Are Cantonese and Cantonese exactly the same thing?

Before the British came to Hong Kong, the local natives in Hong Kong spoke Cantonese "Weitou dialect" and Hakka dialect. After the opening of the port, a large number of immigrants from the Pearl River Delta, other parts of Guangdong and even other provinces (especially Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang) entered, and the population structure of Hong Kong also changed. Today, about 90% of Hong Kong people are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, among whom Cantonese is the most spoken. Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong. Therefore, Cantonese with Hong Kong accent has gradually become the mainstream language in Hong Kong. It can be said that Cantonese with Hong Kong accent is an extension and development of Cantonese. After 1949, due to the interruption of the traditional connection between Guangzhou and Hong Kong, Cantonese with Hong Kong accent developed independently, which led to some subtle differences in vocabulary and accent.

Cantonese is just a scientific name. Guangdong/Guangxi people generally call Cantonese "vernacular", while Hong Kong people call Cantonese "Cantonese". As Cantonese is the standard accent, officials generally address Cantonese in Cantonese. Whether it's Cantonese or Vernacular or Cantonese, it's actually the same thing.

Cantonese in Guangdong Province itself has many different accents. Relatively speaking, Cantonese with Guangzhou accent is very close to Cantonese with Hong Kong accent (because Cantonese with Hong Kong accent itself is developed from Cantonese). Cantonese accent is slightly high and crisp, while Hong Kong people's voice tone is relatively low and mild. In addition, Hong Kong people have some words made by themselves.

Generally speaking, although there are some differences in accents between the two places, the differences are still quite small. People who are not familiar with Cantonese can't tell the difference between Cantonese and Cantonese in Hong Kong.

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Turn to an article written by Hong Kong people. The author of this article is Pei, a native of Hong Kong and a native of Zhejiang.

Before the Anti-Japanese War, the population of Hong Kong was about 800,000. After the large-scale fall of the mainland, especially Guangdong Province, due to the influx of refugees, the population once soared to 1.6 million (1.94 1). During the fall of Hong Kong, the population dropped to 600,000 due to the forced return policy of the Hong Kong and Japanese governments. After peace, in addition to those who were forced to return home, there were a large number of refugees who flooded into Hong Kong to escape the civil war. By 1946, the population had climbed to1600,000, returning to the pre-war level. By 1949, the mainland regime changed hands in an all-round way, and the refugee tide reached its peak. Hundreds of thousands of people flood into Hong Kong every month, and the population of 1950 is close to 2.4 million.

195 1 year, in order to prevent people from fleeing, the border was closed. It was not until 1979 that the border was reopened. This nearly 30-year blockade period has interrupted the traditional links between Hong Kong and the Mainland, especially Guangzhou.

The influx of refugees into Hong Kong and the long-term border blockade are two important historical backgrounds for the formation of Hong Kong accent.

Although a large number of refugees in Hong Kong come from Guangdong Province, there are also many refugees from other places. Under the impact of foreign refugees, the proportion of Cantonese population in Hong Kong dropped to 48% in the early 1950s, just over half. The remaining 52% of the population speak various dialects, mainly Chaozhou dialect, Hakka dialect, Shanghai dialect, Minnan dialect and Putonghua.

Those non-Cantonese ethnic groups also existed before the war, and they were able to maintain their dialect status in Hong Kong for a long time. That's because all ethnic groups in Hong Kong had the habit of "intermarriage" before the war. For example, in chaozhou people's family, children can't find a Chaozhou girl in Hong Kong, and they would rather go back to their hometown and marry a girl who took her to Hong Kong. The same is true of Shanghainese, who are extremely reluctant to marry Guangfu people, and the families of Guangfu people do not like to marry Shanghainese. Because of this psychology, small dialects before the war can form their own small communities and keep their own dialects in the communities.

After the border blockade, the new social environment and conditions made people who used to speak various dialects switch to Cantonese. First, people of different nationalities live together and they need the same communication language. Although Cantonese is no longer half, it is still the dialect with the largest population and the greatest traditional influence. Therefore, people of different ethnic groups are used to using Cantonese as a communication language. In other words, if a chaozhou people meets a Shanghainese, it is very likely that he can speak Cantonese.

Another factor is that because of the border blockade, it is impossible for all ethnic groups to go back to their hometown to get married, so they can only find someone in Hong Kong. Especially the younger generation, when they meet in society, you also speak Cantonese, and I also speak Cantonese. I have no idea what the other person's family language is, so interracial marriage becomes normal. After the combination of two men and women with different family languages, for example, the husband speaks Hakka and the wife speaks Chaozhou dialect. After they form a new family, everyone can only speak Cantonese, and the children born will also speak Cantonese as their mother tongue.

Third, in the 1950s and 1960s, radio broadcasting began to be popularized, and every household could have a radio. Later, wireless TV started broadcasting and entered thousands of households. These mass media all speak Cantonese. In the past, Radio Television Hong Kong kept a small number of broadcasts in Hakka, Chaozhou and Mandarin, but it was cancelled in the 1970s due to too few listeners.

Fourthly, education in Hong Kong has always been divided into two systems: Chinese and English. Before the war, many Chinese schools taught in Mandarin (because they were all registered with the Ministry of Education of the National Government at the same time). This traditional connection disappeared after the border was blocked. Although many Chinese schools insisted on teaching in Putonghua at that time, the problem was that the acceptance of Chinese schools was much worse than before. A few pro-leftist Chinese schools don't care about using Cantonese, but most of them are used to communicating with teachers and students in Cantonese. The real point is that since the political power behind Chinese schools disappeared after the war, and English ability is the capital to make a living in Hong Kong, schools of all sizes have changed to English middle schools as a way to recruit students. The problem is that these schools simply do not have enough conditions to implement a complete English education. Therefore, for a long time, most "English schools" in Hong Kong only use English for textbooks, homework tests and school documents, and usually teach in Cantonese to make students understand. This situation did not change until after the reunification. This situation makes the actual communication language of the school completely Cantonese, so all young people educated in ordinary schools in Hong Kong will definitely speak Cantonese.

The overall performance of various situations in the world is that in the past 30 years, from the early 1950s to the late 1970s, with the free development of society, Cantonese has changed from a non-dominant language to a communicative language among ethnic groups, and its status has been further consolidated because the second generation of immigrants born in Hong Kong completely changed to Cantonese as their mother tongue. By the end of1970s, the second generation of refugees from all over Hong Kong (especially the baby boomers born in the early 1950s) had grown up. They all speak Cantonese, and at most they always use their own dialect with their elders at home. By the early 1980s, 95% of Chinese in Hong Kong had Cantonese as their main language. Today, the proportion has even risen to 98%, and even a large number of non-Chinese ethnic minorities, especially Portuguese and Indian, have switched to Cantonese.

If we understand this legendary language change in a generation, we can naturally understand how the Hong Kong accent was formed. In the 1950s, the Cantonese accent in Hong Kong was exactly the same as that in Guangzhou. However, due to the closure of the border in the next 30 years, and 52% of the non-Cantonese population in society will switch to Cantonese within one generation, it will naturally lead to phonetic variation. In fact, the rapid phonetic changes of Cantonese in Hong Kong over the past 30 years have made us clearly feel that what people said in those days was different from what we saw in black-and-white Cantonese movies in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, Cantonese in Hong Kong is still changing rapidly, resulting in new phonology commonly known as "lazy sound", such as "You" changing from "nei" to "lei" and "I" changing from "ngo" to "O". This topic has always attracted much attention in Cantonese studies.

My own family history is also a living example of the phonetic changes in Hong Kong. My family is from Shanghai, Zhejiang, and most of my members moved to Hong Kong before the Liberation War. My grandfather's generation only knew Zhejiang dialect and Shanghai dialect, and he couldn't speak Cantonese well with a strong accent. My parents' generation mainly speaks Cantonese, but Zhejiang dialect is still quite fluent. Their Cantonese has no obvious accent, but careful analysis will reveal many phonetic variations inherited from Wu dialect. As the third generation, Cantonese is my only mother tongue, but my Cantonese still inherits my parents' phonetic changes. Many people in Guangfu can clearly distinguish the sound, but I can't distinguish it at all. This is probably a microscopic example of phonetic changes.