Standard Cantonese - Initials

Like any dialect, the phonology of Standard Cantonese varies among speakers. Unlike Standard Mandarin, there is no official agency to regulate Standard Cantonese. Below is the phonology accepted by most scholars and educators, the one usually heard on TV or radio in serious broadcast like news reports. Common variations are also described. There are about 630 different extant combinations of syllable onsets (initial consonants) and syllable rimes (remainder of the syllable), not counting tones. Some of these, such as e6/ei6 (欸), bun ...

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Standard Cantonese, Standard Cantonese - Phonology, Standard Cantonese - Initials, Standard Cantonese - Finals, Standard Cantonese - Tones, Standard Cantonese - Current Phonological Shift, Standard Cantonese - Romanization, Standard Cantonese - Written Cantonese, Standard Cantonese - Cultural role, Standard Cantonese - Loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Imported loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Exported loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Cantonese versus Mandarin

Read more here: » Standard Cantonese: Encyclopedia II - Standard Cantonese - Phonology

The so-called "Battle between Cantonese and Mandarin" started in Hong Kong in the mid-1980s when a large number of mainland Chinese people started crossing the border into Hong Kong during Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. At that time, Hong Kong and Macau were still under British and Portuguese rules respectively, and Mandarin was not often heard in those territories. Businesspeople from the mainland and the colonies shared a mutual dislike and distrust of one another, and in magazines in China in the mid-1980s, they would publish polemics ...

See also:

Standard Cantonese, Standard Cantonese - Phonology, Standard Cantonese - Initials, Standard Cantonese - Finals, Standard Cantonese - Tones, Standard Cantonese - Current Phonological Shift, Standard Cantonese - Romanization, Standard Cantonese - Written Cantonese, Standard Cantonese - Cultural role, Standard Cantonese - Loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Imported loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Exported loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Cantonese versus Mandarin

Read more here: » Standard Cantonese: Encyclopedia II - Standard Cantonese - Cantonese versus Mandarin

Cantonese is usually referred to as a spoken dialect, and not as a written dialect. Spoken vernacular Cantonese differs from modern written Chinese, which is essentially formal Standard Mandarin. Written Chinese spoken word for word sounds overly formal and distant in Cantonese. As a result, the necessity of having a written script which matched the spoken verse increased over time. This resulted in the generation of additional Chinese characters to complement the existing characters. Many of these represent phonological sounds not presen ...

See also:

Standard Cantonese, Standard Cantonese - Phonology, Standard Cantonese - Initials, Standard Cantonese - Finals, Standard Cantonese - Tones, Standard Cantonese - Current Phonological Shift, Standard Cantonese - Romanization, Standard Cantonese - Written Cantonese, Standard Cantonese - Cultural role, Standard Cantonese - Loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Imported loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Exported loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Cantonese versus Mandarin

Read more here: » Standard Cantonese: Encyclopedia II - Standard Cantonese - Written Cantonese

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

See also:

Standard Cantonese, Standard Cantonese - Phonology, Standard Cantonese - Initials, Standard Cantonese - Finals, Standard Cantonese - Tones, Standard Cantonese - Current Phonological Shift, Standard Cantonese - Romanization, Standard Cantonese - Written Cantonese, Standard Cantonese - Cultural role, Standard Cantonese - Loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Imported loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Exported loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Cantonese versus Mandarin

Read more here: » Standard Cantonese: Encyclopedia II - Standard Cantonese - Loanwords

The economic pre-eminence of Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangdong province, as well as its predominance in many overseas Chinese communities, has given Standard Cantonese a reach far beyond its comparatively small homeland. As the usual spoken variety of Chinese in Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese is the only Chinese variety to be used in official contexts other than Standard Mandarin, which remains the official dialect of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan; as a predominant language of the Chinese diaspora, Can ...

See also:

Standard Cantonese, Standard Cantonese - Phonology, Standard Cantonese - Initials, Standard Cantonese - Finals, Standard Cantonese - Tones, Standard Cantonese - Current Phonological Shift, Standard Cantonese - Romanization, Standard Cantonese - Written Cantonese, Standard Cantonese - Cultural role, Standard Cantonese - Loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Imported loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Exported loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Cantonese versus Mandarin

Read more here: » Standard Cantonese: Encyclopedia II - Standard Cantonese - Cultural role

There are several major romanization schemes for Cantonese: Barnett-Chao, Meyer-Wempe, and Yale. While they do not differ greatly, Yale is the one most commonly seen in the west today. The Hong Kong linguist Sidney Lau modified the Yale system for his popular Cantonese-as-a-second-language course, so that is another system used today by contemporary Cantonese learners. The one advocated by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) is called jyutping, which solves many of the inconsistencies and problems of the older, favored, and mor ...

See also:

Standard Cantonese, Standard Cantonese - Phonology, Standard Cantonese - Initials, Standard Cantonese - Finals, Standard Cantonese - Tones, Standard Cantonese - Current Phonological Shift, Standard Cantonese - Romanization, Standard Cantonese - Written Cantonese, Standard Cantonese - Cultural role, Standard Cantonese - Loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Imported loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Exported loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Cantonese versus Mandarin

Read more here: » Standard Cantonese: Encyclopedia II - Standard Cantonese - Romanization

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

See also:

Standard Cantonese, Standard Cantonese - Phonology, Standard Cantonese - Initials, Standard Cantonese - Finals, Standard Cantonese - Tones, Standard Cantonese - Current Phonological Shift, Standard Cantonese - Romanization, Standard Cantonese - Written Cantonese, Standard Cantonese - Cultural role, Standard Cantonese - Loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Imported loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Exported loanwords, Standard Cantonese - Cantonese versus Mandarin

Read more here: » Standard Cantonese: Encyclopedia II - Standard Cantonese - Written Cantonese