Differences between Hong Kong Dialect and Cantonese

There are four differences between Hong Kong dialect and Cantonese:

1. Tone

Some linguists believe that there are two main differences between Hong Kong Cantonese and Guangzhou Cantonese. First, there are vowels. Some vowels in Hong Kong Cantonese are actually not found in Guangzhou Cantonese. Another point, which is more noteworthy, is tone.

As we all know, there are nine tones in Cantonese: Nine tones in Cantonese come from the floating circle of Hong Kong at 00:0000:05. In short, if both words are the first flat tones, Guangzhou people will pronounce both flat tones as 55-53. Usually the pronunciation is not 55 (black line) but 53 (gray line), which means that the tone is a little falling, which is very similar to the tone sandhi of Mandarin.

With more and more frequent exchanges between the two places, many new immigrants have brought the pronunciation habit of Guangzhou Cantonese to Hong Kong, and now some Cantonese in Hong Kong will also include words with a flat tone of 53.

2. Lazy voice

There are relatively many lazy sounds in Hong Kong-style Cantonese. Do you remember that Juanmei gave you a column of Cantonese lazy voice before? In Cantonese, the most classic lazy sound is that N and L are indistinguishable. For example, this is (ni 1 go3), not (li 1 go3) you: nei5. It is not the difficulty for Hong Kong people to distinguish these two initials, so that some friends in the south can read it clearly: "Grandma Liu asked Grandma Niu to buy durian milk".

Nasal ng laziness (I read O in ngo) is also very common. This initial is not only a difficult point for Hong Kong Cantonese to overcome lazy sounds, but also a difficult point for the pronunciation standards of Cantonese learners. In addition, the initial gw is lazy to become the initial G, and the initial P is lazy to become the initial B, which are also very common lazy sounds.

For example, zau, Guanggwang in Hong Kong, pronounced zau Pupou, speaks Tonghua waa, pronounced gwaa, and cooks bou in winter, so the next time you meet a friend in Hong Kong, humbly say, "The wax gourd I cooked is very ordinary, please forgive me", and don't think that others will cook soup for you.

However, this does not mean that there is no lazy sound in Cantonese in Guangzhou. Now the phenomenon of lazy voice in Lian Xiaoren in Guangzhou is increasing gradually. Therefore, avoiding lazy sounds as much as possible is the key to speaking Cantonese accurately.

3. Mandarin accent and regional accent

With the deepening of Putonghua education in Guangdong, foreigners moved to Guangzhou to study Cantonese, which also brought some changes to Cantonese in Guangzhou. Putonghua pronunciation is a common phenomenon among foreigners who have lived in Guangzhou for many years and can skillfully use Cantonese. Because they learn Cantonese in their daily life, some pronunciations have not been systematically studied and trained, and they are easily unconsciously confused with their own dialects or Putonghua.

This pronunciation is gradually spreading in Guangzhou, and the frequency of use of Putonghua is much higher than that of Cantonese. Gradually, some young people in Guangzhou will also have Mandarin pronunciation. For example, Rui seoi is pronounced si: Rui jeoi is pronounced si to save gau, and aid wun is pronounced Si: to save gau Yuan, and jyun is pronounced Si: Fiber cim. In addition, because Cantonese is across Guangdong and Guangxi, there will be pronunciation differences in different places, and people living in other Guangdong areas in Guangzhou are influenced by their local accents, which will also affect the pronunciation of Cantonese in Guangzhou.

4. Loanwords

The biggest and most intuitive difference between Guangzhou Cantonese and Hong Kong Cantonese should be the usage of vocabulary, which is "different terms" in the words of Hong Kong people.

Hong Kong Cantonese is greatly influenced by English due to historical factors, and loanwords are basically transliterated directly from English, while loanwords in Guangzhou Cantonese are usually translated into standard Mandarin and pronounced in Cantonese, such as "Chelsea" in Guangzhou and "Chellonese" in Hong Kong. Guangzhou Arsenal, Hong Kong Arsenal, Guangzhou Laser, Hong Kong Laser.

Language is constantly developing. With more and more exchanges between Hong Kong and the Mainland, Cantonese in the two places is also developing together. In the past, classic Hong Kong films and TVB dramas brought Hong Kong Cantonese to the mainland, and Hong Kong dialects such as "air conditioning" and "book position" have penetrated into the daily life of Guangzhou people.

Nowadays, more and more Putonghua words are integrated into Cantonese in Hong Kong, such as "tennis" instead of "tennis" and "check/check" instead of "check". Universities in Hong Kong are also gradually promoting "two languages (Chinese and English) and three languages (Hong Kong dialect, Mandarin and English)".

On the one hand, local Cantonese can be well inherited and developed, and at the same time, the two places can communicate better; On the other hand, there are always differences between daily spoken Cantonese and standard written Cantonese, which leads local students to mix Cantonese vocabulary and grammar or Europeanized sentence patterns in their writing. "Bilingualism and trilingualism" teaching can effectively make up for this limitation.

Extended data:

Hong Kong dialect, a kind of Cantonese, originated from Cantonese in Guangfu films and is highly close to Guangzhou dialect. It is the common language and writing of China Special Administrative Region. At present, the official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese and English, and the language policy of the SAR Government is "biliterate and trilingual", that is, Mandarin and English are used in writing and Cantonese, Mandarin and English are used in speaking.

Cantonese is the main language used by Chinese in Hong Kong, while English is the communicative language used by non-Chinese. Most residents in Hong Kong are not local aborigines, but immigrants from the Pearl River Delta. Many people who immigrate to Hong Kong from the Mainland or even other parts of the world will bring their mother tongue to Hong Kong. Besides, Hong Kong culture is also influenced by the trends all over the world. So the language you hear and see in Hong Kong is far more than Cantonese.

The standard Cantonese in Hong Kong (namely, being biliterate and trilingual-Cantonese+Putonghua+English) refers to Cantonese used by Hong Kong officials, media and urban areas, which is very close to Cantonese (with different words). The local dialect in Hong Kong is mainly Cantonese Wanbao dialect. Cantonese, Cantonese and Cantonese are the lingua franca of Hong Kong.

However, the mass media before 1980 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, lazy voice seems to have become a feature of Cantonese in Hong Kong. In most mass media and singers' performances, lazy voice is regarded as "fashionable" and "fashionable". But on the whole, Hong Kong dialect is still very close to Guangzhou dialect.

References:

Baidu encyclopedia-hong kong dialect