Modern Cantonese

memories of a mother tongue

Cantonese has enjoyed a long history of semi-independent development since the Qin (Ch’in) Dynasty. [1] As a result, modern Cantonese retains many traits like tones, words and expressions from the ancient Chinese language. This makes it a fun-filled experience exploring the ancient wisdom hidden behind this popular dialect among overseas Chinese. As Cantonese is also Flying’s mother tongue, it becomes even more compelling for me to preserve some knowledge here online!

Due to the central government’s policy to promote Mandarin Chinese nationwide (and to eradicate all other dialects), youngsters in Guangzhou (Canton) are no longer taught how to write or even speak proper Cantonese. The standard of Cantonese among young people has been deteriorating, despite the fact that Cantonese remains a very strong dialect both locally in Guangzhou and globally among Chinese communities overseas. One of the signs is that many young people no longer know or understand quite a fair bit of dialectal expressions used by their grandparents. Another rather obvious sign is the use of written Cantonese on the Internet, where most Cantonese-speaking web sites contain at least a couple of misused characters, if not many more.

Although UNESCO officially declared Cantonese a language in 2009, the debate of how to preserve Cantonese as a cultural relic will continue on in mainland China. Until the time comes that the powerful central government recognizes the importance of such movement, the heavy responsibility of cultural continuation will rest on us Cantonese speakers!

Flying has collected some really elementary references on Cantonese here. Hope they will be of use for those who are keen on improving their Cantonese fundamentals.

Note: These pages are being updated from time to time. Please feel free to provide any feedback (Zmx5aW5nQGZseWluZy13Lm5ldA==) to help me further improve the content or the format of them.

Friendly Links

Canton 168 - 廣東一路發

Modern Cantonese

memories of a mother tongue

Pronunciation & romanization schemes

Cantonese characters disambiguated

Imaginative Cantonese ideophones

Cantonese two-part folk wisecracks

Cantonese nursery rhymes

Cantonese tongue twisters

《粤讲粤过瘾》

Friendly Links