What is Written Cantonese?

Question

What are "Cantonese characters"? Is it a writing system separate from standard written Chinese? Or is it just traditional Chinese or what? I'm confused.

Answer 1

Chinese contains a large number of characters. No one uses all of them. Cantonese, and other languages as well, such as Shanghainese, use/emphasize a slightly different set of those characters. In others words, most Cantonese characters are the same as those used in Mandarin. Some characters used in Cantonese are not in common use in Mandarin. They still exist of course, but are not in common use. Anyway, written Cantonese only exists now in Hong Kong, since everyone learns to write only Mandarin at school in China.

Answer 2

Cantonese is a spoken language, so if you go to Hong Kong or Guangzhou (where Canto is mainly spoken), you will find most official and formal writings done in Mandarin. Written Cantonese is considered informal, and usually only found in certain literature, Cantopop, colloquial writing, etc. Students in Hong Kong, in fact, receive a lower grade in exams and/or assignments if they write in Cantonese, instead of Mandarin.



Written Cantonese generally uses the same characters as Mandarin, but with different pronunciations. Some characters are used differently in Cantonese than in Mandarin, and some Cantonese characters are not used in Mandarin at all.

Answer 3

China speaks plenty of dialect. Cantonese is considered one of them. Mandarin is the country wide language. One cannot write in Mandarin or Cantonese or some other dialect as they're simply spoken. The written language is both simplified or conventional. Modern China makes use of the simplified. Cantonese is spoken within the province of Canton and in Hongkong. Hongkong nonetheless writes in conventional sort.

Answer 4

http://img.skitch.com/20091025-ctfy4un9c9gyxq24gm97tf98er.jpg



Above it's a scan from a Hong Kong magazine. Those words I highlighted are "Cantonese-only" characters. Usually, if you see a small "mouth" 口 in the left hand side of a character, that is a Cantonese-only character.



In ancient times, Cantonese scholars borrowed wordings from Chinese literatures. However, since many people were illiterate and written Cantonese wasn't acceptable by the educated, most people only remembered the pronunciations and no longer know how to write those borrowed wordings. Later, writers of Cantonese opera, Cantonese versions of Buddhist text and Bible, created their own sets of "Cantonese only characters". (Religious texts and opera wrote in Cantonese for wider Cantonese audiences) Nowadays, some Cantonese scholars are trying to recover how ancient Cantonese wrote those "Cantonese -only" words and they are with some success. It turns out that "Cantonese only" characters aren't really Cantonese-only as most of them were borrowed from ancient literatures which other "dialects" in China and the Japanese also borrowed from.



The writing system of written Cantonese is same as standard written Chinese - both use Han (Chinese) characters. However, as you know, due to political reasons, the Communist party created a simplified version of traditional Han characters.



Written Cantonese is incomprehensible for non Cantonese. Firstly, because of Cantonese-only characters. Secondly, Cantonese has grammatical differences with Mandarin. Cantonese grammar only shares 60% similarity with Mandarin. Not many Hong Kong Cantonese speaker acknowledge with it and therefore they write strange standard written Chinese.

Answer 5

the written cantonese is the chinese characters used to write this language which is different from the Chinese Mandarin characteres since some words have different meanings

Answer 6

what i understand from the natives, is that there are two characters which is traditional and simplified.



traditional = complicated characters

simplified = easier to write than traditional

* note= different characters but the pronunciations are the same



Mandarin (standart), Cantonese (dialect) , Hokkien (dialect) = they're in the same language (Chinese) and characters. just what differentiate them between them are dialects.



if you say something in Mandarin, mostly all of the natives in China understand you well because Mandarin is widely used & understand.

Answer 7

It is probably referring to traditional chinese characters, which are used in Hong Kong.



The traditional characters are also used in Taiwan, Macao, Japan and Korea.



In mainlaind China a simplified version of chinese characters are used. Although they're 'simpler' they're still not 'simple' haha.

Answer 8

Jyutping is the romanization of Cantonese characters.



Pinyin is romanized Mandarin characters.



Romaji -> Japanese



Romaja-> Korean

Answer 9

Cantonese uses traditional Chinese characters...

Answer 10

Cantonese characters = Taiwanese characters = Traditional characters...

while...

Chinese characters = Simplified characters...

Answer 11

those are Traditional Characters...

han-zi before simplification...