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krisbrown1979
Joined: Fri Feb 29, 2008 12:34 pm
Posts: 1
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 im interested in learning cantonese and i wanted to know are characters the same for conatonese and ive studied spanish, yoruba, and I have friends that speak japanese, korean, and even ancient greek.
Would the characters be the same for cantonese and mandarin? if not what are they called and what is the differance?
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| Fri Sep 12, 2008 12:34 pm |
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Yuxin Y
Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2008 12:34 pm
Posts: 1
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Re: im interested in learning cantonese and i wanted to know are characters the same for conatonese Yes, the characters are essentially the same, except that Mandarin used in China and Singapore etc. has simplified characters, and the characters in Cantonese and those used in Taiwan are the traditional ones.
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| Fri Sep 12, 2008 12:34 pm |
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katwalker
Joined: Thu Jul 03, 2008 12:34 pm
Posts: 1
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Re: im interested in learning cantonese and i wanted to know are characters the same for conatonese My understanding is that they are very similiar, so much so that someone who can read Mandarin can read Cantonese. However, they sound very different.
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| Fri Sep 12, 2008 12:35 pm |
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Adam B
Joined: Wed Oct 03, 2007 12:35 pm
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Re: im interested in learning cantonese and i wanted to know are characters the same for conatonese The character set is the same, but Cantonese is a different language and thus has different word use from Mandarin. Cantonese is not a "dialect" of Chinese - it is a language within the Sinitic language family. Cantonese and Mandarin are about as closely related to one another as Italian is to Portuguese.
A fluent speaker of Mandarin should understand most Cantonese written material , but he might see characters he recognizes that don't make sense in the context. Don't let anyone tell you that the only difference between the two is pronunciation, and that they're actually the same language - that's rubbish.
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| Fri Sep 12, 2008 12:35 pm |
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sub
Joined: Mon Nov 19, 2007 12:35 pm
Posts: 1
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Re: im interested in learning cantonese and i wanted to know are characters the same for conatonese They are similar, but quite a number of them are different.
Meaning that, even though some characters are valid in Cantonese, they use other characters, which are only in Cantonese
such as:
? mou = which is 'does not have' or 'does not exist'
? mou, is non-existent in Chinese, it is only in Cantonese.
In Chinese, we use ?? mei2 you3 for the same meaning.
However, in formal Cantonese (in formal writings) ?? is valid though.
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| Fri Sep 12, 2008 12:35 pm |
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Wa Lao
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2008 12:35 pm
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Re: im interested in learning cantonese and i wanted to know are characters the same for conatonese generally they are the same. cantonese is a chinese dialect and as such, there are far more dialect symbols which does not exist or has no/different meaning in chinese.
for example, the sentence "who are you?"
in chinese it's "????" ( in chinese NI SHI SHUI, in cantonese LEI SEE SOI). the same sentence can be read out as cantonese, but cantonese simply don't ask in this manner. it still can be read using cantonese, but it's called "written cantonese". in cantonese, "?????" (in cantonese LEI HAI PIN WAI) is used. and in fact, the word ? does not exist in chinese at all. the word ? in chinese has a totally different meaning from spoken chinese.
words like ?(is, are), ?(look), ?(like this),?(don't have),?(no),?(think),?(he,she),?(be) and a lot more are called cantonese dialect symbols.
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| Fri Sep 12, 2008 12:35 pm |
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