Is Cantonese ancient Chinese?

Cantonese is a traditional ancient Chinese.

Here are the details.

Cantonese, also known as Cantonese, Guangfu dialect or vernacular, is a kind of tonal language and belongs to Sino-Tibetan language family. It is widely used in central and western Guangdong and western Guangxi in southern China, as well as some countries and regions in Hong Kong, Macao and Southeast Asia, as well as overseas Chinese communities. Its name comes from China's ancient appellation "Yue" or "Yue" to the south. There are differences in language classification between China and the West. Most scholars in China advocate that Cantonese should be classified as a Chinese dialect, while most scholars in other countries advocate that Cantonese and Putonghua (represented by Putonghua) should be juxtaposed as an independent language.

The main features of Cantonese

A large number of ancient China components have been preserved.

This is manifested in pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and so on. Phonologically, Cantonese retains many archaic sounds. For example, the two words "I" and "Hunger" in Cantonese both have nasal initials ng- (retaining the original sound of the Middle Ages). In terms of tone, Cantonese completely retains the tone pattern of Middle Ancient Chinese, namely, flat tone, rising tone, falling tone and entering tone, and also derives a tone of middle entering tone from entering tone, which is the most complete language to retain the entering tone of Middle Ancient Chinese and plays an important role in reading and studying ancient Chinese poems and other literary works. Cantonese contains six vowels-P, -t, -k, -n, -m and -ng, and there is no tongue curl, tongue curl and light tone in the northern dialect (these characteristics of the northern dialect were developed after the Middle Ages, and Cantonese did not follow these changes). In terms of vocabulary, Cantonese retains more ancient words with quaint wording. In the northern dialect, these ancient words have been abandoned or rarely used. For example, in Cantonese, "sticky" means "stork" and "police officer" means "police officer". Many words in Cantonese, including modal particles, can be found directly in China ancient books. For example, the modal particle "taboo" in Guangzhou dialect is often used at the end of a sentence (now it is often written as "taboo"). See the Book of Songs, Uncle Zheng Fengshu, "Uncle is good at shooting taboos, but also good at preventing taboos". Another example is the "earth-making stove" (eating hot pot), which is an ancient cooker; "tooth smoke" (that is, "cliff smoke", which means danger, and in ancient Chinese it means "smoke from the kitchen on the cliff", which means "hut on the cliff"-naturally it is very dangerous); "Xixi" (now Cantonese means "making trouble" and "making trouble"; It comes from an ancient book that describes the sound of clothes walking in water wet-imagine the taste of walking in water, and it is not difficult to find vivid Cantonese words). Grammatically, post-modifiers, adding an "A" in front of a person's name to express intimacy, and turning "rooster" into "rooster" in turn are the heritage of ancient China.

Keep more bottom components of ancient South Vietnam.

The Han people who moved south to Lingnan in ancient times lived together with the "South Vietnamese" aborigines for a long time, and their languages, cultures, customs and other aspects unconsciously infiltrated each other. Cantonese has elements of both ancient Chinese and ancient South Vietnam, which is the result of the mutual integration of the two ethnic groups. Modern Cantonese still contains many elements of ancient "South Vietnam", mainly in vocabulary. For example, in Cantonese, "you" means "this", "Wu" means "no", "shrimp" means "bullying" and "bian" means "where". This is the legacy of the bottom word of Ancient Vietnamese. The foundation of ancient Vietnamese is very important in Cantonese. If it is removed, Cantonese will be seriously "disabled" and cannot normally realize the language function of expression and communication.

Absorb more foreign words

Cantonese loanwords mainly come from English. In recent decades, Cantonese in Hong Kong has absorbed a large number of loanwords, which has influenced Cantonese-speaking areas in Guangdong. Many of these loanwords are not absorbed by Mandarin. For example, "store" is spoken in Mandarin. Some have absorbed Mandarin but translated it differently. For example, the "salad" in Mandarin is translated into Cantonese. Cantonese translation of many foreigners' names is also very different from Mandarin. For example, the current US President George W. Bush is translated into "Bush" in Mandarin, and Hong Kong people are translated into "Bush". Cantonese translation is more similar to English pronunciation.

Since1980s, with the increasing communication between residents in Cantonese areas such as Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta, many Cantonese loanwords, such as "bus" and "tip", have gradually entered Mandarin. Sometimes, these words are distorted when they are absorbed by Mandarin. For example, "taxi" in Cantonese (short for "taxi", which is not common in Hong Kong) is absorbed by Putonghua as "taxi".

English words are often used directly in Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong. For example, "file" is usually used (if it is pronounced as "fai-lo", it will be written as "quick work" in stationery stores); Police or teachers are called "A sir" (female police officers are called "Madam" and female teachers are called "Miss"), overtime is called "OT" (from English Over-time) and so on. Although many English pronunciations are translated into Chinese characters, Hong Kong people sometimes use English words to express words directly, such as "feel" instead of "feel", and there are no related Chinese characters to express pronunciation. It is worth noting that in order to adapt to the rhythm of Cantonese, feel is often pronounced less and loses the end of L, while fax is pronounced "fea-si" to emphasize the end. This mixed Chinese and English idiom is very popular in Hong Kong, and it is gradually increasing in Cantonese-speaking areas in Guangdong Province.

Have a large number of unique vocabulary

In the development of Cantonese, there are many unique words, some of which are still in use today, which has become another feature of Cantonese. More than 50% of the words in everyday language are different from those in Mandarin. In the field of science and technology, the difference is relatively low, less than 10%.

Unique sentence patterns and grammar

There are many inversions of modifiers and many special sentence patterns in Cantonese grammar. For example, "no wonder" in Mandarin; It is called "what is strange" or "what is strange" in Cantonese. Another example is "I come first" in Mandarin; Cantonese means "I go first"; "How are you recently" in Mandarin, "How are you" in Cantonese, and so on.

The pronunciation system is very complicated.

Cantonese has a rather complicated tone system, which is quite different from Mandarin (Mandarin dialect). In Cantonese, the entering tone of ancient Chinese is quite well preserved, and it is also divided into middle entering from yin entering and yang entering. Standard Cantonese has nine tones, namely, flat tone, rising tone, rising tone, falling tone, disyllabic, disyllabic, disyllabic, disyllabic, disyllabic, disyllabic and disyllabic.

The writing system of Cantonese

Modern Cantonese generally adopts the modern Chinese vernacular writing system which appeared in the early 20th century in formal occasions, and its grammar and vocabulary are almost the same as written Mandarin. The grammar, vocabulary and expression of this vernacular Chinese are quite different from those of Cantonese, but it seems that people have basically become accustomed to this difference and have not felt great inconvenience. But when people read this vernacular in Cantonese, they generally don't read it literally. Readers will get used to adjusting literal translation sentences according to Cantonese grammar, vocabulary and language and repeating them in Cantonese.

In order to be close to the people, the mass media will add a lot of Cantonese words from time to time. Some magazines will adopt another writing system of Cantonese, and a large number of them will be written according to Cantonese grammar and terminology, which is difficult for China users who don't know Cantonese to understand. Newspapers will take a compromise approach, mainly written in Mandarin and vernacular, but in dialogues and introductions, Cantonese dialogues will be written in Cantonese vernacular, which will make the articles more vivid and will not be distorted when translated into Chinese vernacular.

Cantonese

Guangdong dialect film (standard Guangdong)

Cantonese pronunciation

Nanfanshun dialect

Dongguan dialect

(Modern) Hong Kong Dialect

Siyi dialect

Movies in Levin dialect

Southern Guangxi dialect

Wu Chuanhua

Jiadan dialect

Guangdong dialect movies

Cantonese pronunciation

Guangzhou dialect, also known as "Guangzhou dialect", is a typical representative of Cantonese, but Guangfu dialect itself is constantly changing and developing. Before 1949, the words used in Guangzhou dialect were quaint and less influenced by the northern dialect.

Nanfanshun dialect

Guangzhou itself is composed of Panyu and a part of the South China Sea, so Guangzhou dialect can actually be regarded as a special case of Nanfanshun dialect. The dialects of Guangzhou, Panyu and Nanhai are similar, but the pronunciation of many words in Shunde is different from other places, such as: "concave" is not pronounced [l? P] and read [n? p]； Eating is not called eating rice, but eating rice.

Zhongshan dialect

Shiqi dialect is mainly popular in Shi Qi District, Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province. It is similar to Guangzhou dialect, but not the same. Compared with Guangzhou dialect, the names or generic terms of some things have their own uniqueness. Shiqi people in Zhongshan can understand and speak standard Guangzhou dialect, but Guangzhou people or Hong Kong people may not be able to speak accurately and fully understand Shiqi dialect. For example, in Guangzhou dialect, Shiqi dialect also uses "sleep" (meaning sleep), but it is generally called "sleep". Touxian in Guangzhou dialect is also used in Shiqi dialect, but it is often called Maoxian. In addition, there are some differences in accent between Shiqi dialect and Guangzhou dialect.

Hong kong dialect

Before 1949, Hong Kong dialect had a strong Cantonese-Hakka mixed accent because of the mixed subject and object (that is, Hakka dialect was influenced by the tone and vocabulary of Guangfu dialect, and vice versa). Among them, Jintian dialect is the representative, but this accent only exists among the elderly people in Hong Kong today.

After 1949, a large number of lazy sounds began to appear in Hong Kong dialect, among which nasal sounds disappeared (that is, n/l is indistinguishable) and W- awkward sounds disappeared most obviously. The new generation of young people generally read "you" [nei] and "I" [ngo] as [lei] and [o]. Misread "Guo" as "[gok]" and "Guo" as "Geh". This phenomenon seems to be related to a large number of foreign immigrants. For them, the pronunciation of n/l is not very different, and in most cases, confusing the two will not bring serious communication obstacles. Therefore, when they come to Hong Kong to learn this new dialect, they often give up what is difficult and take what is easy, thus diluting some indistinguishable pronunciation differences. This is also called "immigration theory", and this phenomenon has also appeared in the evolution of desktop Mandarin and American English.

However, before the 1980s, the mass media still tried their best to avoid lazy voices in radio and TV programs. To this day, there are still Hong Kong linguists who criticize lazy pronunciation many times and put forward the activity of "correcting pronunciation". However, the lazy voice seems to be the characteristic of Cantonese in Hong Kong. In most mass media and singers' performances, lazy voices are regarded as "fashionable" and "fashionable" accents. But on the whole, Hong Kong dialect and Guangzhou dialect are still very close.

English is more popular in Hong Kong. In the past, Hong Kong usually came into contact with foreign new things before the mainland. In the past, the lower classes who didn't know English spelled everyday English words in Cantonese, so English loanwords in Cantonese are very common in Hong Kong. For example, the floor coiler is called foreman, the brake is called brake, the bearing is called bearing, the strawberry is called strawberry, and so on. Many old people still refer to stamps as stamps and insurance as insurance. These authentic expressions may confuse foreign users in China.

Dongguan dialect

Luoguang dialect

It is distributed in Zhaoqing, Sihui, Luoding, Guangning, Huaiji, Fengkai, Deqing, Yunan, Yangshan, Lianxian and Lianshan. Represented by Zhaoqing dialect.

Although all the phonetics and vocabulary are close to Guangzhou dialect, the intonation still retains the characteristics of the early ancient saying. For example, the high and low key of Yin Ping Tone is obviously different from that of Gao Pingtiao Tone, and the tone of Yin Ping Tone is biased (the tone value is similar to the fourth tone of Putonghua). There is almost no prevalent lazy sound in Cantonese dialect. For example, all words that do not start with the vowel [i] are prefixed with initials [ng], ke [ngo 1], short [ngai2], sub [ngaa3], love [ngoi3] and evil [ngok3]. The sounds [n] and [l] are completely different.

Siyi dialect

Siyi dialect refers to the dialects of Xinhui, Enping, Kaiping and Taishan, among which Taishan dialect is the representative. Half of Zhuhai people speak Cantonese (especially in Doumen area), while other areas use Xiangshan Cantonese. The pronunciation of Siyi dialect is very different from that of Guangzhou dialect.

Movies in Levin dialect

Levin dialect is mainly distributed in Yangjiang and Leizhou Peninsula.

Rock slices in southern Guangxi

Mainly distributed in southeastern Guangxi. Take the county in northeast Guangxi to Nanning and Pingxiang in south Guangxi as the dividing line. Cantonese is mainly spoken in the southeast of Guangxi, accounting for almost one-third of the total area of Guangxi; Mandarin is mainly spoken in the northwest of the line. Cantonese in Guangxi is similar to Cantonese in Guangzhou, and everyone can understand it. However, in the early days, some Cantonese residents moved into ethnic minority areas and absorbed ethnic minority language elements, forming a dialect that is completely different from Guangzhou dialect, such as Goulou Cantonese. It mainly includes Yongxun Cantonese, Wuzhou Cantonese, Goulou Cantonese and Qinlian Cantonese. The classification is as follows:

Yongxun Cantonese (Nanning Dialect)

Close to Wuzhou Cantonese. Mainly popular in towns with convenient transportation on both sides of Yongzhou and Zhou Xun, such as Nanning, Yongning, Chongzuo, Ningming, Hengxian, pingnan county and parts of Liuzhou. Take Nanning as the representative point.

Wuzhou Cantonese (Wuzhou Dialect)

Very close to Guangzhou dialect. They are mainly distributed in Wuzhou City, Daan, Danzhu and Wulin in Pingnan County, Jintian Town in Guiping County and Cangwu County, and Hexian County (now Hezhou) and its vicinity. The internal differences are very small. Represented by Wuzhou dialect, the phonetic system has 2 1 initials and 46 finals.

Goulou Cantonese (Yulin Dialect)

Mainly distributed in Yulin and Wuzhou (except Pingnan County and Guiping County) 13 counties and cities. The phonology is complex, with 10 tones. There are rare voiced initials B and D in other dialects of Cantonese. The endings of many words are lost, such as "two" pronounced as [lar]. And the vocabulary is also very distinctive. It is very different from Guangzhou dialect, so it is difficult for both of them to communicate.

Qinlian Cantonese (Qinlian Dialect)

It is basically the same as Yongxun Cantonese, with little internal difference. Mainly distributed in Qinzhou City, Hepu County (formerly known as Lianzhou), Pubei County, Fangcheng County, Lingshan and Beihai City.

Wu Chuanhua

Distributed in Wuchuan City and Zhanjiang City, Guangdong Province.

Jiadan dialect

The egg family is a self-proclaimed "Cantonese on the water". Egg talk, also known as water talk, is widely used in houses, ships, Guangdong and Guangxi.