Modern Cantonese

Flying’s 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 read, 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.

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.

• Pronunciation & romanization schemes
• Cantonese characters disambiguated
• Interesting Cantonese phrases
• Imaginative Cantonese ideophones
• Two-part allegorical sayings in Cantonese
• Cantonese nursery rhymes
• Cantonese tongue twisters