How is non-standard Cantonese spoken by some mainland Chinese speakers different from "standard" pronunciation?

Question

As someone who's more or less a native Cantonese speaker, I've noticed that some speakers from mainland China (from Cantonese speaking areas) sound "weird", in that I could clearly notice a difference between them and Hong Kong speakers.

Unfortunately, I can't find a video on YouTube of some examples, but I know of Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong who attribute this to "鄉音". (I have most definitely seen something of the sort on some Hong Kong news channels before, but it's difficult to locate any specific clips.)

Is there anything that generally characterizes these deviations from the sort of Cantonese that might be spoken by Hong Kongers or is the potential "鄉音" influence impossible to generalize? (Some link to another analysis on the internet could also come in handy.)

This would seem relevant, but the difference I'm interested in is more of the difference between a subset of mainland speakers and other Cantonese speakers. For what it's worth, I have not seen the same differences among Chinese American Cantonese speakers with family from mainland China, and I know of mainland Chinese who essentially speak "properly". I am also not sure if this is a non-native speaker problem, particularly in areas like Shenzhen where Mandarin might be more heavily used. But at the very least, note that I am interested in non-standard pronunciation among some mainland Chinese in Cantonese speaking areas, and not, say, a Beijing Mandarin-speaker who knows some Cantonese.

Answer 1

Actually, HK's Cantonese is not the standard of Yue Chinese. The standard is in Guangzhou (and around, like Foshan). Second, there are many many dialects of Cantonese, and you could say that every village has its own variation. Even places like Panyu or Dongguan have their own dialect, and they are not so easy to understand. Tones are different, some vowels too. My favorite example is the local name of Dongguan, where 東 is pronounced somewhat akin to 登: dang1 gun2.

With migrations, it is now sometimes harder to find real local people, but there are still plenty around. And even my HK friends blink like deers in the headlights when faced with such people.

Taishanese people are spread around Guangdong, and speak both Taishanese and standard Cantonese, the way, more or less Sicilian people speak Sicilian and Italian. Taishanese is funny in the sense that it feels like Cantonese, but most of the time what you can hear is static.

Hakka people in Huizhou, Meizhou and around speak Cantonese quasi-natively, at least the older folks, but again they sound "off".

Lastly, you'll find in Guangdong a very large contingent of Guangxi people. When Shenzhen was first started, Guangxi people rushed there -- Guangxi is so poor and desolate that anywhere else sounded like a good deal to the locals... East Guangxi people speak a strange variant of Cantonese. The vowels are off, the tones seem random, they nasalize every second syllable, but somehow it's vaguely understandable. You might have heard Guangxi people.

Answer 2

Edit: Sorry that I misunderstood the question. I thought Maroon was talking about non-native Cantonese speakers.

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Most native Mandarin speakers have trouble handling the rising (上聲) and departing tones (去聲) in Cantonese. It is because Cantonese further differentiates them into high-rising (陰上), low-rising (陽上), high-level (陰去) and low-level (陽去). (Please refer to http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9B%9B%E8%81%B2#.E7.8E.B0.E4.BB.A3.E6.96.B9.E8.A8.80.E5.A3.B0.E8.B0.83.E5.AF.B9.E7.85.A7 for the exact tone contours.)

They also have difficulties pronouncing checked tones (入聲) as they are also absent from Mandarin. And, again, there are three levels of checked tones (陰入, 中入 and 陽入), making it even more difficult to manage.