differently according to each said language. But of course in reality, in German that would be "Ich möchte Hähnchen essen" (google translated) and not "I want to eat chicken". You get what I mean?
Or take another example. “香港是（系）亚洲数一数二的经济中心，也是（系）一个繁华，东西文化合并的国际大都会。” (Hong Kong is one of Asia's premier financial centres, and is also a dynamic East-meets-West international metropolis.)
Mandarin and Cantonese speakers read it as that, write it as that, just the way they pronounce each character is different. This is definitely different from say, English and German, where both use Latin script, but the main difference lies in they each use their very own words and vocabulary to construct the sentences, and English speakers would not be able (or vaguely) to understand the German words in its written form!
And a Mandarin speaker could read and comprehend what is written in the Cantonese newspapers easily (and vice versa) not because they use the same script, but the overall structure and meanings remain the same! I'm sure a Portuguese-speaker would face some problems reading a Spanish daily even if their languages may seem similar.
I am a Mandarin speaker, and while I understand and am able to speak Cantonese and Hokkien should the need arises, I encounter no problems at all surfing/reading/understanding Cantonese (HK) websites and tabloids.
As a Mandarin speaker, I don't speak Cantonese but I understand Cantonese news on TV simply because I kept listening to it for a while. It is definitely NOT a different language. I will never understand Japanese that way.
I learned Cantonese through popular HK TVB dramas and movies too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stoutboy
Basically true, but you are overstating the case. It is not a given that a Mandarin speaker can read HK newspapers 'easily', because there are a LOT of different characters, slangs, etc. It takes time.
Yes, what I mean is, if all dialect-specific lingos and colloquialisms are taken out, and the vocabulary used is neutral without regional influences, Mandarin speakers will have no problem comprehending what is being written or printed.
Basically true, but you are overstating the case. It is not a given that a Mandarin speaker can read HK newspapers 'easily', because there are a LOT of different characters, slangs, etc. It takes time.
Depends. HK newspaper articles, are for the most part, written in standard Chinese, which can be readily understood by non-Cantonese speakers of Chinese. However, some portions of the newspaper, often direct quotes, cartoons, entertainment/gossip sections, are written in idiomatic/colloquial Cantonese, which may take some effort to learn by a Mandarin speaker. Apple Daily and Next Magazine tend to use more idiomatic Cantonese in their writing than other publications.
I am a Mandarin speaker who learned Cantonese through television, movies and just everyday conversation with my colleagues, people on the street, etc., when I moved to Hong Kong to work several years ago.
I learned Cantonese through popular HK TVB dramas and movies too.
Yes, what I mean is, if all dialect-specific lingos and colloquialisms are taken out, and the vocabulary used is neutral without regional influences, Mandarin speakers will have no problem comprehending what is being written or printed.
Totally agree - based upon my experience living in Hong Kong for 4 years.
Due to the conceptual nature of most Chinese characters, any language can be written in them, not only other Asian languages like Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, but also English and French! For example, the character "中" would be pronounced "middle/center" in English. However the grammatical structure of "English Chinese" or "French Chinese" would need to be significantly warped to fit the system of Chinese characters, so much so that English/ French speakers who haven't been trained in English Chinese or French Chinese would not be able to understand it.
It is therefore a tautology to say that because Cantonese or other Chinese "dialects" can be written in the exact same way, so much so that you can't immediately tell the origin of the writer, that these languages are dialects of the same language. Cantonese speakers have told me that their children, before going to school, CANNOT understand written Chinese in childrens' books read to them even when the characters are recited in Cantonese pronunciation. The Chinese-literate parent must always read the sentence in their heads and translate from Written Chinese (Mandarin-based) to Cantonese. This is because Written Chinese grammar differs from that of Cantonese grammar to such an extent that it is unintelligible to illiterate non-Mandarin speaking Chinese people. Don't believe me? Here's an experiment.
Go to a personal blog by a 30-something from China. Why a personal blog? Because they don't contain the complex vocabulary of a newspaper, and many of them are colloquial without being filled with teenage speak and slang. Now find someone who was either brought as a young child from Hong Kong or Singapore but raised in America, who is therefore a "heritage speaker". Now read the blog to them with the Cantonese/Hokkien pronunciations of the characters. The person will NOT understand what the blog is saying.
The only reason why Cantonese and other Chinese languages are considered "dialects" are because of political and historical sentiments, not linguistic ones.
Due to the conceptual nature of most Chinese characters, any language can be written in them, not only other Asian languages like Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, but also English and French! For example, the character "中" would be pronounced "middle/center" in English. However the grammatical structure of "English Chinese" or "French Chinese" would need to be significantly warped to fit the system of Chinese characters, so much so that English/ French speakers who haven't been trained in English Chinese or French Chinese would not be able to understand it.
It is therefore a tautology to say that because Cantonese or other Chinese "dialects" can be written in the exact same way, so much so that you can't immediately tell the origin of the writer, that these languages are dialects of the same language. Cantonese speakers have told me that their children, before going to school, CANNOT understand written Chinese in childrens' books read to them even when the characters are recited in Cantonese pronunciation. The Chinese-literate parent must always read the sentence in their heads and translate from Written Chinese (Mandarin-based) to Cantonese. This is because Written Chinese grammar differs from that of Cantonese grammar to such an extent that it is unintelligible to illiterate non-Mandarin speaking Chinese people. Don't believe me? Here's an experiment.
Go to a personal blog by a 30-something from China. Why a personal blog? Because they don't contain the complex vocabulary of a newspaper, and many of them are colloquial without being filled with teenage speak and slang. Now find someone who was either brought as a young child from Hong Kong or Singapore but raised in America, who is therefore a "heritage speaker". Now read the blog to them with the Cantonese/Hokkien pronunciations of the characters. The person will NOT understand what the blog is saying.
The only reason why Cantonese and other Chinese languages are considered "dialects" are because of political and historical sentiments, not linguistic ones.
You seem to ignore the fact that the dialects of Chinese are closely related and derive from the same ancestor language too. Mandarin and Cantonese split during Tang dynasty (1000 years ago), roughly speaking.
Yes, the pronunciations of Mandarin and Cantonese can be very different. However, there are still "mapping" rules, and if you know the rules it helps a lot.
Every dialect of Chinese has slang, but that is ONLY a memorization issue, and has nothing to do with grammar. Beijing dialect has a lot of slang not known by other Chinese too.
You seem to ignore the fact that the dialects of Chinese are closely related and derive from the same ancestor language too. Mandarin and Cantonese split during Tang dynasty (1000 years ago), roughly speaking.
Yeah and so do Russian and Polish, German and Dutch, Italian and Spanish. All of these language pairs have mapping rules, which can predict to a high degree of accuracy what a word will be in one language if you know it in the other.
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