At least he tried, I give him that but I do recommend to watch this guy instead in which the speaker actually explains with academic terms rather than imposing his opinion on us smh th-cam.com/video/s2km_z4-1T8/w-d-xo.html
@@recuerdos2457because HK is not a country and never was. The only issue HKers are facing is the fact how brainwashed a number of them are thanks to British colonial rule. They have done the divide and conquer but the good thing is majority of HKers are not that stupid.
LOL honoured to have my "harsh" response be chosen as your example elucidating the difference between written (as well as spoken) Cantonese & Putonghua. I've made my point. Thanks for explaining it to non-Chinese viewers in detail. Nailed it. M goi saai! Great video. & your attempt at the Cantonese tongue twister & poem recital was most impressive!
west do not understand that there are so many Chinese dialects that uses the standard written char but used differently. even diu lei lou mou and gan ni na bu is the same what :P
👍👍👍 !!! 比好多住咗喺香港幾十年嘅都講得㠪 ! 最正嘅係你識睇同寫廣東話 👏👏👏 You are literally knowing the language, its history and can tell the difference between Cantonese and Putonghua ! Really appreciate you posted this video to let more non-Cantonese speakers know the beauty & value of Cantonese. Thanks you
As a native Cantonese speaker and a language lover, this is definitely one of the most favorite videos I've ever watched ! :) Thank you for making this video! 😊 Yeah, Cantonese and Mandarin are two different LANGUAGES, not "dialects". So are other Chinese languages, such as Hokkien, Hakka, Shanghainese...etc. Cantonese and Mandarin have different writing chareters, different grammars, different sentence structures, completely different pronunciations, different tones and different vocabularies, they're totally mutually unintelligible, they're distinct languages within Sinitic language family. The difference is even larger than between Romance languages.
It's just a question of what standard you use. The difference between Spanish and Portuguese is not necessarily greater than that between different dialects of Spanish, but we don't have to invent a conception like the Spanish languages. Same to Han Chinese.
Thats exactly what I just commented! Lol. They’re even more mutually unintelligible than some Romance languages are - like between Spanish and Portuguese. If Cantonese and Mandarin were dialects, which I agree - they totally aren’t, they’re both their own distinct language - then Spanish and Portuguese sure as heck are merely dialects, too. I would know, being also kind of fluent in Spanish - heck in a Lang Focus video, I hear that Portuguese speakers can actually understand Spanish better than Spanish speakers can understand Portuguese.
It also depends on where you are in China, Mandarin is a much more based upon northern dialects, southern dialects(Shanghainese) preserve different parts/similar of the middle Chinese in which Cantonese descends from, so sensitivity and understanding are different. Also, we also need to consider classical Chinese along with vernacular, and how a common grounding of administration and culture, affects this.
日头 was replaced with 太阳 in the Ming dynasty, due to the development of 入/日 expletive system which originated in the Yangste river valley, which made words unusable.
As an American growing up speaking Cantonese i can't tell you how much this video means to me. As you said in the video, I did feel the poetic intentions more in Cantonese, definitely had that a-ha moment after you read it out (similar to other poetry that utilizes some type of meter, e.g. iambic pentameter). I hope Cantonese will be preserved for future generations and not die out in my lifetime. Thank you for this video.
If you're into Anime or K-drama, you probably noticed a lot of terminologies sound more like Cantonese than Mandarin. 毒藥/毒薬 - Poison duk yeuk, canto doku yaku, jp dog yag, korean du yao, mando 滿足 - Satisfied mun juk, canto man zoku, jp man jog, korean man zu, mando 參加者 - Contestants chaam ga je - canto cham ga ja - korean can jia zhe - mando Hope this helps you appreciate Cantonese even more, as it is indeed the language that preserves our culture the most.
It's funny to hear you say that. Most of ABCs have issue speaking Cantonese in US, and you worried about the future of Cantonese dialogue in China. Cantonese has been spoken in China for many centuries and will continue for many more centuries in the future. If I were you, I would worry about ABC Cantonese speakers not being able to speak the mother tongue in US. Some white guys in US said the same thing about the dialogue would die out in the future in the late 70s. Yeah, nice try...to divide among the people?
@@wsmithe2209 A large amount of new generations in Guangzhou refuse to learn Cantonese. Cantonese will be almost completely gone in about a hundred years due to China's policies and culture, for example, if you spoke Cantonese in public there will be a bunch of kids screaming at you and demanding you speak Mandarin. Even when you walk down the streets in Hong Kong now, you will hear lots of kids speaking Mandarin.
@@Aznbomb3rAs someone who speak Teochew, some of the words are carried over to Korean and Japanese too, e.g Si-gan, ji-kan. Teochew(Min language), like Cantonese has ending consonants that modern Mandarin has removed.
Cantonese has a "cool" factor that Mandarin lacks, I dont know the language but I know a Japanese guy who learned both and he always talk abou how much he likes Cantonese.
basically the usefulness of a language is based on the number and variations of swear words one can use and apply.... Cantonese has endless supply of swear word combos in any given situation.
well most of japanese kanji are influenced by Cantonese. Take time in japanese. its jikan and in cantonese is sikan also world in japanese is seikai with cantonese being saigaai Theres many more japanese word with similar pronounciation to cantonese then mandarin which is probably why he likes cantonese more because it sounded familair
It’s so impressive that a non-Chinese fellow like yourself has such deep understanding of the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin! I totally agree with you on the analogies with the Titanic and row boat!
Being a native Cantonese speaker from HK, I appreciate the beauty of Cantonese that can’t be replace by any form of languages. Thanks for sharing such interesting information and look forward to your next video thanks!
Being a native Western Cantonese speaker near Vietnam, HK Cantonese is more like a heavily Mandarinized version of Cantonese in phonology, grammar and vocabulary
I am Vietnamese, In Vietnam There is a big Cantonese (Guangzhou) community lives in Saigon and I really appreciate your video. Btw your Mandarin and Cantonese skill is very excellent
I have been to Saigon (in mid 2000), and found people there congenial when I suddenly heard them bursting a few words in Cantonese, or even conversing completely in Cantonese. Their accent was just like one found in Canton, although their ancestors may have left the mainland China decades ago. I also like they use 唐人 not 華人 to describe themselves. Perhaps this term has been used by overseas Chinese since really Tang Dynasty?
@@recuerdos2457 before the Vietnamese Communist party took over the south part,many richer Cantonese from south vietnamese left and move to the states.
古詩果part可以參考一下何文匯教授，要欣賞唐宋古詩最好仲要識分平起或仄起，要知135不論246分明，拗句要點救，何教授都有詳盡解釋。但係作為一個外國人可以理解中文咁多已經不可思議，真係叻過唔少大學生添呀！As a 唐人 myself, I’m so appreciated for your hard work.
I am a Malaysian of Chinese ethnicity. I use English, Malay, Mandarin, Hokkine, Cantonese and Teochew on a daily basis. My ancestors are Cantonese, so I speak Cantonese at home. I can confirm that Cantonese, Hokkien/Teowchew and Mandarin are definately different languages. It is so different to translate between Cantonese to Mandarin or Hokkien and vice-versa! Great video that highlights this fact!
Lies repeated often enough became common sense. As a Cantonese schooled in Hong Kong 60-70, I brought into one written Chinese, writing in vernacular was not done, faux pas. And Cantonese is just a dialect. An uncouth provincial. Until I tried to learn PTH. BOY,was I confused! Written language would have been same as spoken mandarin, no way! The er and Zi where did that came from! Mongolian? Manchurian? Thanks for restoring my self respect.
I was born and raised in Hong Kong. I have been speaking Cantonese for my whole life. There were so many Chinese mainlanders told me that Cantonese is just a dialect of Mandarin. I was like how come? I know how to speak both, I learned poetries in Cantonese and they're totally different. I knew Cantonese is not just a dialect but I have no proof. Thank god this video just popped up in my youtube recommendations and cleared my mind. As we all know, Cantonese is dying and slowly disappearing. I am really thankful that you've done so much study on my language. This has to be my favourite video in 2022. 多謝你
It's so sad to acknowledge that cantonese is dying :( I'm a mandarin student, but ever since I've known about cantonese, I find it much more interesting Greetings from Brazil
It's the pessimism and inaction kill the language. There are still 60-100 million Canto speakers across the world. If we think it dying and do nothing then we will be one of the people making the language disappear.
When I were in Beijing, Along with People from Heilongjiang, JiangXi, Henan, Anhui can understand each other but struggle to communicate with people from the South Shanghai and HKers cantonese!! They prefer to speak English instead. Means cantonese and mandarin are Not the samne language!!
OMG, I’m so amazed you have such deep understanding in both languages. Thanks for making this beautiful clip explaining the differences precisely and clearly. 好利害！
I don't speak either language though it was incredibly satisfying to hear you talking about the differences plus having a poem to read with! I felt culturally deep, I can't even explain, haha! Nice video, Stuart!
I'm impressed finally a foreigner recognises there ARE differences between the two languages and that one language does not represent all things Chinese :) And that I'm glad you recognise that Cantonese in written format is not the same as written in Mandarin too Here's another tongue twister in Cantonese (Which is from what I remember watching a HK show & wouldn't be surprised if you knew it already) - have fun with it! :) 一蚊一隻雞，七蚊一隻龜，他話龜貴過雞，我話雞貴過龜，咁究竟龜貴過雞定係雞貴過龜?
Interestingly, when the tongue-twister poem is read in Sino-Vietnamese, which is thought as resembling Cantonese to a great extend, some rhymes don't work anymore because certain homophones in Cantonese are not in Vietnamese. The poem would be read like so in Vietnamese: "Quật cam quật cát quật kim cát Quật kê quật cốt quật quy cốt Quật hoàn kê cốt quật kim cát Quật hoàn quy cốt quật kê cốt" So in standard Sino-Vietnamese reading, the character 金 is always read as kim. This is different from Sino-Korean, where this character is read as Kim when it's the surname, but as geum (금) anywhere else, resembling the Cantonese reading. 雞 and 龜 are read as kê and quy, respectively in Vietnamese, so they don't really rhyme as in Cantonese. However, all in all, this poem seems to also work in Vietnamese as well, as it does have a nice rhythm to it when reading in Sino-Vietnamese.
雞 and 龜 were denoted in Middle Chinese as /kei/ and /kˠiuɪ/ . From Phiên Thiết Hán Việt : 今 = 居吟切 - Cư ngâm thiết = Câm (KH, THĐTĐ). Chữ trên vẫn được các cụ đồ ngày xưa đọc là Kim
RESPECT! You are Really 1 in a Million.. I grew up speaking Cantonese thanks to my dad. ( I never went to Chinese school) And to have a Gwai Low on TH-cam teaching the world about Cantonese dialect is Out of this World. Your ability to read in both Mandarin & Cantonese baffles a lot of Cantonese speaking people. Thanks for the useful info. Keep it up!!
Stuart - you are one of the rare few who can speak Cantonese practically perfect. Between Cantonese and Mandarin, Cantonese is so much harder. I know many Caucasian who can speak Mandarin very well, but no one can speak Cantonese! So kudos to you.
as a portuguese living in Macau for more than 40 years......i never study cantonese or mandarin but i speak fluent cantonese but when i try to learn mandarin its totally different, i even notice that alot of cantonese speakers or native Macau born ppl dont speak mandarin.......
For Business, I want Mandarin. For Scholarly Work, I want Cantonese, since it's a gateway to the original pronunciation of the classics. Like reading Shakespeare in OP rather than RP; completely different feel, cadence, and manner.
Cantonese is also really good as a gateway to learning other East-Asian languages like Japanese and Korean. Word - Japanese - Canto - Mandarin 國 Country - Koku/Goku - Gwok - Guo 毒藥 Poison - Doku Yaku - Duk Yeuk - Du Yao 復仇 Revenge - Fuku Shu - Fuk Sau - Fu Chou 六 Six - Roku - Luk - Liu
@@Aznbomb3r It really is. I was surprised that I am able to understand some Korean words in official statements using my Cantonese knowledge. (I've only learnt Korean alphabet before) Such as this phrase I've encountered regarding recent event (RIP victims and condolences to their loved ones): 국적 미파악 (guk-jeok mi-pa-ak), I immediately know it's 國籍 未把握 (gwok-zik mei-baa-ak) meaning “nationality unknown” in Cantonese
@@jamesw4459 Yep, that's because when Japan and Korea borrowed Chinese characters during the Sui-Tang dynasty, China's official language was southern Chinese. Mandarin as we know it today is actually heavily Mongolian influenced due to Yuan Dynasty rule, then Ming dynasty moved the capital from central China to Beijing which solidified mandarin as the new official language. Sad loss of culture to China. Both Japanese and Korean kept the consonant enders from Chinese, which mandarin lost all of. For example, the Korean language has the -P enders. 合 hab/hap, 十 sib/sip. Japanese has kept the -T enders. 突 totsu, 失 shitsu. Both have kept the -K enders. 國 goku, gug/guk 目 moku, mog/mok 學 gaku, hag/hak
@@Aznbomb3rcorrect! The “ku” from Japanese / Korea all relates to the closing sound of Cantonese “k” so it proofs that the pronunciation of Chinese word the two countries implemented must be from the similarity of Cantonese rather than Mandarin, and yes because Mandarin has less history than Cantonese (200 comparing to 2000 years) as it was a made up language for Mengs to incorporate themselves into Chinese. I hope people who only take Mandarin as Chinese not counting Cantonese and saying Cantonese is a dialect can one day realise the truth is the other way round.
@@chocoluvluv Slightly inaccurate. Mandarin has about 600-700 years of history, it's from the Yuan dynasty when Mongolians ruled China. After we booted out the Mongolians, the first Ming Emperor moved China's capital all the way to Beijing. Ming dynasty is the first time we've had recorded text of the "er" sound in mandarin, which does not exist in most east-asian languages.
Really amazed by how well you know about Cantonese and the fact that using Cantonese for ancient poetry reading is better in someway. Not many people (other than native Cantonese) will know this, really appreciate you share this information to people who don't know the language. And yes, Cantonese is not the same as Mandarin, they are two different languages.
If you dig up Cantonese poet, isnt it obvious that it would sound better in Cantonese? One can dug up an ancient poem from the north, It wouldnt rhyme so well in Cantonese either would it?
@@sportsonwheelssCantonese rhymes in older poem. Modern poem don’t rhyme but can work with mandarin. The further u go back it won’t work in mandarin but will in canto. Also canto have much older pronunciation so even if it don’t rhymes it still make more sense than mandarin by a landsid
Don't think you know what you are talking about. There are so many region that do poem back in the day. Different poet from different region will make Mandarin sounds off. @@YorgosL1
@@sportsonwheelss that cause Cantonese is ancient and mandarin is modern. U can’t never make mandarin more accurate at any point when Cantonese system is way more complex than the latter
Are you thick in the head? learn about different region use different language, or most western scholars say dialects. Nothing new or old about it. Mandarin is the current lingua franca that is all. @@YorgosL1
Could you PLEASE do a video on how many more ways to swear there are in Cantonese vs. vanilla Mandarin?? I am most proud about that as a Cantonese speaker 😂
This is absolutely amazing, thank you for this video! This is one of the aspects I like the most about the various different southern chinese languages. Even though I am learning mandarin, I am currently also self-studying southern min (in this case Taiwanese), even though Taiwanese is very difficult I am extremely fascinated with its' older elements that have been kept since ancient times! Same goes for cantonese!
@heian17 English is diffiranciate most from other Germanic languges, French is diffirinciate most from Latin. The fact Mandarin differanciate from Middle Chinese more then other varieties just indicate it is the most developed Sinitic languge. I am really sorry if I am hurt someone, I just can't keep silance I have to tell the thing which is clear to me.
I was'nt really interested in learning chinese since dramas have subtitles and i think learnin them is so difficult, just watching the complex characters is so hard but i fell in love with the cantonese language while listening to my fav actor's interview in that language i thought it sounded so cool! That got me interested in learning it!
I agree. I’m a Cantonese speaker in Malaysia and there is a lot words and feeling that you can’t express out using mandarin. Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien and etc are the language itself from different dynasty and cannot be classified as dialect. This is due to China political that makes people think that others is dialect.
I am a Cantonese speaker in Canton :), and I also speak Teochew as I come from Shantou. Cantonese, Teochew along with Hakka are dialects compare to others dialects from different provinces, though those are more close to Mandarin. It is always funny to see ppl like to talk about politics when it comes to China and think mainlanders are that mindless to be taught and lectured by the government. 收皮喇唔该你~
I am also a cantonese speaker from the mainland, and you don't speak for all of us. And also, don't you speak toishanese or something else other than actual cantonese anyway if you are from Shantou lmao.
@@rainnchen9632 Dont't be so upset buddy, I spoke for myself, I have no interest in speaking for someone who cannot tell the difference between Taishan and Shantou, Toisanese and Teochew, please rest assured. 收皮喇唔该你~
Great video! Thank you for promoting Cantonese and highlighting its unique features. It's refreshing to see Cantonese getting the recognition it deserves. Keep up the excellent work! Looking forward to more content like this.
i'm a southern vietnamese and cantonese pronounciation are just too easy for me compare to mandarin. to the point of that my friend from hongkong said when i pronounce i don't have that "foreign kind of accent" .
@@shanghainesetv3992 that's also true because before the Han people expand southward of yangtze river they call whoever in south of that river are yue (Viet) and when i was a kid all Vietnamese kid did learn about a mythical tale of Lac long quan and Au co they have 100 child 50 follow the father to mountain 50 follow follow the mother to the ocean , so now looking back at that tale it's kind of make sense ( bai yue mean 100 Viet ) they did have 100 child , and they spread out from the ocean coast ( south eastern china coastline from Shanghai to north vietnam ) and 50 mountain which mean province like guangxi , yunnan . And for some reason i believe acient Chinese language are somewhat affected by the acient Viet language at the time too.
Oh thats so cool. I live in Saigon and I'm learning southern vietnamese and I love the accent. I would like to learn one of the Chinese language too and i didnt know what to choose - Cantonese or Mandarin. After seeing this video and your comment I have no dilema anymore. Thanks!
I'm a native Canto speaker who lives in the U.S. I've always called it a dialect when explaining it to non-Canto speakers but THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for teaching me the error of my ways! Deep down, I knew there was something special about Canto that I couldn't explain, like when I try to translate HK cinema to others, but I had no idea about the history behind it. The tongue twister is the perfect example and explanation. I got a good laugh when you read it but it was such an ah-ha moment! Amazing video!
Thank you. I'm from Singapore and I my grandmother spoke Cantonese to me from day1. I love Cantonese and use it proudly all the time. Yes it is way richer than Cantonese and it has way more puns which cannot be replicated in mandarin!
I'm moved and really happy that you are explaining about the Cantonese. This video is very attractive to me as a native speaker! Much appreciated that you can distinguish and explain to the world about the difference
You have extraordinary insight and knowledge in the differences between Cantonese and Putonghua, as well as Chinese poetry and literature, as a laowai, which is so wonderful. Would be great to discuss languages with you, these topics are so interesting and full of stories.
You may find this interesting but when you read Tang poems in Vietnamese, all the classical language features are preserved too. In school in Vietnam we learnt some Tang poetry and they all sounded beautiful. We even learnt the ping ru contrasting tones. More modern Vietnamese poetry forms, for example the 六八 form, have its own contrasting rule too. When I picked up Mandarin Chinese later on, it was mind-blowing to learn that the average Chinese who only knows Putonghua is not able to appreciate these poetries like we Vietnamese did! Vietnamese Hán Việt is closer in sound to how Chinese sounded in the past.
True but Vietnamese is close however when you compare it taishanese , Hokkien and Cantonese well I think some sound are better in those language. Mandarin is a just a northern dialect that screw people perception on what real Chinese once was.
So very impressed! Thank you for teaching Cantonese as a HKer. I love my own language and would hate if it were confused as the more difficult version of Mandarin, rendering it useless to learn. Since it’s not, yknow, the main langauge spoken. Honestly, there’s so many other dialects in China it would be stupid to assume Putonghua is the standard and only important one. I’m very happy to see someone out of HK to have an interest in Cantonese! 多謝晒🥺🥺 For the record… our 繁體 , traditional writing, has so much more cultural and historical meaning than 簡體. I understand how simplifying the language would be beneficial…? But so much cultural meaning is lost and gone and it’s such a shame :( Like, the words and pronunciations used in historical poetry is closer to Cantonese than to Mandarin. Also… speaking Cantonese has enabled me to learn Japanese so much easier. LMAOO
A Cantonese is like a Dutch person that speaks Dutch but writes in German. I think where it gets confusing is that we refer to the written language as standard written Chinese. In reality, you are writing in Mandarin vernacular, which has only been the norm since 1919 actually. Prior to that, the written discourse was via literary classical Chinese. Yes, people also do write in vernacular Cantonese, but its use in written communications is limited to Hong Kong magazines and Court documents and communication online or in written letters between close friends that understand cantonese.
i mean in Hong Kong , they use standard chinese and english even before They reeturn back to China... so i dont see how the comparssion between dutch writing in german is the same to Mandarin and Cantonese
@@kaisasong1332 you are thinking way too much. It has nothing to do with Hong Kong's political status. It has to do with the everyday experience of a hong konger. You have to learn two languages in one because how you speak and how you read and write are two different languages. When you speak, you are following Cantonese grammatical rules and choices of words. When you are reading or writing, you are following Mandarin grammatical rules and Mandarin vocabulary.
No. It's more like a Swiss German speaker learning German from Germany (which actually happens as Swiss doesn't have a standard written form). Mutually unintelligible and there exists many varieties of Swiss German. Each town has their own variety or accent but are basically different names despite the "German" part of Swiss German.
@@eb.3764 No, just because two languages are considered Chinese, it does not have the same similarity with variations of German. Actually the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin is even greater than German and Dutch which I just used as an analogy. Cantonese preserves elements of Chinese that were in use 1000 years before mandarin. Chinese civilization has been around for a very long time and dialect families should be regarded as separate languages if we are to examine chinese. the other thing is that Chinese is logographic. Characters indicate meanings rather than pronunciations and can have radically different pronunciations when you compare dialectal groups.
@@alanjyu I would usually say that speaking Cantonese and reading/writing in Standard Chinese , the literal form of Mandarin, is like speaking Portuguese and reading/writing in Spanish. Or all the speakers of Romance languages (Spanish, Catalan, Metropolitan French, Canadian French, Portuguese, Italian, Sardinian, Romanian, Latin) speaking in their respective spoken language and reading/writing in Latin.
As a person with Cantonese as mother tongue and someone who researches on languages, thanks a lot for the video. Cantonese is actually an old “language”, similar to Latin, which is being faded out by Mandarin as the Chinese Communist Party chose a “dialect”, Mandarin (north eastern dialect in China) as their official language when they existed 70 years ago. Actually Cantonese can be written but most of the words are just lost.
Your deep understanding of Cantonese and the essence of the words is truly amazing. Not only do you know the language in its academic form but even the slang! Very impressive…wish there’s an easy way to learn language to that level of depth.
Not sure how I stumbled on this channel but, Wow! As a speaker-user of a few Chinese dialects myself, I'm absolutely impressed with your depth of understanding and application of the main Chinese dialects. This is hugely important because as an English-speaking host, you are going to contribute immensely to the understanding in the west of the Chinese languages , culture and history. Well done! Heck, I even pick up something new from you - that the Sanskrit-Portuguese word 'menteri' and the word 'mandarin' have the same root. Thanks.
I'd love to see a video on written Min. Whenever I can't figure out a sign in Taiwan it's because there's a Min word written in a character I've never seen before, or even written in Zhuyin Fuhao. When I ask locals they often say there is no character, but maybe it's just been forgotten over time. Other Chinese say there are no words whatsoever that have no character but I'm not sure they really know. Sometimes the same nonstandard word will be written using several different characters that sound similar. And of course everything else about Min is fascinating too. Such as its amazing diversity in its home region in the mainland plus its regional dialects in Taiwan vs Malaysia and across Southeast Asia. I believe in fact that the Min languages are so incredibly diverse that they are an example of where the binary classification of language vs dialect breaks down and part of the reason linguists don't talk about dialects but instead varieties. Basically in linguistics a dialect is defined by mutual comprehension. But in the Min languages divisions and subdivisions and sub-subdivisions can still be mutually incomprehensible.
as far as I’m aware, there’re several writing systems for Taiwanese Min, one in Han character, and few versions using romanisation. Penang Hokkien also has their own writing system based on Han characters. Perhaps you could check out Aiong Taigi.. there’s one ep where he dissects the pros and cons of different writing systems of Taiwanese Min.
& that's just SOUTHERN Min (Minnan). Eastern Min (Mindong) like what they speak in Fuzhou is a COMPLETELY different language with a completely different phonological system as well. All the southern "dialects" have no written form, because they're all simply used as everyday spoken languages, & all educated Chinese nowadays are forced to learn to write STANDARD Chinese (aka Mandarin/ Putonghua) so nobody's trained in writing in your local dialect/ language. The Taiwanese you've asked probably has NO idea what you're even asking (most Chinese have never asked themselves whether they're speaking a language or a dialect, or look into the original characters of colloquial language). Some words do have roots in Classical Chinese, but if you're a scholar or linguist you wouldn't know about it. Some words may not even be Chinese at all, probably Austronesian or Austroasiatic in origin. Most modern Chinese languages, Mandarin & Cantonese as well, descend from Middle Chinese (approx Tang dynasty era) so it's more systematic than Min, which has a layer of literary vocabulary from Middle Chinese, but a substratum of Old Chinese (Qin or even pre-Qin period!) so yes, it is very complex & fascinating. If you want to know more, "Taiwanese Grammar: A Concise Reference" by Philip T. Lin is a great book. You can read its excellent introduction on Amazon for free if you don't want to buy it LOL.
Yes. A min video would be awesome! I’m from the Philippines and I speak Hokkien. Would love to really learn more about the history of Hokkien. Also, why are there so many Korean and Japanese words that sound similar to Hokkien?
As a native Cantonese speaker who was born and raised in Hong Kong (now living abroad for decades now), I am so honored to have seen your video about Cantonese as a language (growing up, I was educated it was merely a dialect, I was too naive to have believed it.). My Mandarin still sucks and so I so appreciate how well you know these languages. I did notice you had mispronounced a few words, especially in the tones, but overall you did very well, and your understanding of the history and the linguistic aspect of the language have greatly made up for it. Ironically, even though I am a native speaker, I cannot explain or point out the tones as I was never taught formally about its form! Thanks for the video and again, on behalf of all the native speakers, I am so honored. I hope the language will not die too soon as it is our culture and identity. Thanks!
When Japan and Korea borrowed Chinese characters during sui-tang dynasty, they also borrowed the pronunciations, so we can compare them and see which language is closest to middle Chinese. 國/国 gwok, canto goku/koku, jp gug, korean guo, mando 復仇 fuk sau, canto fuku shu, jp bog su, korean fu qiu, mando 毒藥/毒薬 duk yeuk, canto doku yaku, jp dog yag, korean du yao, mando 滿足 mun juk, canto man zoku, jp man jog, korean man zu, mando 目 muk, canto moku, jp mog, korean mu, mando Hopefully this will further help you in loving and respecting your own language, it is NOT inferior to Mandarin. Cantonese 有過之而無不及!
Cantonese indeed is a dialect, like Hokkien, Hainan, Teochew, Foochow etc. Mandarin is the official written and spoken Chinese language. The written Mandarin form can also be read in the other dialects mentioned.
@@scalarnai That's not the English definition of 'dialect'. As long as the two languages are mutually unintelligible, then it is a language and not a dialect.
@@scalarnai Once again, the problem most people have with the word dialect is that it's an inaccurate translation of "fang yan", which should have been translated as regional language.
I highly appreciate your effort in summarizing hundreds of papers in such an amazing video. I hope someday you can take a look on the Min group in Sinitic family and make a video about it. I believe it will be more wonderful as the group of Min should be even older than both Cantonese and Mandarin. :))
Southern Min has RETAINED a lot of older elements of Chinese, but no modern Chinese language is "older" than the other. Mandarin has kept retroflex consonants, Cantonese has kept the final consonants, & Min has retained voiced consonants as well as a lot of elements from pre-Qin Old Chinese. But no single modern Chinese language/ dialect that evolved organically can claim to be older than the rest. Shanghainese is younger as it was a small fishing village before it became a modern metropolis & people from waaaaay older urban areas around that region (Ningpo/ Suzhou/ Wuxi/ Zhenjiang... all these cities have 2000 yrs of history) went there & their languages blended together to form Shanghainese. & yes, Putonghua IS the youngest Chinese dialect, because it did not evolve organically but was chosen & crafted by a panel of people to be the "standard" national language of China in the 40s.
@@StuartJayRaj Looking forward to the Min video! I speak Mandarin and HK Cantonese but never quite learned the Taiwanese Hokkien (Min) that my grandparents speak. To know it predates Middle Chinese is so interesting to me! Love the cadence of it… I just can’t grasp some of the consonants and vowels… thanks for a great video and cheers!
To you goes the laurel for your expertise in Cantonese. Your knowledge surpasses native speakers for sure and the way you explained it so well was truly impressive! I liked the tongue twisting too!
It wasn't written for the Cantonese tongue spoken in southern China today. It just so happens that Cantonese preserves the phonological system represented in the rhyming guide called qieyun that was used to help poets find characters to produce rhyming lines of poetry. It's kind of like William shakespeare. If you read William Shakespeare using standard British English there are certain rhymes that are lost but are preserved in OP or original pronunciation or Shakespeare's English.
@@xiwang9560 Perhaps it's because Mandirin wasn't invented when the poems were made? Cantonese: ~200AD and widely spoken Mandirin: 1638AD as administrative languages (the latin of china)
@@xiwang9560even when it does not fit but canto is still win by a landside because Cantonese pronunciation is a lot older than mandarin even when it does not rhymes. It’s a much older language why wouldn’t it ? the pronunciation is quite far off. If you were to pronounce 月 = yue. This sound doesn’t sound good in mandarin. In Cantonese is 月 = jhyut. this will give you a clue on what is closer to old Chinese when reading poem.
@@The_Chicken_One modern mandarin and modern cantonese are both the children of anceint Chinese, and cantonese has part of it from the locals. They chose 2 different paths, which makes them both somehow similar and not similar to ancient Chinese. Meanwhile, none of them are the same, or even close to ancient Chinese. There is a famous poem called 锄禾 the last charater of line 1, 3 and 4 are 午土苦. In modern mandarin pinyin, they are wu3, tu3, and ku3. In modern cantonese, they are ng5, tou2, and fu2. Obviously, this poem written by Li Shen (772AD-846AD) does not rhyme in modern cantonese while modern mandarin works fine. during Tang dynasty when Li Shen alived, the word ox/cow was pronounced as "ngiu". In modern mandarin, it's "niu". The "iu" part got kept. In modern cantonese, it's "ngau". The "ng" part got kept. Hope you got the idea.
31:26 I also agree with learners of mandarin to understand how chinese works because Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese borrowed words are based off of Chinese that’s older than mandarin. Borrowed sino words sometimes have their p,t,k endings preserved.
Dude, you’re amazing! I’m Chinese from the Philippines and I speak Hokkien. I agree. The different types of Chinese are definitely languages. Not dialects. If China was not unified and these southern provinces were independent countries, they would be classified as languages like the Romance languages.
Being someone who speaks both cantonese and mandarin... I think you as a foreigner for the Chinese language, you know the language much more in details than most of us Asians. Isn't it funny? Good job! You explained it very well and I think anybody will be able to learn something from you!
If weren't for HK drama industry sucking nowadays and the dominance of mainland Mandarin period dramas, I would really much want to see a serious Tang dynasty period movie or drama using Cantonese. I'm not talking about dubbing it Cantonese or those silly humorous TVB ones either.
I really appreciate the effort that you have been putting on learning Cantonese as your second langage and the thoroughly analysis of the differece between Madarin and Cantonese. Moreover, I find that your spoken English is very clear and easy to follow. I can catch 90% of what your saying without English subtitle while I can hardly undersand what the people said in US. They seem speaking in different kinds of English. Just like Mandarin and Contonese.
This is great ! I'm learning Mandarin as a background for my Herbal research work. I'd wanted to learn Cantonese (there were a good number of top herbalists that emigrated to California and Oregon in the old days), the poetic beauty of it's sounds is so obvious. But God help us nobody is ever going to learn even broken Cantonese from the wretched books and recordings out there. It's hopeless. Ever tried reading a description of the Cantonese tones, let alone learning them ? So for self learners, Mandarin has enormous resources, both written and audio, even though Cantonese wins by far, on sheer beauty and, if this video is right, quite possibly on a lot more than that. I keep getting that odd feeling, as I progress in Mandarin, that it is Cantonese, somehow, that is the REAL Chinese !!!
Wow ~ this is the first time I watch your video , your Cantonese really amaze ! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 thank you for making interesting videos promoting such a beautiful language 🙏🏻
I’m guessing that 叉 in modern HK Cantonese represents the symbol X which censors whatever expletive you could have used as the X is often used in printed materials in the same way. The X as a symbol is known as a 交叉.
Yes, that is its fascinating bicultural etymology. But it became a minor expletive in spoken Cantonese, like "heck" for "hell" or "frick" for "fūck". So this spoken Hong Kong Cantonese slang word has roots in the English written language!
Being a native chaozhounese, southern min language. I always find mandarin to be so different from chaozhounese. N reading the last story of this, i found out that even cantonese say 日頭 as a sun, the same as my language. Ur video is fascinating, so detail. Keep it up
It's sad that you use Mandarin pinyin to call your own language. It has an official name called Teochow or something. Look it up. There are a lot of Thai and Malaysian speaking it and if you refer to it using "Chaozhounese", nobody's gonna understand you.
So happy you make it really clear that the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin. I just want to note one thing, 不學詩,無以言 is talking about 經, is a collection book of different "country song" and "national anthem" like song, the last edition is done by the Confucius himself. It don't have much connection with Tong poetry. I mean Tong poetry has clearly succeed some elements from , but I want to emphasize is 不學詩,無以言, "詩" here is talking about 經 exclusively, nothing else
I'm glad I did click the video and you immediately hooked me with that tongue twister I've never heard before which is why I kept replaying that part several times before continuing the video.😆 Therefore a like and a sub from a Canto speaker 👍😁
Nothing beats the hilarity of Cantonese slang that gets completely lost in translation 🤣 It's why classic "mo lei tau" Stephen Chow movies are such classic comedy.
You are just amazing. The most difficult Cantonese few sentences which you managed very well. Blow my mind. I always think there are no westerners would like to learn Cantonese as it is rather difficult, no clear grammar and no that systematic to learn. But Cantonese is fun and alive.
@@dementedmindstate7063 I am an native speaker so not know much. However, I saw this lady who is American and learning great and teaching Cantonese as well. th-cam.com/video/WPtQSrnniy0/w-d-xo.html
What you said is also a slap in the face to some comments I saw left in your previous clips. They alluded that Cantonese is vulgar and can’t compare to Mandarin which is more refined or culturally more superior. If I remember correctly, there was also a comment (from someone who claimed to be some kind of linguistic expert) saying that if Mandarin (ie not Cantonese) were spoken in Guangdong in the distant past, would you still say that Cantonese is more classical that Mandarin? But the truth is the Northern Mandarin never got the chance to beat Cantonese and gain a upper hand as the lingua franca there. Even if it were spoken there, because Mandarin lacks all the elements of old Chinese (as you vividly presented in this clip), it is no match to Cantonese (or Hakka or Min) when it comes to proximity to the past.
Hi Stuart. I'm a native Cantonese in HK. First time listened to your teaching and sharing. I must say you're a very excellent, scholastic polyglot knowing so many languages in Far East Asia! And in the latter part of your video your correlation of Cantonese / Yue to Viet and Thai really does remind me of the geo-political influence and cultural mix among these 3 places way back in Qing Dynasty or even Zhou Dynasty (before 200BC). At that time these areas were collectively called 百越/粵 Hundreds of Yue, so the similarity of those word-additives you find in Cantonese, Viet and Thai might date back then.
Wow. Your scholarly knowledge is exquisite. You probably know more about Chinese than the vast majority of native Chinese speakers (of any dialect/language). You truly appreciate the Chinese language in all its forms; that you weren't exposed to them as a child makes you supremely impressive.
Absolutely brilliant video ! I almost didn't click on it, but I'm so glad I did. Much deeper than every other Canto vs Mando video I've watched. More videos like this one please !
OMG , Thanks Stuart. I am a Cantonese speaker and I'm seeing the beauty of this Tang poetry for the first time. Cleary this Tang poet was brilliant for alternating sentences with entering tones between those without entering tones. Sadly, this is all lost in Mandarin and the speakers of the Mandarin will never see the subtle beauty of those verses. FYI, I also understand a bit of the Minnan aka Hokkien 'dialect'' and I tried reading the poetry in Hokkien and like Cantonese (though I have not completely grasped the full extent of the Min pronunciation), they have retained a lot of entering tones as well. In fact, the Hokkien dialect has preserved more archaic pronunciations of certain chinese words. Take for example, instead of calling the stomach 肚子 as in standard Mandarin they use a more archaic form called 腹肚. (fu'du in Mandarin) And it's pronounced as 'bak daw/ do'h' , where in ancient chinese there is no 'f' consonant. In place of the f consonants in ancient Chinese were the 'b' or 'p'. Thanks for this video, Stuart.
But I have seen a Mandarin advocate picked an ancient poem without any entering tones to argue that Mandarin sounds are as classical as those spoken by our distant ancestors. Haha…. What a tactic!
Btw, my Taiwanese friend told me the Min/Minan/Fujian language/regional "dialect" was the language used during the Tang Dynasty. I have no means to verify its validity or otherwise.
@@frankyong2607 if one were to say that the minnan/ taiwanese/ Hokkien "regional speech" inherited or retained some aspects of Tang dynasty spoken Chinese, that could still be acceptable, just like all the other southern Chinese dialects. But to assert that minnan/ hokkien dialect was the Tang dynasty speech, that would be quite a stretch. None of our modern dialects are the exact speech of Tang vernacular. They have all evolved over the centuries. So all that talk about the Hokkien/ minnan dialect being the actual Tang dynasty spoken language doesn't hold water.
@@frankyong2607 technically Min is thought to derive directly from Old Chinese (Qin era and earlier), whereas Middle Chinese was the spoken vernacular for much of China during and after the Han. Min and Middle Chinese are different, so it seems unlikely that Min was the lingua franca of the Tang dynasty
@@Rollersox thanks so much for the explication. I'm a novice on Chinese linguistics - I speak Cantonese (my mother tongue) and Putonghua as a second/third language. Therefore I wonder the current thinking on the lingua franca used in the Tang Dynasty/court as High Tang was influential and eclectic opened to western Iranian culture and even Japan dispatched official learning missions to Changan.
Really impressed and well said and explained 🎉 as a Cantonese speaker, the history of it was very fascinating indeed and I learned a lot from this! Well done 😊 A side note is that people used to do subtitles for Hong Kong dramas in the actual language in direct spoken form, which is awesome for people learning Cantonese, nowadays, the attempt to turn Cantonese into a dialect has resulted in subtitles not correctly translated from the spoken words, it is really sad. We’re gradually being made obsolete, and one day no one other than linguists will be able to understand the ancient texts as they are written in traditional Chinese and not the newly made ‘simplified’ (lazy) Chinese 😅
My mother tongue is Mandarin but my family had migrated from Guangzhou generations back, and knowing both languages, I totally agree that Cantonese is so much more beautiful, especially when reading poems and ancient texts. I love, love, love reading text written in Cantonese and all the characters which are only available in Cantonese script. The sounds of it is much to my ears too (even the cursing lol). Thanks for this video! I'm learning Thai now and the video opened my eyes to its similarities with Cantonese!
I had no idea that oranges/tangerines were pronounced the same as in korean. This also made me realize "oh yeah... it does sound like gold" what a discovery~ 귤감 is specifically the word I was thinking of in case you were wondering
but the hanja for 귤 is 橘 right? although both 橘 and 桔 means tangerine/mandarin and pronounced the same as jǘ.. i’m still confused why do they need different characters for the same thing after so many years 🙈
@@CeliaGoh Because 橘 has too many strokes? 桔 is a simplified form. Also the pronunciation has simplified as well. 橘 is [kwat] but 桔 is [kat]. I guess [kat] is a lazy example but if it's been done for centuries, it's now standard LOL.
@@Jumpoablehmm，now that you mentioned, i feel that both pronunciations are actually retained for 桔.. [kwat] in 金桔; [kat] in 桔仔.. around my area, there are differences between 橘 and 桔.. 橘 is interchangeable with 柑 and 桔 refers to the smaller ones like kamquat or calamansi.. but in the greater chinese area, i feel both words refer to the same thing, which confused the crap out of me 😂🙈🙈
@@Jumpoable hahahaha, true that.. I always find it hard to explain what calamansi is to my friends in the greater chinese area 🤐🤐 but it's fun to see how the same language changes with region and culture..
Hainan island has their own hainanese language too 😅. Being a Malaysian Chinese of southern Min, mum is of hainanese and paternal grandma is Hakka while born and bred in Kuala Lumpur which speaks Cantonese. Hence these languages do come in our daily mode of communication here 😅including mandarin, English and Malay
Shanghai is 吳越 Ngo Viet/ Wuyue. 百越 call also be latinized as Bach Viet in Vietnamese and of course Bach Viet includes regions from Shanghai to Hanoi, including Tai-Kadai language speakers, Austronesian speakers, Hmong-Mien speakers and Austroasiatic speakers etc.
WuYue and Bai-Yue, based on modern studies, is now thought to be Austronesian and Kra-Dai. The recorded language of Wu-Yue was deciphered and show relations to Kra-Dai. Kra-Dai was spoken from Yangtze River Delta down to the Red River Delta.
@@shanghainesetv3992 correct. Bai-yue meanings many Yue people; Nothing to do with modern day Vietnamese ancestors. Vietnamese (south of viet) is on the southern most frontier of yue. Chinese documented bai-yue correctly, it was austronesian and Kra-dai tribes. Austroasiatic is bai-pu very different not the same people. I just want to make it clear the modern trent amongst academia yue/bai-yue is Kra-Dai/Austronesian not Vietic/Mon-Khmer
@@shanghainesetv3992 yes hundreds of Kra-Dai/Austronesian tribes from Yangtze River delta down to Red River Delta. It’s not a mistake the Chinese documented correctly. Wu-Yue during warring states is now known to be a Kra-Dai/Austronesian language.
I like how you hint of the connections between Cantonese and Southeast Asian languages, as if it were part of a sprachbund. I remember reading somewhere that the "bong ngo sau", "bong keui sau" (he helped him) could represent some non-Chinese influence. I feel bad now for living in Guangzhou and only learning conversational Mandarin. And while I heard people tell me that Cantonese was a more archaic version of Chinese, you're presenting a much more interesting picture. It not only represents older Chinese but a possible ancient intermixture with other language families. You are a true scholar.
Thank you. Very impressive. I am Cantonese and I speak Mandarin and Thai. Didnt know that Thai and Cantonese are similar. I learned Thai by translating with Mandarin (instead of English). Should have learned Thai with Cantonese. Make more sense instead.
The story I read somewhere was that Mandarin was easier than Cantonese and hence it was decided, even though 孙中山, the first China president, himself spoke Cantonese.
Hi, thanks for making a video for Cantonese! As a Cantonese speaker from Hong Kong, I feel glad that someone who's first language is not Cantonese realizes that Cantonese is a different language from Mandarin. Although it is similar but it's still different. I think you did mention a bit of that, but I just want to clarify for those whose first language is not Cantonese. The written Cantonese in this video is the written form of spoken Cantonese. However, it is consider as an informal written language. It was not what we will use for schools, documents, news papers or in typical novels. Although it was more common nowadays (some novels were written in spoken Cantonese), we never learn how to WRITE Cantonese in schools. For example, we learn how to write 我們很開心 instead of 我哋好開心. To be honest, the formal written Cantonese we learn to write in schools are quite different from what we speak every day in terms of vocabularies and wordings. Therefore, quite a number of elementary students struggle with writing in formal Chinese. I can't really think of an accurate example now cause my formal written skill in Chinese also sucks. As a result, lots of schools in Hong Kong started using Mandarin as their main language for Chinese lessons so that kids can write things more formally. I agree that learning Mandarin can help writing formal Chinese but it is quite sad that those kids in Hong Kong were not using Cantonese, which was Hong Kong's official language in their Chinese lessons. Something else to add on, Hong Kong Cantonese speakers(in my, my family and my friends experiences), never learn the "pinyin" in Cantonese. It was not taught in school nor by family. Learning how to pronounce Cantonese through memorizing them naturally from past experience is the way most Cantonese natives do. Just like what native English speakers did instead of learning phonics. This is quite different from Mandarin speakers since they all learn "pinyin". There all are just my personal opinion, thanks for reading and please ignore my grammar mistakes if it occurs
Native English speakers in Australia also learns English phonics in early years to help them learn how to read. I wish we did learn Cantonese "ping yin" growing up, would make typing Chinese so much easier ...I'm learning the Mandarin ping yin with my kids who are learning Mandarin now
The poem is written in cantonese, so, of course, doesn't sound great in mandarin. It's not due to the entering tone, but due to the fact in cantonese, it plays with words and tones sounding the same and playing with the fact tones change meanings. If you translate french historical poetry to english, you may need to alter it to give a similar feel, as it gives in french, or you might just directly translate.
You preach! Applaud! No words can express how moved I am to learn that there is some one on earth not born a Hongkongese able to deconstruct my mother language as brilliantly as you did, I am honestly moved and having tears streaming down my face as I worried so much that there won't be a "next generation" of my kind.
All the best. Cantonese language has more different tones than Mandarin/Putonghua/Standard Chinese apparently 9 to 4. Cantopop i.e. Hong Kong Cantonese popular songs are as strong and vibrant as ever.
If you do learn Cantonese, it'll also open up a fun gateway to Japanese and Korean as they share many pronunciations. Also, Cantonese is a singing language, it has 6 tones of which 4 are flat tones meaning the only way to differentiate them is by the high and low pitches.
Cantonese and Mandarin are two different languages. In spoken form everyone agrees they are different. In written form, Cantonese and Mandarin are different. However, Cantonese speakers were taught to write Mandarin in schools in the past. Nowadays, most HK and Macau Cantonese speakers write in Cantonese more often than Mandarin, because this is the most natural way to write our mother tongue. Thank you so much for helping reveal the truth
And in the age of social media, writing in Cantonese is on the rise which is a good sign of revival or perseverance of written Cantonese. If we chit-chat or write comments in Facebook or TH-cam in standardised written Chinese, they will all look formal and out of place, just like sitting for an exam or writing a letter to your grandpa. But we write colloquially, the tone is right for the occasion. I have also seen people from Hong Kong left comments in written Cantonese in a blog originating from Taiwan. Taiwanese may understand some, but not all of what is written. To be respectful, I will write in standardised Chinese which can be understood by all 華人
I personally believe Cantonese and Mandarin are separate languages. I like to think of it as how Portuguese and Spanish are their own languages despite being leagues more similar than Cantonese and Mandarin are. Spanish and Portuguese share way more in common, meanwhile only certain, sparsely-found phrases are shared between Cantonese and mandarin like 只不過，albeit pronounced slightly differently (canto: zi2 bat1 gwo3 | mando: zhi3 bu guo2). On the flip side, there are also a lot of words and phrases that just use totally different characters like Cantonese using 係 and Mandarin using 是. Lastly, I feel like people that don’t really have any familiarity with the differences between the two languages fail to understand that using the same writing system doesn’t equate to being the same language. Although Cantonese and Mandarin use the same script, they’re both their own distinct languages. This is like how Spanish and Portuguese, despite being extremely similar in a lot of ways as well as sharing the Latin script as their main writing system, are still considered different languages from one another in their own right.
超勁～～講解得好清晰！ 學到野🤣～ Impressive!! You even share something that I really didn’t know, I am Cantonese speaker though… I quite like your idea using the metaphor of European languages to describe the relation between Cantonese and Mandarin. Honestly, it ‘s really hard to differentiate from these two languages for people who don’t know Chinese at all. Thank you for your sharing and I really appreciate it!
Although you gave an interesting example for poem. I think a much more accessible and well known poem example is 靜夜詩 by Li Bai. 床前明月光, 疑是地上霜 舉頭望明月, 低頭思故鄉 The poem consists of two lines of two phrases each. In Cantonese, the last characters of the two lines (霜 and 鄉), rhyme and that's it. But in Mandarin, the last characters in three phrases rhyme (光，霜，and 鄉). But actually, if you look closely it is actually the first and second phrases that rhyme (光 and 霜) in Mandarin and the last character of the poem doesn't actually rhyme. As a result, Mandarin speakers learn that there's an AABA rhyme scheme which is weird and asymmetric if you ask me (also mentioned in the Wikipedia article for this poem, which I think is incorrect). And really in Mandarin this would be a AABa rhyme scheme or something. So they unfortunately teach the wrong thing in school to fit Mandarin when these poems make more sense in Cantonese where it's clear what the rhyme scheme is and is symmetrical. This is only one of many examples you can find where Cantonese fits the poems better. After all there are hundreds of famous Tang dynasty poems.
Thanks for posting. Our parents spoke Hoisan dialect. Cantonese sounds a little bit harsher but a slight similar. Also I remember mom reading the characters in Hoisan pronunciation and I could barely understand her.
Thank you for appreciating Cantonese, i really love your analogy of the boat and titanic LOL I am a teochew but i love cantonese and i could not articulate it well but the same sentence expressed in cantonese just appear to carry a lot of meaning and the appropriate sound that expresses what it means for me.
見到有人咁認真研究廣東話，真係好感動。作為香港人，真係好擔心廣東話喺不久嘅將來唔再存在，因為粵語係中國文化嘅核心。
Definitely
扯吧，一群人想论证古诗用粤语念更优美，结果韵都不对
@@dodo-eu6ox 證據呢？
@@5gjmlch9 视频里哪怕他把普通话逻辑重音声调几乎全念错，还是能听出来粤语版某几个音比如忽格外的突兀呢。带出入音的方言可不只是粤语，然而粤语念古诗因为不符合粤语语言习惯突兀的音最多
@@dodo-eu6ox 當然是不對呀,中國古代講的語言跟我們現代的不一樣呀,但是那種語言跟廣東話很相似,所以讀起來才押韻。反而普通話就一點都不像
Being a native HK Cantonese, I am totally surprised that you could understand the beauty of my mother tongue…. You are 👍
This guy is exceptional
At least he tried, I give him that but I do recommend to watch this guy instead in which the speaker actually explains with academic terms rather than imposing his opinion on us smh
th-cam.com/video/s2km_z4-1T8/w-d-xo.html
Hong Kong is just a very small island, never a country. Have you ever see the full picture of the whole world?
What are you trying to say if HongKong is not a country??? It seems you re narrow minded big time🤔
@@recuerdos2457because HK is not a country and never was. The only issue HKers are facing is the fact how brainwashed a number of them are thanks to British colonial rule. They have done the divide and conquer but the good thing is majority of HKers are not that stupid.
LOL honoured to have my "harsh" response be chosen as your example elucidating the difference between written (as well as spoken) Cantonese & Putonghua. I've made my point. Thanks for explaining it to non-Chinese viewers in detail. Nailed it. M goi saai!
Great video. & your attempt at the Cantonese tongue twister & poem recital was most impressive!
唔該嗮
Oh my God am glad I came across video and as an asian of chinese descent and also able to speak the 2 chinese its so much fun to watch
west do not understand that there are so many Chinese dialects that uses the standard written char but used differently. even diu lei lou mou and gan ni na bu is the same what :P
講埋曬D粗口，失禮人吖！
@@andrewy2662 咁先夠地道丫
你對廣東話和中國歷史的認識真系“西非利”。肯定很多廣東人，香港人同海外廣東話唐人都唔知道竟然會有一個外國人對廣東話有咁深厚的功力。佩服，“你好逕”.😊
鬼佬磨賓卅～西𨳊利😂
勁？靚？
佬细，伱啲粤语真系唔九正。
@@WardenHello ...."你"...up乜9...🤣
👍👍👍 !!! 比好多住咗喺香港幾十年嘅都講得㠪 ! 最正嘅係你識睇同寫廣東話 👏👏👏
You are literally knowing the language, its history and can tell the difference between Cantonese and Putonghua !
Really appreciate you posted this video to let more non-Cantonese speakers know the beauty & value of Cantonese. Thanks you
Actual... it's Cantonese and Putonghua/Kuo Yu
As a native Cantonese speaker and a language lover, this is definitely one of the most favorite videos I've ever watched ! :) Thank you for making this video! 😊
Yeah, Cantonese and Mandarin are two different LANGUAGES, not "dialects". So are other Chinese languages, such as Hokkien, Hakka, Shanghainese...etc. Cantonese and Mandarin have different writing chareters, different grammars, different sentence structures, completely different pronunciations, different tones and different vocabularies, they're totally mutually unintelligible, they're distinct languages within Sinitic language family. The difference is even larger than between Romance languages.
It's just a question of what standard you use. The difference between Spanish and Portuguese is not necessarily greater than that between different dialects of Spanish, but we don't have to invent a conception like the Spanish languages. Same to Han Chinese.
Thats exactly what I just commented! Lol. They’re even more mutually unintelligible than some Romance languages are - like between Spanish and Portuguese. If Cantonese and Mandarin were dialects, which I agree - they totally aren’t, they’re both their own distinct language - then Spanish and Portuguese sure as heck are merely dialects, too. I would know, being also kind of fluent in Spanish - heck in a Lang Focus video, I hear that Portuguese speakers can actually understand Spanish better than Spanish speakers can understand Portuguese.
It also depends on where you are in China, Mandarin is a much more based upon northern dialects, southern dialects(Shanghainese) preserve different parts/similar of the middle Chinese in which Cantonese descends from, so sensitivity and understanding are different. Also, we also need to consider classical Chinese along with vernacular, and how a common grounding of administration and culture, affects this.
To make sure, it is not Cantonese that is suited for poetry, it is Tang poetry for Cantonese, as Tang middle Chinese predates modern Cantonese.
日头 was replaced with 太阳 in the Ming dynasty, due to the development of 入/日 expletive system which originated in the Yangste river valley, which made words unusable.
As an American growing up speaking Cantonese i can't tell you how much this video means to me. As you said in the video, I did feel the poetic intentions more in Cantonese, definitely had that a-ha moment after you read it out (similar to other poetry that utilizes some type of meter, e.g. iambic pentameter). I hope Cantonese will be preserved for future generations and not die out in my lifetime. Thank you for this video.
一齐努力
If you're into Anime or K-drama, you probably noticed a lot of terminologies sound more like Cantonese than Mandarin.
毒藥/毒薬 - Poison
duk yeuk, canto
doku yaku, jp
dog yag, korean
du yao, mando
滿足 - Satisfied
mun juk, canto
man zoku, jp
man jog, korean
man zu, mando
參加者 - Contestants
chaam ga je - canto
cham ga ja - korean
can jia zhe - mando
Hope this helps you appreciate Cantonese even more, as it is indeed the language that preserves our culture the most.
It's funny to hear you say that. Most of ABCs have issue speaking Cantonese in US, and you worried about the future of Cantonese dialogue in China. Cantonese has been spoken in China for many centuries and will continue for many more centuries in the future. If I were you, I would worry about ABC Cantonese speakers not being able to speak the mother tongue in US. Some white guys in US said the same thing about the dialogue would die out in the future in the late 70s. Yeah, nice try...to divide among the people?
@@wsmithe2209 A large amount of new generations in Guangzhou refuse to learn Cantonese. Cantonese will be almost completely gone in about a hundred years due to China's policies and culture, for example, if you spoke Cantonese in public there will be a bunch of kids screaming at you and demanding you speak Mandarin. Even when you walk down the streets in Hong Kong now, you will hear lots of kids speaking Mandarin.
@@Aznbomb3rAs someone who speak Teochew, some of the words are carried over to Korean and Japanese too, e.g Si-gan, ji-kan. Teochew(Min language), like Cantonese has ending consonants that modern Mandarin has removed.
Cantonese has a "cool" factor that Mandarin lacks, I dont know the language but I know a Japanese guy who learned both and he always talk abou how much he likes Cantonese.
I have a Norwegian friend who is a linguist and a polyglot and who speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese. Cantonese is his favourite language.
basically the usefulness of a language is based on the number and variations of swear words one can use and apply.... Cantonese has endless supply of swear word combos in any given situation.
well most of japanese kanji are influenced by Cantonese.
Take time in japanese. its jikan and in cantonese is sikan
also world in japanese is seikai with cantonese being saigaai
Theres many more japanese word with similar pronounciation to cantonese then mandarin which is probably why he likes cantonese more because it sounded familair
btw im writing the romanization/romanji of the word
Here a video where an academic explains it better
th-cam.com/video/s2km_z4-1T8/w-d-xo.html
真係好開心有人咁有心學同研究廣東話
作為香港人
多謝你❤❤
It’s so impressive that a non-Chinese fellow like yourself has such deep understanding of the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin! I totally agree with you on the analogies with the Titanic and row boat!
Being a native Cantonese speaker from HK, I appreciate the beauty of Cantonese that can’t be replace by any form of languages. Thanks for sharing such interesting information and look forward to your next video thanks!
Being a native Western Cantonese speaker near Vietnam, HK Cantonese is more like a heavily Mandarinized version of Cantonese in phonology, grammar and vocabulary
@@zitloeng8713what.
我是台灣人，對於你的文學素養很佩服，也感謝你深入研究這流傳千年的珍貴文化~
I am Vietnamese, In Vietnam There is a big Cantonese (Guangzhou) community lives in Saigon and I really appreciate your video. Btw your Mandarin and Cantonese skill is very excellent
I have been to Saigon (in mid 2000), and found people there congenial when I suddenly heard them bursting a few words in Cantonese, or even conversing completely in Cantonese. Their accent was just like one found in Canton, although their ancestors may have left the mainland China decades ago. I also like they use 唐人 not 華人 to describe themselves. Perhaps this term has been used by overseas Chinese since really Tang Dynasty?
Saigon is cool. I live here too. I love Vietnamese people.
I have some Vietnamese friends here in the states, they speaks perfect Cantonese… strange but it’s their native tongue indeed
I met a Cantonese in Danang whose Cantonese was pretty good.
@@recuerdos2457 before the Vietnamese Communist party took over the south part,many richer Cantonese from south vietnamese left and move to the states.
古詩果part可以參考一下何文匯教授，要欣賞唐宋古詩最好仲要識分平起或仄起，要知135不論246分明，拗句要點救，何教授都有詳盡解釋。但係作為一個外國人可以理解中文咁多已經不可思議，真係叻過唔少大學生添呀！As a 唐人 myself, I’m so appreciated for your hard work.
I am a Malaysian of Chinese ethnicity. I use English, Malay, Mandarin, Hokkine, Cantonese and Teochew on a daily basis. My ancestors are Cantonese, so I speak Cantonese at home. I can confirm that Cantonese, Hokkien/Teowchew and Mandarin are definately different languages. It is so different to translate between Cantonese to Mandarin or Hokkien and vice-versa! Great video that highlights this fact!
Yes people who say they are dialects should also say French, Spanish etc. are Latin dialect
我地繼續用祖先嘅話 🙏🏻💪
作為一個講廣東話的香港人，十分佩服閣下對廣東話和中國文化的認識。呢條片連廣東話在詩詞文化中為何咁重要，以及被邊緣化的歷史都交代得十分清楚。簡直係教授級而又深入淺出嘅講解。謝謝你。
He really knows Chinese language, not just speaking, but understanding it. So impressive.
Lies repeated often enough became common sense. As a Cantonese schooled in Hong Kong 60-70, I brought into one written Chinese, writing in vernacular was not done, faux pas. And Cantonese is just a dialect. An uncouth provincial. Until I tried to learn PTH. BOY,was I confused! Written language would have been same as spoken mandarin, no way! The er and Zi where did that came from! Mongolian? Manchurian? Thanks for restoring my self respect.
The "Er" sound in mandarin showed up after the Yuan Dynasty in Northern parts of china. So it's most likely from Mongolians.
『er』音在元朝後開始有記載。應該是從蒙古人進入。
I was born and raised in Hong Kong. I have been speaking Cantonese for my whole life. There were so many Chinese mainlanders told me that Cantonese is just a dialect of Mandarin. I was like how come? I know how to speak both, I learned poetries in Cantonese and they're totally different. I knew Cantonese is not just a dialect but I have no proof. Thank god this video just popped up in my youtube recommendations and cleared my mind. As we all know, Cantonese is dying and slowly disappearing. I am really thankful that you've done so much study on my language. This has to be my favourite video in 2022. 多謝你
It's so sad to acknowledge that cantonese is dying :( I'm a mandarin student, but ever since I've known about cantonese, I find it much more interesting
Greetings from Brazil
It's the pessimism and inaction kill the language. There are still 60-100 million Canto speakers across the world. If we think it dying and do nothing then we will be one of the people making the language disappear.
When I were in Beijing, Along with People from Heilongjiang, JiangXi, Henan, Anhui can understand each other but struggle to communicate with people from the South Shanghai and HKers cantonese!! They prefer to speak English instead. Means cantonese and mandarin are Not the samne language!!
@@oliverlam6843 believe or not, mainly it’s because of political reasons, at least in Hong Kong
Greetings from Hong Kong :D
OMG, I’m so amazed you have such deep understanding in both languages. Thanks for making this beautiful clip explaining the differences precisely and clearly. 好利害！
好厲害
@@apple-on5pq 好犀利!
I don't speak either language though it was incredibly satisfying to hear you talking about the differences plus having a poem to read with! I felt culturally deep, I can't even explain, haha! Nice video, Stuart!
haha thank you. Chinese is a rabbit hole that's super fun to dive into
How can a Chinese doesn't speak either one of them. Look into the profile, oh he's a Japanese. haha
I'm impressed finally a foreigner recognises there ARE differences between the two languages and that one language does not represent all things Chinese :)
And that I'm glad you recognise that Cantonese in written format is not the same as written in Mandarin too
Here's another tongue twister in Cantonese (Which is from what I remember watching a HK show & wouldn't be surprised if you knew it already) - have fun with it! :)
一蚊一隻雞，七蚊一隻龜，他話龜貴過雞，我話雞貴過龜，咁究竟龜貴過雞定係雞貴過龜?
Interestingly, when the tongue-twister poem is read in Sino-Vietnamese, which is thought as resembling Cantonese to a great extend, some rhymes don't work anymore because certain homophones in Cantonese are not in Vietnamese. The poem would be read like so in Vietnamese:
"Quật cam quật cát quật kim cát
Quật kê quật cốt quật quy cốt
Quật hoàn kê cốt quật kim cát
Quật hoàn quy cốt quật kê cốt"
So in standard Sino-Vietnamese reading, the character 金 is always read as kim. This is different from Sino-Korean, where this character is read as Kim when it's the surname, but as geum (금) anywhere else, resembling the Cantonese reading. 雞 and 龜 are read as kê and quy, respectively in Vietnamese, so they don't really rhyme as in Cantonese. However, all in all, this poem seems to also work in Vietnamese as well, as it does have a nice rhythm to it when reading in Sino-Vietnamese.
Wow! Thanks
At least it's not like ji ji ji ji ji ji ji ji ji in Mandarin. LOL.
@@Jumpoable lmao
雞 and 龜 were denoted in Middle Chinese as /kei/ and /kˠiuɪ/ . From Phiên Thiết Hán Việt : 今 = 居吟切 - Cư ngâm thiết = Câm (KH, THĐTĐ). Chữ trên vẫn được các cụ đồ ngày xưa đọc là Kim
@@Jumpoable mandarin have many annoying sound to me like shiii , zhiiii , jiii , shhhh. Cantonese does not have it.
RESPECT! You are Really 1 in a Million.. I grew up speaking Cantonese thanks to my dad. ( I never went to Chinese school) And to have a Gwai Low on TH-cam teaching the world about Cantonese dialect is Out of this World. Your ability to read in both Mandarin & Cantonese baffles a lot of Cantonese speaking people. Thanks for the useful info. Keep it up!!
Stuart - you are one of the rare few who can speak Cantonese practically perfect. Between Cantonese and Mandarin, Cantonese is so much harder. I know many Caucasian who can speak Mandarin very well, but no one can speak Cantonese! So kudos to you.
It's because native Mandarin speakers tend to look down on other dialects, including Cantonese
as a portuguese living in Macau for more than 40 years......i never study cantonese or mandarin but i speak fluent cantonese but when i try to learn mandarin its totally different, i even notice that alot of cantonese speakers or native Macau born ppl dont speak mandarin.......
It's like Portuguese forced to learn French as a written language. LOL.
For Business, I want Mandarin. For Scholarly Work, I want Cantonese, since it's a gateway to the original pronunciation of the classics. Like reading Shakespeare in OP rather than RP; completely different feel, cadence, and manner.
Cantonese is also really good as a gateway to learning other East-Asian languages like Japanese and Korean.
Word - Japanese - Canto - Mandarin
國 Country - Koku/Goku - Gwok - Guo
毒藥 Poison - Doku Yaku - Duk Yeuk - Du Yao
復仇 Revenge - Fuku Shu - Fuk Sau - Fu Chou
六 Six - Roku - Luk - Liu
@@Aznbomb3r It really is. I was surprised that I am able to understand some Korean words in official statements using my Cantonese knowledge. (I've only learnt Korean alphabet before) Such as this phrase I've encountered regarding recent event (RIP victims and condolences to their loved ones): 국적 미파악 (guk-jeok mi-pa-ak), I immediately know it's 國籍 未把握 (gwok-zik mei-baa-ak) meaning “nationality unknown” in Cantonese
@@jamesw4459 Yep, that's because when Japan and Korea borrowed Chinese characters during the Sui-Tang dynasty, China's official language was southern Chinese. Mandarin as we know it today is actually heavily Mongolian influenced due to Yuan Dynasty rule, then Ming dynasty moved the capital from central China to Beijing which solidified mandarin as the new official language. Sad loss of culture to China.
Both Japanese and Korean kept the consonant enders from Chinese, which mandarin lost all of.
For example, the Korean language has the -P enders. 合 hab/hap, 十 sib/sip.
Japanese has kept the -T enders. 突 totsu, 失 shitsu.
Both have kept the -K enders.
國 goku, gug/guk
目 moku, mog/mok
學 gaku, hag/hak
@@Aznbomb3rcorrect! The “ku” from Japanese / Korea all relates to the closing sound of Cantonese “k” so it proofs that the pronunciation of Chinese word the two countries implemented must be from the similarity of Cantonese rather than Mandarin, and yes because Mandarin has less history than Cantonese (200 comparing to 2000 years) as it was a made up language for Mengs to incorporate themselves into Chinese. I hope people who only take Mandarin as Chinese not counting Cantonese and saying Cantonese is a dialect can one day realise the truth is the other way round.
@@chocoluvluv Slightly inaccurate. Mandarin has about 600-700 years of history, it's from the Yuan dynasty when Mongolians ruled China. After we booted out the Mongolians, the first Ming Emperor moved China's capital all the way to Beijing. Ming dynasty is the first time we've had recorded text of the "er" sound in mandarin, which does not exist in most east-asian languages.
That part at around ~21:00 revealing the glottal stops in the Cantonese pronunciation of the poem was legit cool 😎 💯
Really amazed by how well you know about Cantonese and the fact that using Cantonese for ancient poetry reading is better in someway. Not many people (other than native Cantonese) will know this, really appreciate you share this information to people who don't know the language. And yes, Cantonese is not the same as Mandarin, they are two different languages.
If you dig up Cantonese poet, isnt it obvious that it would sound better in Cantonese? One can dug up an ancient poem from the north, It wouldnt rhyme so well in Cantonese either would it?
@@sportsonwheelssCantonese rhymes in older poem. Modern poem don’t rhyme but can work with mandarin. The further u go back it won’t work in mandarin but will in canto. Also canto have much older pronunciation so even if it don’t rhymes it still make more sense than mandarin by a landsid
Don't think you know what you are talking about. There are so many region that do poem back in the day. Different poet from different region will make Mandarin sounds off. @@YorgosL1
@@sportsonwheelss that cause Cantonese is ancient and mandarin is modern. U can’t never make mandarin more accurate at any point when Cantonese system is way more complex than the latter
Are you thick in the head? learn about different region use different language, or most western scholars say dialects. Nothing new or old about it. Mandarin is the current lingua franca that is all. @@YorgosL1
Could you PLEASE do a video on how many more ways to swear there are in Cantonese vs. vanilla Mandarin?? I am most proud about that as a Cantonese speaker 😂
This is absolutely amazing, thank you for this video! This is one of the aspects I like the most about the various different southern chinese languages. Even though I am learning mandarin, I am currently also self-studying southern min (in this case Taiwanese), even though Taiwanese is very difficult I am extremely fascinated with its' older elements that have been kept since ancient times! Same goes for cantonese!
Using Hakka, Hokkien and other Chinese languages to read poems are more rhyming as Cantonese does than Mandarin as well ❤️❤️
Can you teach me how to read in Hakka? I only picked up a bit of Hakka from my grandma.
yes ❤
Anything but Beijing Mandarin. Even Nanking Mandarin, Southwestern Mandarin sound better
@heian17 English is diffiranciate most from other Germanic languges, French is diffirinciate most from Latin. The fact Mandarin differanciate from Middle Chinese more then other varieties just indicate it is the most developed Sinitic languge.
I am really sorry if I am hurt someone, I just can't keep silance I have to tell the thing which is clear to me.
I was'nt really interested in learning chinese since dramas have subtitles and i think learnin them is so difficult, just watching the complex characters is so hard but i fell in love with the cantonese language while listening to my fav actor's interview in that language i thought it sounded so cool! That got me interested in learning it!
I agree. I’m a Cantonese speaker in Malaysia and there is a lot words and feeling that you can’t express out using mandarin. Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien and etc are the language itself from different dynasty and cannot be classified as dialect. This is due to China political that makes people think that others is dialect.
I am a Cantonese speaker in Canton :), and I also speak Teochew as I come from Shantou. Cantonese, Teochew along with Hakka are dialects compare to others dialects from different provinces, though those are more close to Mandarin.
It is always funny to see ppl like to talk about politics when it comes to China and think mainlanders are that mindless to be taught and lectured by the government. 收皮喇唔该你~
I am also a cantonese speaker from the mainland, and you don't speak for all of us. And also, don't you speak toishanese or something else other than actual cantonese anyway if you are from Shantou lmao.
@@rainnchen9632 Dont't be so upset buddy, I spoke for myself, I have no interest in speaking for someone who cannot tell the difference between Taishan and Shantou, Toisanese and Teochew, please rest assured. 收皮喇唔该你~
😮
Great video! Thank you for promoting Cantonese and highlighting its unique features. It's refreshing to see Cantonese getting the recognition it deserves. Keep up the excellent work! Looking forward to more content like this.
i'm a southern vietnamese and cantonese pronounciation are just too easy for me compare to mandarin. to the point of that my friend from hongkong said when i pronounce i don't have that "foreign kind of accent" .
That is true
We are Bach Viet 百越 people from Shanghai to Saigon.😊
@@shanghainesetv3992 that's also true because before the Han people expand southward of yangtze river they call whoever in south of that river are yue (Viet) and when i was a kid all Vietnamese kid did learn about a mythical tale of Lac long quan and Au co they have 100 child 50 follow the father to mountain 50 follow follow the mother to the ocean , so now looking back at that tale it's kind of make sense ( bai yue mean 100 Viet ) they did have 100 child , and they spread out from the ocean coast ( south eastern china coastline from Shanghai to north vietnam ) and 50 mountain which mean province like guangxi , yunnan . And for some reason i believe acient Chinese language are somewhat affected by the acient Viet language at the time too.
Oh thats so cool. I live in Saigon and I'm learning southern vietnamese and I love the accent. I would like to learn one of the Chinese language too and i didnt know what to choose - Cantonese or Mandarin. After seeing this video and your comment I have no dilema anymore. Thanks!
Im also a southern Vietnamese and that’s so true. LOL
I'm a native Canto speaker who lives in the U.S. I've always called it a dialect when explaining it to non-Canto speakers but THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for teaching me the error of my ways! Deep down, I knew there was something special about Canto that I couldn't explain, like when I try to translate HK cinema to others, but I had no idea about the history behind it. The tongue twister is the perfect example and explanation. I got a good laugh when you read it but it was such an ah-ha moment! Amazing video!
Dude, please make more of these vids on cantonese. You have an endless audience on youtube who are dying to watch these 🧧🥮
Thank you. I'm from Singapore and I my grandmother spoke Cantonese to me from day1. I love Cantonese and use it proudly all the time. Yes it is way richer than Cantonese and it has way more puns which cannot be replicated in mandarin!
I'm moved and really happy that you are explaining about the Cantonese. This video is very attractive to me as a native speaker! Much appreciated that you can distinguish and explain to the world about the difference
You have extraordinary insight and knowledge in the differences between Cantonese and Putonghua, as well as Chinese poetry and literature, as a laowai, which is so wonderful. Would be great to discuss languages with you, these topics are so interesting and full of stories.
You may find this interesting but when you read Tang poems in Vietnamese, all the classical language features are preserved too. In school in Vietnam we learnt some Tang poetry and they all sounded beautiful. We even learnt the ping ru contrasting tones. More modern Vietnamese poetry forms, for example the 六八 form, have its own contrasting rule too.
When I picked up Mandarin Chinese later on, it was mind-blowing to learn that the average Chinese who only knows Putonghua is not able to appreciate these poetries like we Vietnamese did! Vietnamese Hán Việt is closer in sound to how Chinese sounded in the past.
True but Vietnamese is close however when you compare it taishanese , Hokkien and Cantonese well I think some sound are better in those language. Mandarin is a just a northern dialect that screw people perception on what real Chinese once was.
So very impressed! Thank you for teaching Cantonese as a HKer. I love my own language and would hate if it were confused as the more difficult version of Mandarin, rendering it useless to learn. Since it’s not, yknow, the main langauge spoken. Honestly, there’s so many other dialects in China it would be stupid to assume Putonghua is the standard and only important one. I’m very happy to see someone out of HK to have an interest in Cantonese! 多謝晒🥺🥺
For the record… our 繁體 , traditional writing, has so much more cultural and historical meaning than 簡體. I understand how simplifying the language would be beneficial…? But so much cultural meaning is lost and gone and it’s such a shame :( Like, the words and pronunciations used in historical poetry is closer to Cantonese than to Mandarin.
Also… speaking Cantonese has enabled me to learn Japanese so much easier. LMAOO
i personally just think that putonghua is harder than cantonese since i only spoke cantonese lol
You explain it very well. Cantonese is very different to Mandarin. Especially when it is in written form for Cantonese.
Cantonese is always beautiful!
And I am amazed by your understanding of Cantonese. Really wanna know your background and how do you learn Cantonese!
A Cantonese is like a Dutch person that speaks Dutch but writes in German. I think where it gets confusing is that we refer to the written language as standard written Chinese. In reality, you are writing in Mandarin vernacular, which has only been the norm since 1919 actually. Prior to that, the written discourse was via literary classical Chinese. Yes, people also do write in vernacular Cantonese, but its use in written communications is limited to Hong Kong magazines and Court documents and communication online or in written letters between close friends that understand cantonese.
i mean in Hong Kong , they use standard chinese and english even before They reeturn back to China... so i dont see how the comparssion between dutch writing in german is the same to Mandarin and Cantonese
@@kaisasong1332 you are thinking way too much. It has nothing to do with Hong Kong's political status. It has to do with the everyday experience of a hong konger. You have to learn two languages in one because how you speak and how you read and write are two different languages. When you speak, you are following Cantonese grammatical rules and choices of words. When you are reading or writing, you are following Mandarin grammatical rules and Mandarin vocabulary.
No. It's more like a Swiss German speaker learning German from Germany (which actually happens as Swiss doesn't have a standard written form). Mutually unintelligible and there exists many varieties of Swiss German. Each town has their own variety or accent but are basically different names despite the "German" part of Swiss German.
@@eb.3764 No, just because two languages are considered Chinese, it does not have the same similarity with variations of German. Actually the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin is even greater than German and Dutch which I just used as an analogy. Cantonese preserves elements of Chinese that were in use 1000 years before mandarin. Chinese civilization has been around for a very long time and dialect families should be regarded as separate languages if we are to examine chinese. the other thing is that Chinese is logographic. Characters indicate meanings rather than pronunciations and can have radically different pronunciations when you compare dialectal groups.
@@alanjyu I would usually say that speaking Cantonese and reading/writing in Standard Chinese , the literal form of Mandarin, is like speaking Portuguese and reading/writing in Spanish. Or all the speakers of Romance languages (Spanish, Catalan, Metropolitan French, Canadian French, Portuguese, Italian, Sardinian, Romanian, Latin) speaking in their respective spoken language and reading/writing in Latin.
As a person with Cantonese as mother tongue and someone who researches on languages, thanks a lot for the video. Cantonese is actually an old “language”, similar to Latin, which is being faded out by Mandarin as the Chinese Communist Party chose a “dialect”, Mandarin (north eastern dialect in China) as their official language when they existed 70 years ago.
Actually Cantonese can be written but most of the words are just lost.
Your deep understanding of Cantonese and the essence of the words is truly amazing. Not only do you know the language in its academic form but even the slang! Very impressive…wish there’s an easy way to learn language to that level of depth.
Not sure how I stumbled on this channel but, Wow!
As a speaker-user of a few Chinese dialects myself, I'm absolutely impressed with your depth of understanding and application of the main Chinese dialects. This is hugely important because as an English-speaking host, you are going to contribute immensely to the understanding in the west of the Chinese languages , culture and history. Well done!
Heck, I even pick up something new from you - that the Sanskrit-Portuguese word 'menteri' and the word 'mandarin' have the same root. Thanks.
I'd love to see a video on written Min. Whenever I can't figure out a sign in Taiwan it's because there's a Min word written in a character I've never seen before, or even written in Zhuyin Fuhao. When I ask locals they often say there is no character, but maybe it's just been forgotten over time. Other Chinese say there are no words whatsoever that have no character but I'm not sure they really know. Sometimes the same nonstandard word will be written using several different characters that sound similar. And of course everything else about Min is fascinating too. Such as its amazing diversity in its home region in the mainland plus its regional dialects in Taiwan vs Malaysia and across Southeast Asia.
I believe in fact that the Min languages are so incredibly diverse that they are an example of where the binary classification of language vs dialect breaks down and part of the reason linguists don't talk about dialects but instead varieties. Basically in linguistics a dialect is defined by mutual comprehension. But in the Min languages divisions and subdivisions and sub-subdivisions can still be mutually incomprehensible.
as far as I’m aware, there’re several writing systems for Taiwanese Min, one in Han character, and few versions using romanisation. Penang Hokkien also has their own writing system based on Han characters.
Perhaps you could check out Aiong Taigi.. there’s one ep where he dissects the pros and cons of different writing systems of Taiwanese Min.
& that's just SOUTHERN Min (Minnan). Eastern Min (Mindong) like what they speak in Fuzhou is a COMPLETELY different language with a completely different phonological system as well.
All the southern "dialects" have no written form, because they're all simply used as everyday spoken languages, & all educated Chinese nowadays are forced to learn to write STANDARD Chinese (aka Mandarin/ Putonghua) so nobody's trained in writing in your local dialect/ language. The Taiwanese you've asked probably has NO idea what you're even asking (most Chinese have never asked themselves whether they're speaking a language or a dialect, or look into the original characters of colloquial language). Some words do have roots in Classical Chinese, but if you're a scholar or linguist you wouldn't know about it. Some words may not even be Chinese at all, probably Austronesian or Austroasiatic in origin.
Most modern Chinese languages, Mandarin & Cantonese as well, descend from Middle Chinese (approx Tang dynasty era) so it's more systematic than Min, which has a layer of literary vocabulary from Middle Chinese, but a substratum of Old Chinese (Qin or even pre-Qin period!) so yes, it is very complex & fascinating.
If you want to know more, "Taiwanese Grammar: A Concise Reference" by Philip T. Lin is a great book. You can read its excellent introduction on Amazon for free if you don't want to buy it LOL.
Yes. A min video would be awesome! I’m from the Philippines and I speak Hokkien. Would love to really learn more about the history of Hokkien. Also, why are there so many Korean and Japanese words that sound similar to Hokkien?
Min is not a single language like Cantonese. "Taiwanese" has Japanese pronunciation, there is xia meng hua, fu zhou hua etc etc...
@@CeliaGoh All Min is written in Han character.
As a native Cantonese speaker who was born and raised in Hong Kong (now living abroad for decades now), I am so honored to have seen your video about Cantonese as a language (growing up, I was educated it was merely a dialect, I was too naive to have believed it.). My Mandarin still sucks and so I so appreciate how well you know these languages. I did notice you had mispronounced a few words, especially in the tones, but overall you did very well, and your understanding of the history and the linguistic aspect of the language have greatly made up for it. Ironically, even though I am a native speaker, I cannot explain or point out the tones as I was never taught formally about its form! Thanks for the video and again, on behalf of all the native speakers, I am so honored. I hope the language will not die too soon as it is our culture and identity. Thanks!
When Japan and Korea borrowed Chinese characters during sui-tang dynasty, they also borrowed the pronunciations, so we can compare them and see which language is closest to middle Chinese.
國/国
gwok, canto
goku/koku, jp
gug, korean
guo, mando
復仇
fuk sau, canto
fuku shu, jp
bog su, korean
fu qiu, mando
毒藥/毒薬
duk yeuk, canto
doku yaku, jp
dog yag, korean
du yao, mando
滿足
mun juk, canto
man zoku, jp
man jog, korean
man zu, mando
目
muk, canto
moku, jp
mog, korean
mu, mando
Hopefully this will further help you in loving and respecting your own language, it is NOT inferior to Mandarin. Cantonese 有過之而無不及!
Cantonese indeed is a dialect, like Hokkien, Hainan, Teochew, Foochow etc. Mandarin is the official written and spoken Chinese language. The written Mandarin form can also be read in the other dialects mentioned.
@@scalarnai That's not the English definition of 'dialect'. As long as the two languages are mutually unintelligible, then it is a language and not a dialect.
@@Aznbomb3r We're not talking English here mate, we're talking Chinese dialects
@@scalarnai Once again, the problem most people have with the word dialect is that it's an inaccurate translation of "fang yan", which should have been translated as regional language.
I highly appreciate your effort in summarizing hundreds of papers in such an amazing video. I hope someday you can take a look on the Min group in Sinitic family and make a video about it. I believe it will be more wonderful as the group of Min should be even older than both Cantonese and Mandarin. :))
I have a lot for min. That is a huge topic... coming soon
Southern Min has RETAINED a lot of older elements of Chinese, but no modern Chinese language is "older" than the other. Mandarin has kept retroflex consonants, Cantonese has kept the final consonants, & Min has retained voiced consonants as well as a lot of elements from pre-Qin Old Chinese. But no single modern Chinese language/ dialect that evolved organically can claim to be older than the rest.
Shanghainese is younger as it was a small fishing village before it became a modern metropolis & people from waaaaay older urban areas around that region (Ningpo/ Suzhou/ Wuxi/ Zhenjiang... all these cities have 2000 yrs of history) went there & their languages blended together to form Shanghainese.
& yes, Putonghua IS the youngest Chinese dialect, because it did not evolve organically but was chosen & crafted by a panel of people to be the "standard" national language of China in the 40s.
@@StuartJayRaj Looking forward to the Min video! I speak Mandarin and HK Cantonese but never quite learned the Taiwanese Hokkien (Min) that my grandparents speak. To know it predates Middle Chinese is so interesting to me! Love the cadence of it… I just can’t grasp some of the consonants and vowels… thanks for a great video and cheers!
To you goes the laurel for your expertise in Cantonese. Your knowledge surpasses native speakers for sure and the way you explained it so well was truly impressive! I liked the tongue twisting too!
These are fantastic examples of how classic Chinese poetry was written for the Cantonese tongue! Beautiful! Wonderful! Thank you, StuJay!
there are also so many that doesn't fit cantonese, they just chose to not tell you about it.
It wasn't written for the Cantonese tongue spoken in southern China today. It just so happens that Cantonese preserves the phonological system represented in the rhyming guide called qieyun that was used to help poets find characters to produce rhyming lines of poetry. It's kind of like William shakespeare. If you read William Shakespeare using standard British English there are certain rhymes that are lost but are preserved in OP or original pronunciation or Shakespeare's English.
@@xiwang9560 Perhaps it's because Mandirin wasn't invented when the poems were made?
Cantonese: ~200AD and widely spoken
Mandirin: 1638AD as administrative languages (the latin of china)
@@xiwang9560even when it does not fit but canto is still win by a landside because Cantonese pronunciation is a lot older than mandarin even when it does not rhymes. It’s a much older language why wouldn’t it ? the pronunciation is quite far off. If you were to pronounce 月 = yue. This sound doesn’t sound good in mandarin. In Cantonese is 月 = jhyut. this will give you a clue on what is closer to old Chinese when reading poem.
@@The_Chicken_One modern mandarin and modern cantonese are both the children of anceint Chinese, and cantonese has part of it from the locals.
They chose 2 different paths, which makes them both somehow similar and not similar to ancient Chinese.
Meanwhile, none of them are the same, or even close to ancient Chinese.
There is a famous poem called 锄禾
the last charater of line 1, 3 and 4 are 午土苦.
In modern mandarin pinyin, they are wu3, tu3, and ku3.
In modern cantonese, they are ng5, tou2, and fu2.
Obviously, this poem written by Li Shen (772AD-846AD) does not rhyme in modern cantonese while modern mandarin works fine.
during Tang dynasty when Li Shen alived, the word ox/cow was pronounced as "ngiu".
In modern mandarin, it's "niu". The "iu" part got kept.
In modern cantonese, it's "ngau". The "ng" part got kept.
Hope you got the idea.
作為香港人好感激你學廣東話 同埋宣揚廣東話!🙏❣️ 因為廣東話才是 我們 華夏文化 歷史的根源!
咁又唔至于，粤语的确係中华文化里边有重要地位，但中国5000年历史不断改朝换代，好多唔同嘅语系都曾经係中国嘅官方语言。
不过我同意，粤语有必要继续宣扬并继承。
光復香港 時伐革命
@@greenbean8346 代😂
勿寫殘體字.
請問，廣東話才是華夏文化的根源的依據是什麼？please cite your sources
31:26 I also agree with learners of mandarin to understand how chinese works because Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese borrowed words are based off of Chinese that’s older than mandarin. Borrowed sino words sometimes have their p,t,k endings preserved.
Dude, you’re amazing! I’m Chinese from the Philippines and I speak Hokkien. I agree. The different types of Chinese are definitely languages. Not dialects. If China was not unified and these southern provinces were independent countries, they would be classified as languages like the Romance languages.
好佩服你對中文有咁多研究，特別係廣東話。多謝！
作為香港人，好多謝你鑽研粤語的美 ❤ 就算新一代的香港小朋友已經唔知道什麼是白話，真係要好好保育粵語先得
你講d野都偏向普通話寫法啦，仲話d小朋友，你新移民扮香港人呀
唐詩要用粤語讀先正！您好叻，我都唔識解釋比人知！勁！
为什么香港都小孩子不会说白话？不解？不是教学都是粤语的吗
你好叻呀！好感動啊！
因為很多小孩父母都是大陸人@@weiweiho3783
Being someone who speaks both cantonese and mandarin... I think you as a foreigner for the Chinese language, you know the language much more in details than most of us Asians. Isn't it funny? Good job! You explained it very well and I think anybody will be able to learn something from you!
If weren't for HK drama industry sucking nowadays and the dominance of mainland Mandarin period dramas, I would really much want to see a serious Tang dynasty period movie or drama using Cantonese. I'm not talking about dubbing it Cantonese or those silly humorous TVB ones either.
I really appreciate the effort that you have been putting on learning Cantonese as your second langage and the thoroughly analysis of the differece between Madarin and Cantonese.
Moreover, I find that your spoken English is very clear and easy to follow.
I can catch 90% of what your saying without English subtitle while I can hardly undersand what the people said in US. They seem speaking in different kinds of English. Just like Mandarin and Contonese.
This is great ! I'm learning Mandarin as a background for my Herbal research work. I'd wanted to learn Cantonese (there were a good number of top herbalists that emigrated to California and Oregon in the old days), the poetic beauty of it's sounds is so obvious. But God help us nobody is ever going to learn even broken Cantonese from the wretched books and recordings out there. It's hopeless. Ever tried reading a description of the Cantonese tones, let alone learning them ? So for self learners, Mandarin has enormous resources, both written and audio, even though Cantonese wins by far, on sheer beauty and, if this video is right, quite possibly on a lot more than that. I keep getting that odd feeling, as I progress in Mandarin, that it is Cantonese, somehow, that is the REAL Chinese !!!
Wow ~ this is the first time I watch your video , your Cantonese really amaze ! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 thank you for making interesting videos promoting such a beautiful language 🙏🏻
I’m guessing that 叉 in modern HK Cantonese represents the symbol X which censors whatever expletive you could have used as the X is often used in printed materials in the same way. The X as a symbol is known as a 交叉.
Yes, that is its fascinating bicultural etymology. But it became a minor expletive in spoken Cantonese, like "heck" for "hell" or "frick" for "fūck".
So this spoken Hong Kong Cantonese slang word has roots in the English written language!
Being a native chaozhounese, southern min language. I always find mandarin to be so different from chaozhounese. N reading the last story of this, i found out that even cantonese say 日頭 as a sun, the same as my language. Ur video is fascinating, so detail. Keep it up
Two more characters, please, for the song called " 日頭 down mountain ",...哈哈哈
It's sad that you use Mandarin pinyin to call your own language. It has an official name called Teochow or something. Look it up. There are a lot of Thai and Malaysian speaking it and if you refer to it using "Chaozhounese", nobody's gonna understand you.
@@陳查理-c2c 哈哈哈哈。。。。原来是您啊，陈小姐！
You're Teochew, not "chaozhounese"...
好suprise你會教廣東話，加油啊
佢發音好撚唔標準，即係塑膠粵語
@@paullee7636 咁又系
@@paullee7636 我希望大家會支持
So happy you make it really clear that the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin. I just want to note one thing, 不學詩,無以言 is talking about 經, is a collection book of different "country song" and "national anthem" like song, the last edition is done by the Confucius himself. It don't have much connection with Tong poetry. I mean Tong poetry has clearly succeed some elements from , but I want to emphasize is 不學詩,無以言, "詩" here is talking about 經 exclusively, nothing else
In taishanese :
Bed Hak Si Mo Y Ngun - 不學時無以言
I'm glad I did click the video and you immediately hooked me with that tongue twister I've never heard before which is why I kept replaying that part several times before continuing the video.😆 Therefore a like and a sub from a Canto speaker 👍😁
Nothing beats the hilarity of Cantonese slang that gets completely lost in translation 🤣
It's why classic "mo lei tau" Stephen Chow movies are such classic comedy.
Btw, Stephen Chow born in Hong Kong has Shanghainese ancestry through his parents.
Totall agree
You are just amazing. The most difficult Cantonese few sentences which you managed very well. Blow my mind. I always think there are no westerners would like to learn Cantonese as it is rather difficult, no clear grammar and no that systematic to learn. But Cantonese is fun and alive.
What's the best way or ways for an English speaking person to learn Cantonese??
@@dementedmindstate7063 I am an native speaker so not know much. However, I saw this lady who is American and learning great and teaching Cantonese as well. th-cam.com/video/WPtQSrnniy0/w-d-xo.html
Host is mixed race from his name !
@@yanliew4027 I see.
What you said is also a slap in the face to some comments I saw left in your previous clips. They alluded that Cantonese is vulgar and can’t compare to Mandarin which is more refined or culturally more superior.
If I remember correctly, there was also a comment (from someone who claimed to be some kind of linguistic expert) saying that if Mandarin (ie not Cantonese) were spoken in Guangdong in the distant past, would you still say that Cantonese is more classical that Mandarin?
But the truth is the Northern Mandarin never got the chance to beat Cantonese and gain a upper hand as the lingua franca there. Even if it were spoken there, because Mandarin lacks all the elements of old Chinese (as you vividly presented in this clip), it is no match to Cantonese (or Hakka or Min) when it comes to proximity to the past.
Hi Stuart. I'm a native Cantonese in HK. First time listened to your teaching and sharing. I must say you're a very excellent, scholastic polyglot knowing so many languages in Far East Asia!
And in the latter part of your video your correlation of Cantonese / Yue to Viet and Thai really does remind me of the geo-political influence and cultural mix among these 3 places way back in Qing Dynasty or even Zhou Dynasty (before 200BC). At that time these areas were collectively called 百越/粵 Hundreds of Yue, so the similarity of those word-additives you find in Cantonese, Viet and Thai might date back then.
Wow. Your scholarly knowledge is exquisite. You probably know more about Chinese than the vast majority of native Chinese speakers (of any dialect/language). You truly appreciate the Chinese language in all its forms; that you weren't exposed to them as a child makes you supremely impressive.
Absolutely brilliant video ! I almost didn't click on it, but I'm so glad I did. Much deeper than every other Canto vs Mando video I've watched. More videos like this one please !
OMG , Thanks Stuart. I am a Cantonese speaker and I'm seeing the beauty of this Tang poetry for the first time. Cleary this Tang poet was brilliant for alternating sentences with entering tones between those without entering tones. Sadly, this is all lost in Mandarin and the speakers of the Mandarin will never see the subtle beauty of those verses. FYI, I also understand a bit of the Minnan aka Hokkien 'dialect'' and I tried reading the poetry in Hokkien and like Cantonese (though I have not completely grasped the full extent of the Min pronunciation), they have retained a lot of entering tones as well. In fact, the Hokkien dialect has preserved more archaic pronunciations of certain chinese words. Take for example, instead of calling the stomach 肚子 as in standard Mandarin they use a more archaic form called 腹肚. (fu'du in Mandarin) And it's pronounced as 'bak daw/ do'h' , where in ancient chinese there is no 'f' consonant. In place of the f consonants in ancient Chinese were the 'b' or 'p'. Thanks for this video, Stuart.
But I have seen a Mandarin advocate picked an ancient poem without any entering tones to argue that Mandarin sounds are as classical as those spoken by our distant ancestors. Haha…. What a tactic!
Btw, my Taiwanese friend told me the Min/Minan/Fujian language/regional "dialect" was the language used during the Tang Dynasty. I have no means to verify its validity or otherwise.
@@frankyong2607 if one were to say that the minnan/ taiwanese/ Hokkien "regional speech" inherited or retained some aspects of Tang dynasty spoken Chinese, that could still be acceptable, just like all the other southern Chinese dialects. But to assert that minnan/ hokkien dialect was the Tang dynasty speech, that would be quite a stretch. None of our modern dialects are the exact speech of Tang vernacular. They have all evolved over the centuries. So all that talk about the Hokkien/ minnan dialect being the actual Tang dynasty spoken language doesn't hold water.
@@frankyong2607 technically Min is thought to derive directly from Old Chinese (Qin era and earlier), whereas Middle Chinese was the spoken vernacular for much of China during and after the Han. Min and Middle Chinese are different, so it seems unlikely that Min was the lingua franca of the Tang dynasty
@@Rollersox thanks so much for the explication. I'm a novice on Chinese linguistics - I speak Cantonese (my mother tongue) and Putonghua as a second/third language. Therefore I wonder the current thinking on the lingua franca used in the Tang Dynasty/court as High Tang was influential and eclectic opened to western Iranian culture and even Japan dispatched official learning missions to Changan.
Impressive. 作為一個粵語使用者，我覺得你講嘅嘢，好多母語喺粵語嘅人都未必識。
Really impressed and well said and explained 🎉 as a Cantonese speaker, the history of it was very fascinating indeed and I learned a lot from this! Well done 😊
A side note is that people used to do subtitles for Hong Kong dramas in the actual language in direct spoken form, which is awesome for people learning Cantonese, nowadays, the attempt to turn Cantonese into a dialect has resulted in subtitles not correctly translated from the spoken words, it is really sad. We’re gradually being made obsolete, and one day no one other than linguists will be able to understand the ancient texts as they are written in traditional Chinese and not the newly made ‘simplified’ (lazy) Chinese 😅
My mother tongue is Mandarin but my family had migrated from Guangzhou generations back, and knowing both languages, I totally agree that Cantonese is so much more beautiful, especially when reading poems and ancient texts. I love, love, love reading text written in Cantonese and all the characters which are only available in Cantonese script. The sounds of it is much to my ears too (even the cursing lol). Thanks for this video! I'm learning Thai now and the video opened my eyes to its similarities with Cantonese!
I had no idea that oranges/tangerines were pronounced the same as in korean. This also made me realize "oh yeah... it does sound like gold" what a discovery~
귤감 is specifically the word I was thinking of in case you were wondering
but the hanja for 귤 is 橘 right? although both 橘 and 桔 means tangerine/mandarin and pronounced the same as jǘ.. i’m still confused why do they need different characters for the same thing after so many years 🙈
@@CeliaGoh Because 橘 has too many strokes? 桔 is a simplified form. Also the pronunciation has simplified as well. 橘 is [kwat] but 桔 is [kat]. I guess [kat] is a lazy example but if it's been done for centuries, it's now standard LOL.
@@Jumpoablehmm，now that you mentioned, i feel that both pronunciations are actually retained for 桔.. [kwat] in 金桔; [kat] in 桔仔..
around my area, there are differences between 橘 and 桔.. 橘 is interchangeable with 柑 and 桔 refers to the smaller ones like kamquat or calamansi.. but in the greater chinese area, i feel both words refer to the same thing, which confused the crap out of me 😂🙈🙈
@@CeliaGoh Calamansi is a SE Asian thing. Oh well, I'm a linguist, not a botanist. LOL.
@@Jumpoable hahahaha, true that.. I always find it hard to explain what calamansi is to my friends in the greater chinese area 🤐🤐 but it's fun to see how the same language changes with region and culture..
Hainan island has their own hainanese language too 😅. Being a Malaysian Chinese of southern Min, mum is of hainanese and paternal grandma is Hakka while born and bred in Kuala Lumpur which speaks Cantonese. Hence these languages do come in our daily mode of communication here 😅including mandarin, English and Malay
Shanghai is 吳越 Ngo Viet/ Wuyue.
百越 call also be latinized as Bach Viet in Vietnamese and of course Bach Viet includes regions from Shanghai to Hanoi, including Tai-Kadai language speakers, Austronesian speakers, Hmong-Mien speakers and Austroasiatic speakers etc.
WuYue and Bai-Yue, based on modern studies, is now thought to be Austronesian and Kra-Dai. The recorded language of Wu-Yue was deciphered and show relations to Kra-Dai. Kra-Dai was spoken from Yangtze River Delta down to the Red River Delta.
@@D2E80 Bai-Yue/ Bach-Viet means literally ‘hundreds of Yues/Viets’, with different nations and tribes
@@shanghainesetv3992 correct. Bai-yue meanings many Yue people; Nothing to do with modern day Vietnamese ancestors. Vietnamese (south of viet) is on the southern most frontier of yue. Chinese documented bai-yue correctly, it was austronesian and Kra-dai tribes. Austroasiatic is bai-pu very different not the same people. I just want to make it clear the modern trent amongst academia yue/bai-yue is Kra-Dai/Austronesian not Vietic/Mon-Khmer
@@shanghainesetv3992 yes hundreds of Kra-Dai/Austronesian tribes from Yangtze River delta down to Red River Delta. It’s not a mistake the Chinese documented correctly. Wu-Yue during warring states is now known to be a Kra-Dai/Austronesian language.
@@D2E80 越南 Vietnam is also one of Bai-Yue/Bach-Viet, but not Austronesian
I like how you hint of the connections between Cantonese and Southeast Asian languages, as if it were part of a sprachbund. I remember reading somewhere that the "bong ngo sau", "bong keui sau" (he helped him) could represent some non-Chinese influence. I feel bad now for living in Guangzhou and only learning conversational Mandarin. And while I heard people tell me that Cantonese was a more archaic version of Chinese, you're presenting a much more interesting picture. It not only represents older Chinese but a possible ancient intermixture with other language families. You are a true scholar.
Thank you. Very impressive. I am Cantonese and I speak Mandarin and Thai. Didnt know that Thai and Cantonese are similar. I learned Thai by translating with Mandarin (instead of English). Should have learned Thai with Cantonese. Make more sense instead.
The story I read somewhere was that Mandarin was easier than Cantonese and hence it was decided, even though 孙中山, the first China president, himself spoke Cantonese.
Hi, thanks for making a video for Cantonese! As a Cantonese speaker from Hong Kong, I feel glad that someone who's first language is not Cantonese realizes that Cantonese is a different language from Mandarin. Although it is similar but it's still different.
I think you did mention a bit of that, but I just want to clarify for those whose first language is not Cantonese. The written Cantonese in this video is the written form of spoken Cantonese. However, it is consider as an informal written language. It was not what we will use for schools, documents, news papers or in typical novels. Although it was more common nowadays (some novels were written in spoken Cantonese), we never learn how to WRITE Cantonese in schools. For example, we learn how to write 我們很開心 instead of 我哋好開心.
To be honest, the formal written Cantonese we learn to write in schools are quite different from what we speak every day in terms of vocabularies and wordings. Therefore, quite a number of elementary students struggle with writing in formal Chinese. I can't really think of an accurate example now cause my formal written skill in Chinese also sucks. As a result, lots of schools in Hong Kong started using Mandarin as their main language for Chinese lessons so that kids can write things more formally. I agree that learning Mandarin can help writing formal Chinese but it is quite sad that those kids in Hong Kong were not using Cantonese, which was Hong Kong's official language in their Chinese lessons.
Something else to add on, Hong Kong Cantonese speakers(in my, my family and my friends experiences), never learn the "pinyin" in Cantonese. It was not taught in school nor by family. Learning how to pronounce Cantonese through memorizing them naturally from past experience is the way most Cantonese natives do. Just like what native English speakers did instead of learning phonics. This is quite different from Mandarin speakers since they all learn "pinyin".
There all are just my personal opinion, thanks for reading and please ignore my grammar mistakes if it occurs
Native English speakers in Australia also learns English phonics in early years to help them learn how to read. I wish we did learn Cantonese "ping yin" growing up, would make typing Chinese so much easier ...I'm learning the Mandarin ping yin with my kids who are learning Mandarin now
PRC uses Pinyin for their Mandarin.
Taiwan uses Zhuyin for their Mandarin.
The poem is written in cantonese, so, of course, doesn't sound great in mandarin. It's not due to the entering tone, but due to the fact in cantonese, it plays with words and tones sounding the same and playing with the fact tones change meanings.
If you translate french historical poetry to english, you may need to alter it to give a similar feel, as it gives in french, or you might just directly translate.
This poem in particular was written as a challenge to contrast 平 and 入 tones.
你真是好盞鬼，好勁！多謝你分享廣東話”正”的地方。我地作為世界的香港人，認為廣東話是完整的方言。By the way, 其實周星馳的廣東話真是值得一講。
Excellent interpretation of Cantonese and some other ancient Chinese dialects such as Hakka.....Support 廣東話。
You preach! Applaud! No words can express how moved I am to learn that there is some one on earth not born a Hongkongese able to deconstruct my mother language as brilliantly as you did, I am honestly moved and having tears streaming down my face as I worried so much that there won't be a "next generation" of my kind.
I wanna learn Cantonese too now
All the best. Cantonese language has more different tones than Mandarin/Putonghua/Standard Chinese apparently 9 to 4. Cantopop i.e. Hong Kong Cantonese popular songs are as strong and vibrant as ever.
@@frankyong2607 😯
If you do learn Cantonese, it'll also open up a fun gateway to Japanese and Korean as they share many pronunciations. Also, Cantonese is a singing language, it has 6 tones of which 4 are flat tones meaning the only way to differentiate them is by the high and low pitches.
@Chrispin Loves To Dance ok thank you
@@Aznbomb3r wow thank you
Cantonese and Mandarin are two different languages.
In spoken form everyone agrees they are different.
In written form, Cantonese and Mandarin are different. However, Cantonese speakers were taught to write Mandarin in schools in the past.
Nowadays, most HK and Macau Cantonese speakers write in Cantonese more often than Mandarin, because this is the most natural way to write our mother tongue.
Thank you so much for helping reveal the truth
I doubt tribal regionalism can make Cantonese writing an acceptable formal Chinese writing.
And in the age of social media, writing in Cantonese is on the rise which is a good sign of revival or perseverance of written Cantonese.
If we chit-chat or write comments in Facebook or TH-cam in standardised written Chinese, they will all look formal and out of place, just like sitting for an exam or writing a letter to your grandpa. But we write colloquially, the tone is right for the occasion.
I have also seen people from Hong Kong left comments in written Cantonese in a blog originating from Taiwan. Taiwanese may understand some, but not all of what is written. To be respectful, I will write in standardised Chinese which can be understood by all 華人
@@dantse2012able It's used in transcriptions in court. Is that legal or formal enough for you?
I personally believe Cantonese and Mandarin are separate languages. I like to think of it as how Portuguese and Spanish are their own languages despite being leagues more similar than Cantonese and Mandarin are. Spanish and Portuguese share way more in common, meanwhile only certain, sparsely-found phrases are shared between Cantonese and mandarin like 只不過，albeit pronounced slightly differently (canto: zi2 bat1 gwo3 | mando: zhi3 bu guo2). On the flip side, there are also a lot of words and phrases that just use totally different characters like Cantonese using 係 and Mandarin using 是. Lastly, I feel like people that don’t really have any familiarity with the differences between the two languages fail to understand that using the same writing system doesn’t equate to being the same language. Although Cantonese and Mandarin use the same script, they’re both their own distinct languages. This is like how Spanish and Portuguese, despite being extremely similar in a lot of ways as well as sharing the Latin script as their main writing system, are still considered different languages from one another in their own right.
Oh man, U did way better than many Cantonese speakers ❤
超勁～～講解得好清晰！ 學到野🤣～
Impressive!! You even share something that I really didn’t know, I am Cantonese speaker though… I quite like your idea using the metaphor of European languages to describe the relation between Cantonese and Mandarin. Honestly, it ‘s really hard to differentiate from these two languages for people who don’t know Chinese at all.
Thank you for your sharing and I really appreciate it!
Although you gave an interesting example for poem. I think a much more accessible and well known poem example is 靜夜詩 by Li Bai.
床前明月光, 疑是地上霜
舉頭望明月, 低頭思故鄉
The poem consists of two lines of two phrases each. In Cantonese, the last characters of the two lines (霜 and 鄉), rhyme and that's it. But in Mandarin, the last characters in three phrases rhyme (光，霜，and 鄉). But actually, if you look closely it is actually the first and second phrases that rhyme (光 and 霜) in Mandarin and the last character of the poem doesn't actually rhyme. As a result, Mandarin speakers learn that there's an AABA rhyme scheme which is weird and asymmetric if you ask me (also mentioned in the Wikipedia article for this poem, which I think is incorrect). And really in Mandarin this would be a AABa rhyme scheme or something. So they unfortunately teach the wrong thing in school to fit Mandarin when these poems make more sense in Cantonese where it's clear what the rhyme scheme is and is symmetrical.
This is only one of many examples you can find where Cantonese fits the poems better. After all there are hundreds of famous Tang dynasty poems.
I used that in a clip a few weeks back
@@StuartJayRaj any link?
In Sino-Vietnamese
Sàng tiền minh nguyệt quang, nghi thị địa thượng sương
Cử đầu vọng minh nguyệt, đê đầu tư cố hương
Rhymed: sương with hương / 霜 with 鄉
In Mandarin
chuáng qián míng yuè guāng, yí shì dì shàng shuāng
jǔ tóu wàng míng yuè, dī tóu sī gù xiāng
Unrhymed: shuāng with xiāng
Aaaand here it is.
Time to go straight to the comments
Thanks for posting. Our parents spoke Hoisan dialect. Cantonese sounds a little bit harsher but a slight similar. Also I remember mom reading the characters in Hoisan pronunciation and I could barely understand her.
I believe if you are able to speak Hoisan dialect, you'll understand normal Cantonese.
@@timmactw5486 Living in northwestern Minnesota so unable to use any type of Chinese.
Hoisan or I suppose Toishan is considered relatively speaking a rural village language while Cantonese/Yue is urban city.
Good job ! Cantonese is very difficult to learn, but u seems to have mastered it flawlessly.
Thank you for appreciating Cantonese, i really love your analogy of the boat and titanic LOL I am a teochew but i love cantonese and i could not articulate it well but the same sentence expressed in cantonese just appear to carry a lot of meaning and the appropriate sound that expresses what it means for me.