The difference between Cantonese and Mandarin.

First, the status is different. Mandarin is the national language and the legal communication language in formal occasions. Cantonese (also known as "Cantonese") is a dialect of Chinese.

Second, use different surfaces. Mandarin is spoken all over the country, and only two vast areas and Hong Kong and Macao speak Cantonese.

Third, the language itself is different. Including pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and so on.

Different pronunciations (including initials, finals, tones, etc. )

1. Different initials. The biggest difference is that Mandarin has rhyme zh, ch, sh, R, but Cantonese doesn't.

2. Different vowels. The biggest difference is that there are nasal vowels ending in M in Cantonese, vowels ending in B, D and G (i.e. entering vowels), but not in Mandarin.

3. Different tones. Mandarin has only four tones: flat tone, rising tone, rising tone and falling tone; Cantonese has nine tones: Yin Ping, Yangping, Yin Shang, Yang Shang, Yin Qu, Yang Qu, Shang Yin Ru, Xia Yin Ru and Yang Ru.

Second, the basic vocabulary is different. For example, Mandarin says "cry" and Cantonese says "shout"; Mandarin says "station" and Cantonese says "enterprise"; Mandarin says "sleep" and Cantonese says "training"; Say "look" in Mandarin and "look" in Cantonese; Mandarin says "eat" and Cantonese says "eat". Wait a minute.

The three grammars are different. Or the word order is different, such as saying "I'll go first" in Mandarin. Say "I'll go first" in Cantonese. Or use different function words, such as saying "I am reading" in Mandarin. In Cantonese, it means "I study hard." Wait a minute.

There are many differences. Due to the limited time, I can't elaborate, just say a rough idea.

Cantonese putonghua

Endure for a long time

the whole day

Fat man, fat man, fat man

A slip of the tongue stutters.

Pretty girl, pretty girl

1. Verb:

Cantonese putonghua

dislodge

guess

cycling

Gungun

draw

2. Pronouns:

Cantonese putonghua

I'll cut us.

Woka mine

What about this?

Gege that

Well, here you are.

3. Adverbs:

Cantonese putonghua

Uh, no.

No, no.

No need, no need.

You also know that.

Just now.

4. Adjectives:

Cantonese putonghua

Wei Shi Chan zui

Poor Yin Hegong

Solids and solids

Throat emergency

Average deposit

5. Prepositions:

Cantonese putonghua

Give, give, give.

will

Loudness coefficient

use

6. Quantifiers:

Cantonese putonghua

A dog, a dog.

A banana and a banana.

A banana comb and a banana.

A group of people

A puff of smoke

7. Conjunction:

Cantonese putonghua

If if.

Well, it's not just

Better, better

Or

anyway

8. interjection:

An exclamatory sentence is a word that expresses exclamation, call or response. It is generally not combined with other words, but it is a very independent part of speech. The interjection wolf in Cantonese and Mandarin is very different. For example, the word "wow", which is often used to express surprise, is interpreted as noisy in Putonghua and has no exclamation function. The most commonly used expressions of surprise in Mandarin are "vomit" and "ouch". Other common examples are as follows:

Cantonese putonghua

Scared. Hey

Oh, oh.

aha

Haha, hehe

Huh?

Hello.

squeeze

Guaba

That's all.

Because the above materials are also about the lexical differences between Mandarin and Cantonese to some extent, which is beyond the scope of our further study. We mainly discuss the syntactic differences between Mandarin and Cantonese.

3. Syntactic differences:

On the surface, it seems that the syntactic differences between Mandarin and Cantonese are not as great as those between pronunciation and vocabulary. But if we carefully observe and study, it is not difficult to find that there are also great differences between them, and they are regular and very interesting.

9. Word order differences:

Word order refers to the order of words. Word order here refers not to the order in which morphemes appear in vocabulary, but to the order in which parts of speech appear in sentence patterns. There are often differences in word order between Mandarin and Cantonese, which can be divided into the following categories:

1. Adverbs have different positions:

The difference between Mandarin and Cantonese in this word order is very obvious. In Mandarin, adverbs are always placed in front of verbs as adverbials, without exception. But in Cantonese, there are many adverbs that can be placed after verbs, such as:

Movement+vice (shape)+movement

Cantonese putonghua

Sorry, I can do it first. I'll go first.

How much? How much? Give more, why so little?

Talk less, talk more and make more mistakes. Talking less and talking more would be a big mistake.

Buried is slow. Wait for them. Let's take our time.

I will lock the door before you go out. I will lock the door before you go out.

2. Adjectives are in different positions

In Mandarin, adjectives are often used as predicates in nouns. But in Cantonese, there are also some adjectives, such as: more, less, bigger, and more. , often used as an attribute before a word, such as:

Form (definite)+name+form (predicate)

Cantonese putonghua

It doesn't matter if there are many people.

Business is good. Business is good.

Mr. Huang is a good man. Mr. Huang is very nice.

The wind is stagnant! The wind is too strong!

Today is really great. It is really crowded today.

3. The positions of two objects are different.

The object is a joint component of the verb. Sometimes a verb can take two objects, such as "He lent me two magazines." I "and" I "in" magazine "are dual objects. Mandarin and Cantonese are just opposite in the order of double objects. In Mandarin, the object that refers to a person comes first and the object that refers to a thing comes last, which constitutes a person (the object of a person) and a person (the object of a thing), while in Cantonese, the opposite is true. The object that refers to things comes first and the object that refers to people comes last, which constitutes people (object of things) and people (object of people). To put it simply, the double object exists in the form of "ancestors after things" in Putonghua, while it exists in the form of "ancestors after things" in Cantonese.

Subject+verb+object+person object Subject+verb+person object+object.

Cantonese putonghua

Give me a book. Give me a book.

He gave me money. He gave me money.

He lent me two magazines. He lent me two magazines.

Your name is Xiaohua. Call Xiaohua.

You write her a letter. You write him a letter.

4. In the negative form of verb-complement structure, the position of negative words is different.

In the negative form of verb-complement structure in Mandarin, the negative word "bu" usually comes after the verb, while in Cantonese, the negative word "hao" usually comes before the verb, for example:

Negative word+verb+negative word

Cantonese putonghua

I can't read these words clearly. I can't read those words clearly.

Training is too late for me. It's so noisy that I can't sleep.

I can't compete with them. We can't compete with them.

10. Differences in comparative sentences:

Adverbs in Cantonese comparative sentences are often added directly after verbal predicates to express comparison, such as adding "Guo" after "Gao" and "Da"; On the other hand, in Mandarin, "bi" is used to express comparison, and adverbs must follow verbs. For example:

A+ predicate+adverb +B+ bi +B+ adverb+predicate

Cantonese putonghua

I am taller than you. I am taller than you.

I am older than you. I am older than you.

You arrived fifteen minutes earlier than me. You came fifteen minutes earlier than me.

He handed in his papers before me, and so did he.

This year is better than last year. This year is better than last year.

1 1. The difference between judgments:

In Cantonese, "Li Jia" or "No Li Jia" are often used to express affirmation or negation, but in Mandarin, they cannot be translated as "Yes … Lai" and "No … Lai" because "Li" in Cantonese is only used to help us judge, not to clap the meaning of "Lai".

Cantonese putonghua

What is this? What is this? What is this?

Li Jia, a student of education department. He is a student.

This is a glass shelf. This is glass.

The doll is a ceramic shelf. This doll is ceramic.

12. Quantifier:

In Cantonese, quantifiers can often omit some morphemes without making others understand, such as:

Cantonese putonghua

12 120

Seventy-seven thousand

In addition, in Cantonese, when quantifiers are added to demonstratives, such as "you" and? ? ","Bo "and so on can be omitted, for example:

Cantonese putonghua

Eat well in the wild. These things are delicious.

What a good doll book. I am a stranger. He gave my brother a picture book.

This car is so beautiful. This car is very beautiful.

How much is this book? How much are these books?

Has the fire been put out? Has the fire been put out?

13. The sentence pattern of "you":

In Cantonese, "you" is often used to express the tone of emphasis. When answering questions, you often add "you" before the verb as a positive answer, and sometimes even answer "you" directly. But not in Mandarin. For example:

Cantonese putonghua

I called. Made a phone call.

Flowers are in full bloom. The flowers have already bloomed.

I took part in the competition. I took part in the competition.

With a cover. I brought an umbrella.

5. Summary:

In fact, it is impossible to explain the grammatical differences between Mandarin and Cantonese systematically and step by step with only a few thousand words. This paper only briefly describes the grammatical differences between Mandarin and Cantonese. In the phonetics, vocabulary and grammar of Mandarin and Cantonese, the grammatical difference is the smallest. It can be seen that studying the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese is actually a very profound knowledge. I hope this humble article can become an introduction to learning Mandarin and arouse your interest in learning Mandarin with me.

Section 9: How to learn Cantonese?

Learning a language is not an easy task. Northerners often say that "if you are not afraid of heaven, you are afraid that Cantonese will speak Mandarin." It can be seen that it is not easy for Cantonese people to learn Mandarin well. It's not that Cantonese people are slow, but it's just as difficult for northern people to learn Cantonese, even more difficult than Cantonese people to learn Mandarin. The main difficulty for Cantonese people to learn Putonghua lies in pronunciation, but they are familiar with the vocabulary and grammar of Putonghua, because people with secondary education are generally familiar with the vocabulary and grammar norms of their own language, but the difficulty for northerners to learn Cantonese lies not only in pronunciation, but also in vocabulary and grammar. Therefore, when you make up your mind to learn Cantonese, you must be mentally prepared.

The first step in learning Chinese is to train your ears and distinguish two different sounds. Different languages have different phonemes. When you learn Cantonese, at least half of the sounds are unheard of in your life. Most people are not sensitive to sounds other than their mother tongue, so it is not easy to distinguish them. For example, chicken gei 1 in Cantonese does not have this sound in Mandarin (E in Cantonese is different from E in Mandarin, which means short A sound), and it is usually confused with street gai 1. Pay attention to the difference between these sounds when learning.

The second step in learning Chinese is to practice your mouth. Sometimes you know how to pronounce that sound, but when you start to speak, you will unconsciously pronounce another sound or stutter. Why is there such a situation of "lip service but not reality"? It is because you are not proficient in the pronunciation of this language and your tongue is not flexible that your pronunciation will be unconsciously influenced by your mother tongue. The only solution is to train your mouth by speaking more.

The third step in learning Chinese is to train your eyes. When listening to others, we should not only listen to his voice, but also look at his mouth, how his mouth moves and what his mouth is like. For example, the pronunciation of "Dian" and "Dian" in Cantonese is very similar. The pronunciation of point din2 is not closed, and the pronunciation of point dim2 is closed. If you can see the difference, you won't confuse the two voices.

Every language has its own special expression. It is not enough to know the pronunciation of words by optics, but also to know what words to express. For example, if you want to buy a water chestnut in Guangzhou, I'm afraid you can't buy it if you say "water chestnut", because Cantonese call it "horseshoe", even if he knows that water chestnut is a horseshoe, he will feel very uncomfortable. For example, when Cantonese people talk about time, they call five minutes "one word" and "4: 45" as "4.9 words" or "4.9". If you don't understand, you may mistake it for 4.9. Therefore, to learn a language, we must see more, listen more and speak more. To learn Cantonese, you can read some Cantonese reference books, talk and consult with Cantonese speakers, listen to Cantonese songs or watch Cantonese movies and TV series. It may be better to combine study with entertainment.

In short, there is no shortcut to learning a language, only one pains, one gains.