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Post by siuyiu on Jul 27, 2018 1:43:48 GMT
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Post by siuyiu on Jul 28, 2018 0:00:59 GMT
粵語九聲六調 The Nine Tones and Six Modes of CantoneseI've been calling them "pitches" all this time, but according to one source, the proper term is "Nine Tones". Of the nine tones, there are technically only six intonations, or modes, since three of them are actually variations of three of the modes--they are just pronounced in a shorter, terser manner. Confused already? Yeah, well, I didn't invent this dialect! The nine tones can be subdivided into two types: flat/level 「平」 and changing 仄. The changing tones are further divided into three forms: rising「上」, departing「去」, and entering「入」. To add to the layers of confusion, the naming of the nine tones has the addition of yin 陰 and 陽 yang to the mix, with the yin tones higher in pitch than the yang ones. These are the names of the nine tones: 1 陰平聲 - Tone 1 "dark flat" (dark referring to yin) 2 陰上聲 - Tone 2 "dark rising" 3 陰去聲 - Tone 3 "dark departing" 4 陽平聲 - Tone 4 "light flat" (light referring to yang) 5 陽上聲 - Tone 5 "light rising" 6 陽去聲 - Tone 6 "light departing" 7 陰入聲 - Tone 7 "dark entering" 8 中入聲 - Tone 8 "middle entering" 9 陽入聲 - Tone 9 "light entering" Now, you'd think that the nine tones are arranged in order from highest pitch to lowest. Not the case! Tones 1 to 4 go from high to low, but then the pitch goes back up with 5 and 6. Tones 7, 8, 9 are the variations I mentioned earlier. Respectively, 7, 8, and 9 are the variations of 1, 3, and 6. So, if the tones are not arranged in order from highest to lowest, how can we possibly remember how they sound? Someone came up with a clever mnemonic, using the most basic of numbers, from 0 to 9. Here's the catch though: you have to know how to say the numbers in Cantonese. Sorry! For Canto speakers, here's a table for the mnemonic: 陰平聲 (1) | 陰上聲 (2) | 陰去聲 (3) | 陽平聲 (4) | 陽上聲 (5) | 陽去聲 (6) | 陰入聲 (7) | 中入聲 (8) | 陽入聲 (9) | 三 3 | 九 9 | 四 4 | 零 0 | 五 5 | 二 2 | 七 7 | 八 8 | 六 6 |
If you remember the order of the numbers (3,9,4,etc.), then you will know what each tone sounds like, pitch-wise. Because 1 and 7 are the same pitch, they omitted it. If you want a visual of the nine tones, you can check out these links: here and here. Here's a video that contains the mnemonic, so you can have an audio (if you're an astute listener, you'll discover that the host speaks a lazy version of Hong Kong-styled Cantonese): And finally, if you wanna here what some of the basic numbers sound like in Canto, here's a song: Sources: www.tackching.edu.hk/st9465/canton.htminput.foruto.com/ccc/jyt/005.htmwww.edb.gov.hk/attachment/tc/curriculum-development/kla/arts-edu/nss/2_tone.pdfclevercantonese.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/cantonose-tones-part-1/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonesewww.chineseword.org/en2/27/3818.html
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Post by siuyiu on Jul 28, 2018 0:01:17 GMT
i stumbled upon these videos talking about cantonese dieci! enjoy! NOTE: i'd originally posted these to the Chinese 101 thread, but since i started this new topic, i thought it more appropriate to move the post to this thread.
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Post by siuyiu on Jul 28, 2018 2:51:00 GMT
粵拼 Jyutping So, over the years, there have been attempts to develop a good romanisation (transliteration) system for Cantonese. In 1993, the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) finally came up with a system that minimizes overlaps of transliterations of words that, in English, seem to be homophones (i.e., same tonality) but are, in fact, different--sometimes very different! The LSHK's system is now known as Jyutping. For each Chinese character, its Jyutping format is divided into four parts: beginning consonant 聲母, middle vowel 韻母, ending 韻尾, and tone 聲調. For example, coeng1. (By the way, the colour-coding is not part of the system--I'm merely using colour to illustrate the parts.) Here's a list of the beginning consonants (if they exist for the word--some start with the vowel, just like how English words can start with consonants or vowels): b, | p, | d, | t, | g, | gw, | k, | kw, | z, | c, | m, | n, | ng, | f, | l, | h, | s, | j, | w |
Please note that "j" is pronounced like "y" in English when it is used as a consonant. Now I haven't looked into the system indepth, so I'm assuming the order of the consonants is related to the frequency they appear in Cantonese (otherwise, why not use the English alphabetical order?). Here's a list of the middle vowels--and this is where they've really refined the system to minimize overlaps: Finally, here's a list of the endings (a mixture of English consonants and vowels): Here is a very useful chart that summarizes all the available transliterations in the Jyutping system--note that it has combined the vowels and endings together for convenience. The LSHK has also produced an online resource that allows you to look up Chinese characters using the Jyutping system. Link here. Finally, if anyone is interested in the differences in the various romanisation systems, you can have a look here. Here's an example of how the new system is better than one of the older systems: old system word: cheung Chinese words of different tonalities that use the same romanisation: 長 唱 昌 搶 Jyutping system: coeng1 associated Chinese word: 昌 Jyutping system: coeng2 associated Chinese word: 搶 Jyutping system: coeng3 associated Chinese word: 唱 Jyutping system: coeng4 associated Chinese word: 長 And here's a video that discusses Jyutping (it's in Cantonese): sources: cantolounge.com/jyutping-chart/www.chineselanguage.org/content/?pageID=book:15humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-can/cantonese.ca/romanization.php(P.S. this system is very new to me--as in i learned about it this week!--so, i doubt i will be adopting it anytime soon. for my various lists and whenever i write Canto, i'll be using the old romanisation system. maybe one day i'll make the switch!)
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Post by siuyiu on Jul 28, 2018 3:38:43 GMT
two videos talking about some characteristic Canto expressions:
a YT user, tom lee, has produced a series of lessons to teach cantonese pronounciations and incorporating jyutping:
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Post by galvatron prime on Jul 28, 2018 6:09:57 GMT
siuyiu Are you Cantonese ? Is majority of Chinese in North America are Cantonese clan? In South East Asian like Malaysia and Singapore ,Hokkien are the majority clan while Cantonese is 3rd clan . I heard that Cantonese lost by single vote to Mandarin when China choose which dialect to become Chinese language after the overthrow of Qing dynasty in 1911,is this true,?
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Post by siuyiu on Jul 28, 2018 6:24:17 GMT
siuyiu Are you Cantonese ? Is majority of Chinese in North America are Cantonese clan? In South East Asian like Malaysia and Singapore ,Hokkien are the majority clan while Cantonese is 3rd clan . I heard that Cantonese lost by single vote to Mandarin when China choose which dialect to become Chinese language after the overthrow of Qing dynasty in 1911,is this true,? 1. yes i am 2. those who first settled in north america were mostly from guangdong and fujian provinces; a second major wave were the taiwanese; nowadays, with the huge migrations of people from mainland, there are a lot of mandarin-speaking people in north america, and they are from all over china. i haven't looked up numbers, so there may still be more cantonese and hokkien in north america compared to taiwanese and mainlanders (sorry, because i don't know which areas they come from, i'm lumping them together for now), but the proportions are getting smaller all the time. 3. that's interesting that majority are hokkien in SE Asia! i know there are a lot in india as well, compared to cantonese 4. yes, that's what i've been told as well. i don't have any historical sources to verify the story, but it's at least an interesting story if it turns out not to be fact! honestly, i think they chose wisely to use mandarin. i don't agree with the simplified text system, but i don't even want to imagine how much more butchered cantonese would sound in other dialects--it really IS harder to wrap your tongue around it compared to mandarin. 5. do you mind me asking what clan you belong to? if you've told me in the past and i've forgotten, my apologies!
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Post by galvatron prime on Jul 28, 2018 6:42:37 GMT
siuyiu I am Cantonese and Hokkien,my dad was Cantonese while my mom is Hokkien. The Hokkien Chinese who marry local Malaysia population know as Baba-Nyonya,however they don,t not convert to Islam unlike now. Cantonese is mostly spoken in Kuala Lumpur Chinatown even the majority are Hokkien. Just image,if Cantonese was chosen as Chinese language,all the mainland China drama will be in Cantonese and even Singapore could follow this tread. Then only left Taiwan to produce Mandarin drama. Do you think so?
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Post by siuyiu on Jul 28, 2018 6:49:12 GMT
@galvatron interesting! do you speak both dialects? what does "baby-nyonya" mean (i suspect it's not complimentary). well, in terms of what dialect mainland dramas would speak, even if they were in canto, doesn't necessarily mean they'd be better. i'm not entirely sure, but historically, it would have been the taiwanese predecessors of the guomindang who would've been part of the voting process that chose mandarin over cantonese. it wasn't the communist party who made that vote; they just chose to continue using it. any historians on the boards can correct me if i'm mistaken!
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Post by yenchin on Jul 28, 2018 8:42:01 GMT
The Cantonese vs Mandarin vote is an urban myth. Initially, a committee consisting of representatives from all the provinces was set up to vote for the pronunciation of 6,500 words. The result was a language which was "something like Peking Mandarin but had a lot of Southern China dialect characteristics".
The result was controversial and the government discarded it and set up a committee consisting of 6 linguists, and after a lot of discussion the result was the Peking Mandarin based language we know today.
(To be frank, this story sounds like something fishy was behind it, regardless of how professional the linguists were)
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Post by reinafu on Jul 28, 2018 14:57:05 GMT
two videos talking about some characteristic Canto expressions: a YT user, tom lee, has produced a series of lessons to teach cantonese pronounciations and incorporating jyutping: Thanks a lot for all these posts, but really, it's too difficult for me !!
While looking at one of your videos form this guy Tomy, I found this one in Mandarin, and I'm very proud of me, becaue I almlost understood all what she saw saying when comparing the Cantones words to the Mandarin ones !! And I even recognized some Cantonese sentences I'm used to hear when watching old Cantonese movies !
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Post by reinafu on Jul 28, 2018 15:03:53 GMT
siuyiu Are you Cantonese ? Is majority of Chinese in North America are Cantonese clan? In South East Asian like Malaysia and Singapore ,Hokkien are the majority clan while Cantonese is 3rd clan . I heard that Cantonese lost by single vote to Mandarin when China choose which dialect to become Chinese language after the overthrow of Qing dynasty in 1911,is this true,? I always hear about Hokkien and I even have some Yang Li Hua's Hokkien dramas, but what is it actually ? Is it how is called Taiwanese language ? I'm too busy to have searched the meaning of this word, sorry...
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Post by reinafu on Jul 28, 2018 15:07:31 GMT
Frankly, I'm super happy that it's Mandarin language that have been chosen, because if I had to watch all the series I'm fond of only in Cantonese language, it would be very difficult for me to understand what's going on in the plot. It's already difficult to understand the old Connie Chan, Shih Kien and so on movies in Cantonese, as well as the old RTV and ATV or TVB dramas that don't have any Mandarin language, so, if I can find them in Mandarin, it's just the level before the graal, for me, the graal being to find them with english subtitles !!
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Post by reinafu on Jul 28, 2018 15:09:11 GMT
Just a question that has nothing to do with the thread : how come that when I quote someone, I'm able to use the smileys in my answer, but when I don't quote and just post a quick reply, I can't use any smileys in my answer ?
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Post by siuyiu on Jul 28, 2018 17:45:31 GMT
The Cantonese vs Mandarin vote is an urban myth. Initially, a committee consisting of representatives from all the provinces was set up to vote for the pronunciation of 6,500 words. The result was a language which was "something like Peking Mandarin but had a lot of Southern China dialect characteristics". The result was controversial and the government discarded it and set up a committee consisting of 6 linguists, and after a lot of discussion the result was the Peking Mandarin based language we know today. (To be frank, this story sounds like something fishy was behind it, regardless of how professional the linguists were) thanks for clarifying this point! i have to agree that it'd be too oversimplistic to decide on a national language thusly.
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