Cantonese (the Language)

choi

本文通过一路BBS站telnet客户端发布

Mark MacKinnon, Mandarin pushing out Cantonese. Globe and Mail (Toronto),
Nov. 20, 2009.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/mandarin-pushing-out-cantonese/article1372429/
("Mandarin – a mixture of Beijing dialect and the Manchurian-inflected
language used in imperial circles during the Ming and Qing dynasties")

Note:
(a) Rao Yuansheng 饒原生, who authored 粵港口頭禪趣解 (廣州: 嶺南美術, 1992).
(b) Ching May-bo 程美寶
(c) To inflect (transitive verb) is defined as "to affect or alter
noticeably : influence <an approach inflected by feminism>"  www.m-w.com

My comment:
(a) I am surprised by the statement that Cantonese "is spoken by more than
70 million people worldwide, and is the third most-used language in Canada
after English and French."  More prevalent than Spanish?
(b) I can relate to the sentence that in Guangdong "students are often
punished for speaking Cantonese in class." That occurred in Taiwan during
the Chiang Presidents.
(c) Guangzhou's "population jumped from just over three million in 1980 to
an estimated 12 million today." I did not know it was such a small city by
population.
(d) I can appreciate this paragraph:

"Cantonese advocates insist that, rather than just another of China's many
dialects, their language is actually more flexible and precise than Mandarin
, partially because it has 59 vowel sounds to Mandarin's 23. They also argue
that classical Chinese poetry, much of which was written in Cantonese, only
sounds right in its original Cantonese."

I am a native speaker of Cantonese, which was the first language I learned
in Taiwan, from my family.

As far back as I can recall, Taiwanese would tirelessly told m
(i) Mandarin has four intonations while Taiwanese has seven and Cantonese,
nine (though fluent in all three languages, I am unsure if it is true; I
just speak them.) Incidentally English has only two.
(ii) Taiwanese are closer to ancient Chinese pronunciation, so much so that
Chinese poems that do not seem to have rhymes 韻 in Mandarin readily have
those when reading in Taiwanese.

(e) The report continued:

"Despite concerns over its future, Cantonese has actually fared better than
dozens of other regional dialects, such as Sichuanese or Shanghainese.

(f) I am glad to learn this fact from the report:

"Ironically, some believe it could just as easily have been Cantonese that
is now spoken by 1.3 billion people, with Mandarin on the ropes. Local
legend has it that the leaders of the 1911 revolution that overthrew the
Qing dynasty – many of whom were from Guangdong – had a heated debate over
what should be the official language of the new republic. Cantonese is said
to have lost out by only one or two votes.

--