Standard Cantonese
Standard Cantonese is a
variant, and is generally considered the
prestige dialect of
Cantonese Chinese. It is spoken natively in and around the cities of
Guangzhou,
Hong Kong, and
Macau in
Southern China. Standard Cantonese is the de facto official
Chinese spoken language of
Hong Kong and
Macau, and the
lingua franca of
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 (;
Jyutping:
Yuet6yue5;
Mandarin:
Yuèy"). Standard Cantonese is also known popularly as
Guangdong speech ( Jyutping:
Gwong2dong1 Wa2; Mandarin:
Guǎngdōng huà) or as the
Canton Prefecture speech (; Jyutping:
Gwong2zau1 Wa2,
Gwong2fu2 Wa2; Mandarin:
Guángf" huà).
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 formal broadcast like news reports. Common variations are also described.
There are about 630 different extant combinations of
syllable onsets (initial consonants) and
syllable rimes (remainder of the syllable), not counting tones. Some of these, such as and (欸) , (埲), (扃) are not common any more; some such as and (隙), or and (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 ("), (胚), (錐), (痂) have alternative nonstandard pronunciations which have become mainstream (as , , and respectively), again making some of the sounds disappear from the everyday use of the language; and yet others such as (謋), (揈), (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 use sounds which never appeared in Cantonese before, such as get1 (note: this is non standard usage as was never an accepted/valid final for sounds in Cantonese, though the final sound has appeared in vernacular Cantonese before this, - notably in describing the
measure word 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:
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 and as part of
finals to make them analogous to the and
medials in
Standard Mandarin, especially in comparative phonological studies. However, since final-heads only appear with
null initial, or , 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 (
glottal stop) when a
vowel other than , or begin a syllable.
The position of the
coronals varies from
dental to
alveolar, with and more likely to be dental. The position of the
sibilants , , and are usually alveolar (, , and ), but can be
postalveolar (, , and ) or
alveolo-palatal (, , and ), especially before the , , or vowels.
Some native speakers cannot distinguish between and , and between and the null initial. Usually they pronounce only 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:
| colspan=2| | | colspan=2| | | colspan=2| | | | Long | Long | Long | Long | Long | Long | Long | Short |
| - / - | | | | | | | | | |
| - | | ¹ | | | | | | | |
| - | | ¹ | | | | | | | |
| - | | | | | | | | | |
| - | | | | | | | | | | |
| - | | ¹ | | | | | | | |
| - | | | | | | | | | |
| - | | | | | | | | | | |
:Syllabic nasals: :¹Finals , and only appear in colloquial speech. They are absent from some analyses and romanization schemes.
Based on the chart above, the following central vowels pairs are usually considered to be allophones:: - , - , - , - , and - .Although that satisfies the
minimal pair requirement, some linguists find it difficult to explain why the coda affect the vowel length. They recognize the following two allophone groups instead:: - and - - .In that way, the phoneme set consists of seven long central vowels and three short central vowels that are in contrast with three of the long vowels, as presented in the following chart:
| colspan=2| | | | | | | | Long | Long | Long | Long | Long | Long | Long |
| - | - / - | | | | | | | |
| - | | | | | | | |
| - | | | | | | | |
| - | | | | | | | |
| - | | | | | | | |
| - | | | | | | | |
| - | | | | | | | |
| - | | | | | | | |
:Syllabic nasals:
Tones
Standard Cantonese has nine
tones in six distinct
tone contours.
| Tone name | Yin Ping
(陰平) | Yin Shang
(陰上) | Yin Qu
(陰去) | Yang Ping
(陽平) | Yang Shang
(陽上) | Yang Qu
(陽去) | Shang
Yin Ru
(上陰入) | Xia
Yin Ru
(下陰入) | Yang Ru
(陽入) | | Contour | 55 / 53 | 35 | 21 / 11 | 13 | 55 | 33 | 22 |
|---|
| Description | high level /
high falling | medium rising | low falling /
very low level | low rising | high level | medium level | low level |
|---|
| Number | 1 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 7 (1) | 8 (3) | 9 (6) |
|---|
| Written (Yale) | mā or mà | má | màh | máh | māk | mak | mahk |
|---|
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 | Central Vowel | Tone Name | Tone Contour | Tone Number |
| Ping | V− | | Yin Ping | 55 / 53 | 1 |
| V+ | Yang Ping | 21 / 11 | 4 |
| Shang | Yin Shang | 35 | 2 |
| V+ | Yang Shang | 13 | 5 |
| Qu | Yin Qu | 33 | 3 |
| V+ | Yang Qu | 22 | 6 |
| Ru | V− | Short | Shang Yin Ru | 55 | 7 (1) |
| Long | Xia 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.
Phonological Shifts
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.
Previous Shifts
One shift that affected Cantonese in the past was the loss of distinction between the alveolar and the alveolo-palatal (sometimes pronounced as postalveolar) sibilants, which occurred during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This distinction was documented in many Cantonese dictionaries and pronunciation guides published prior to the 1950s but is now longer distinguished in any modern Cantonese dictionary.
Publications that documented this distinction include:
* Williams, S.,
A Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect, 1856.
* Cowles, R.,
A Pocket Dictionary of Cantonese, 1914.
*
Meyer, B. and Wempe, T.,
The Student's Cantonese-English Dictionary, 3rd edition, 1947.
*
Chao, Y. Cantonese Primer, 1947.
The depalatalization of sibilants caused many words that were once distinct to sound the same. For comparison, this distinction is still made in modern Standard Mandarin, with the old alveolo-palatal sibilants in Cantonese corresponding to the
retroflex sibilants in Mandarin. For instance:
| Sibilant Category | Character | Modern Cantonese | Old Cantonese!Standard Mandarin | | Unaspirated affricate | 將 | (alveolar) | (alveolar) | (alveolo-palatal) |
| 張 | (alveolo-palatal) | (retroflex) |
| Aspirated affricate | 槍 | (alveolar) | (alveolar) | (alveolo-palatal) |
| 昌 | (alveolo-palatal) | (retroflex) |
| Fricative | 相 | (alveolar) | (alveolar) | (alveolo-palatal) |
| 傷 | (alveolo-palatal) | (retroflex) |
Even though the aforementioned references observed the distinction, most of them also noted that the depalatalization phenomenon was already occurring at the time. Williams (1856) writes::
The initials ch
and ts
are constantly confounded, and some persons are absolutely unable to detect the difference, more frequently calling the words under ts
as ch'', than contrariwise.
Cowles (1914) adds::
"s" initial may be heard for "sh" initial and vice versa.A vestige of this palatalization difference is sometimes reflected in the
romanization scheme used to romanize Cantonese names in Hong Kong. For instance, many names will be spelled with
sh even though the
"sh sound" () is no longer used to pronounce the word. Examples include the surname
石 (), which is often romanized as
Shek, and the names of places like
Sha Tin (沙"; ).
After the shift was complete, even though the alveolo-palatal sibilants were no longer distinguished, they still continue to occur in
complementary distribution with the alveolar sibilants, making the two groups of sibilants
allophones. Thus, most modern Cantonese speakers will pronounce the alveolar sibilants unless the following vowel is , , or , in which case the alveolo-palatal (or postalveolar) is pronounced.
Canton romanization attempts to reflect this phenomenon in its romanization scheme, even though most current Cantonese romanization schemes don't.
The alveolo-palatal sibilants occur in complementary distribution with the retroflex sibilants in Mandarin as well, with the alveolo-palatal sibilants only occurring before , or . However, Mandarin also retains the
medials, where and can occur, as can be seen in the examples above. Cantonese had lost its medials sometime ago in its history, reducing the ability for speakers to distinguish its sibilant initials.
Current Shifts
In modern-day Hong Kong, many 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 becoming more common and is influencing other Cantonese-speaking regions.
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.
Another popular scheme is
Standard Cantonese Pinyin Schemes, which is the only romanization system accepted by
Hong Kong Education and Manpower Bureau and
Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority. Books and studies for teachers and students in primary and secondary schools usually use this scheme. Some dictionaries for Hong Kong students may use an older system:
IPA system (free style).
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 either in Hong Kong or in Guangdong province. In practice, Hong Kong people follow a loose unnamed romanisation scheme used by the
Hong Kong Government. See
Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanisation for details.
Cantonese is usually referred to as a spoken dialect, and not as a written dialect. Spoken vernacular Cantonese differs from modern written Chinese, which is essentially formal
Standard Mandarin in written form. 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 form increased over time. This resulted in the creation 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. Written Cantonese is largely incomprehensible to non-Cantonese speakers because written Cantonese is based on spoken Cantonese which is different to Standard Mandarin in grammar and vocabulary.
With the advent of the computer and standardization of character sets specifically for Cantonese, many printed materials in predominantly Cantonese speaking 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.
China has numerous regional and local varieties of spoken Chinese, many of which are mutually unintelligible; most of these are rarely used or heard outside their native areas, and are not used in education, formal purposes, or in the media. Regional/local dialects (including Cantonese) in mainland China and Taiwan tend to be used primarily between relatives and friends in informal situations, with
Standard Mandarin being used for formal purposes, in the media, and as the language of education. Even though the majority of Cantonese speakers live in mainland China, due to the linguistic history of
Hong Kong and
Macau, as well as its use in many
overseas Chinese communities, the use of Standard Cantonese has spread from Guangdong far out of proportion to its relatively small number of speakers in China.
As the majority of Hong Kong and Macau people and/or their ancestors emigrated from Guangdong before the widespread use of
Standard Mandarin, Cantonese became 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 is the official language of both the
People's Republic of China and the
Republic of China. Also because of its use by non-Mandarin speaking Cantonese speakers overseas, Cantonese is one of the primary forms of Chinese that many Westerners come into contact with. However, the importance of Cantonese as a
lingua franca in
North America has decreased in recent years, with the advent of Mandarin.
Along with Mandarin and
Taiwanese, Cantonese is also one of the few Chinese spoken varieties which has its own popular music (
Cantopop). The prevalence of Hong Kong's popular culture has spurred some Chinese in other regions to learn Cantonese, unique among the varieties of Chinese in the sense that most Chinese who learn a non-native regional/local dialect do so as a result of long-term residence in that area.
The contrast is especially clear with other Chinese varieties, such as
Wu. Wu has more speakers than
Yue (the wider group under which Cantonese is located), 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, Shanghainese does not have a form of popular music, and is virtually unknown in the West. This is because usage of Shanghainese is discouraged by the government, and is banned in schools.
In addition, virtually all Shanghai people can speak Standard Mandarin and use Shanghainese only with other Shanghainese speakers. Therefore, Shanghainese is rarely used outside of the city. This applies to many local varieties of Chinese. Hong Kong people do not speak Standard Mandarin and continue to use Cantonese as the only spoken form of Chinese. However, spurred on by the success of Cantonese, some Wu speakers have begun to promote their
mother tongue.
Cantonese has a standing slightly inferior to Mandarin but enjoys a much superior one 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 Cantonese. Some teachers in Guangdong 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.
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 , 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 by other languages as well.
The so-called "Battle between Cantonese and Mandarin" started in Hong Kong in the mid-1980s when a large number of non-Cantonese speaking mainland Chinese people started crossing the border into Hong Kong during
Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. 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 who did not share a common language 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" - literally "outlaw speech" - in the colonies.
In
Singapore the government has had a
Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC) which seeks to actively promote the use of
Standard Mandarin Chinese instead of
Chinese dialects, such as
Hokkien (45% of the Chinese population),
Teochew (22.5%),
Cantonese (16%),
Hakka (7%) and
Hainanese. This was seen as a way of creating greater cohesion among the ethnic Chinese. In addition to positive promotion of Mandarin, the campaign also includes active attempts to dissuade people from using Chinese dialects. Mostly notably, the use of dialects in local broadcast media is banned, and access to foreign media in dialect is limited.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 on non-cable TV channels are always dubbed in Mandarin and transmitted without their original Cantonese soundtrack. Some Cantonese speakers feel the dubbing causes the series to sound very unnatural and lose much of its flavour.
An offshoot of SMC is the
Pinyinisation of certain terms which originated from southern Chinese languages. For instance,
dim sum is known as
dianxin in Singapore's English language media. Another result of SMC is that most young Singaporeans from Cantonese speaking families are unable to understand or speak Cantonese. The situation is very different in nearby Malaysia, where even most non-Cantonese speaking Chinese can understand the dialect to a certain extent through exposure to the language.
*
List of Chinese dialects*
Cantonese (linguistics)*
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*
粵語拼盤: Learning the phonetic system of Cantonese
*
http://www.cantonese.ca*
http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/*
话说粤语 on BBC.co.uk Chinese*
FSI Basic Cantonese Course Online
