Why don't Cantonese speakers write their own language?

Question

For me the most difficult thing about learning Cantonese has been that there are very few learning materials for foreigners (and I assume even for Chinese people). And even the materials that exist are all only regarding basic conversational topics. There is basically no Cantonese literature at all. When I learned French it was very helpful to be able to follow audiobooks of stories from writers like Voltaire. The closest thing is watching Hong Kong movies, but they speak quickly and the subtitles are in Mandarin not Cantonese.

Are there any Cantonese literature or audiobooks out there?

A question for those Cantonese of you out there: Why does it seem that Cantonese people are so unwilling the write their own language? I understand that if you write Cantonese then other Chinese will not be able to understand, but so what? That sounds like their problem.

For the Vietnamese we used to write everything in Classical Chinese (文言). Since then we've switched to writing in our own language. We like it and are not ashamed of it. I don't see why the Cantonese shouldn't do similarly.

I don't understand why Cantonese are fiercely defensive of their language and at the same time refuse to write it down.

Answer 1

Why not write in written Cantonese?

Cantonese speakers are not unwilling to write their own language. Nowadays, written Cantonese is often used in lyrics, instant messaging, social network, advertisements and billboards. It is also gaining public attention as the Government of China wants to ban it.

There is a Yue Wikipedia site containing 40,000+ articles written in Cantonese. However, written Cantonese is almost always used only in informal writings.

For formal writings, standard written Chinese is being used. It is taught in school to write in standard written Chinese (i.e. written Mandarin). It is because Mandarin was chosen as the basis for standard written Chinese as they had the largest number of speakers during the language reform.

No matter which dialect one spoke, one still wrote in standardised Mandarin for everyday writing. However, Cantonese is unique amongst the non-Mandarin varieties in having a widely used written form. (Wikipedia)

Standard written Chinese is understood by speakers of all varieties of Chinese. Even so, there are some variations in vocabularies in different countries (see example).

Standard written Chinese can be spoken in Cantonese.

(It is interesting to know that, historically, written Cantonese has been used in Hong Kong for legal proceedings in order to write down the exact spoken testimony of a witness, instead of paraphrasing spoken Cantonese into standard written Chinese.)

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Side reading: Language policy of Hong Kong

The language policy of Hong Kong is 兩文三語 (Bi-literacy and Tri-lingualism), which includes:

• Written: Chinese & English
• Spoken: Cantonese, Mandarin & English

Standard written Chinese is normally referred as "Chinese" (中文) or "written Chinese" (書面語) instead of "Mandarin Chinese".

For spoken Chinese (口語), Cantonese (Yue Chinese, namely 廣東話 / 粵語) is the de facto official spoken variety of Chinese in Hong Kong & Macau. It is influential in Guangdong province, and is widely spoken among overseas communities.

On the other hand, Mandarin Chinese (namely 普通話 / 國語 / 華語) is the official language of China & Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore.

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Further reading

Before the 20th century, the standard written language of China was Classical Chinese, which has grammar and vocabulary based on the Chinese used in ancient China, Old Chinese. However, while this written standard remained essentially static for over two thousand years, the actual spoken language diverged further and further away. Some writings based on local vernacular speech did exist but these were rare. In the early 20th century, Chinese reformers like Hu Shi saw the need for language reform and championed the development of a vernacular that allowed modern Chinese to write the language the same way they speak. The vernacular language movement took hold, and the written language was standardised as Vernacular Chinese. Because they had the largest number of speakers, Mandarin was chosen as the basis for the new standard.

The standardisation and adoption of written Mandarin pre-empted the development and standardisation of vernaculars based on other varieties of Chinese. No matter which dialect one spoke, one still wrote in standardised Mandarin for everyday writing. However, Cantonese is unique amongst the non-Mandarin varieties in having a widely used written form. Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong was a British colony isolated from mainland China, so most HK citizens do not speak Mandarin. Written Cantonese was developed as a means of informal communication. Still, Cantonese speakers must use standard written Chinese, or even literary Chinese, in most formal written communications, since written Cantonese may be unintelligible to speakers of other varieties of Chinese.

Historically, written Cantonese has been used in Hong Kong for legal proceedings in order to write down the exact spoken testimony of a witness, instead of paraphrasing spoken Cantonese into standard written Chinese. However, its popularity and usage has been rising in the last two decades, the late Wong Jim being one of the pioneers of its use as an effective written language. Written Cantonese has become quite popular in certain tabloids, online chat rooms, instant messaging, and even social networking websites; this would be even more evident since the rise of Localism in Hong Kong from the 2010s, where the articles written by those Localists media are written in Cantonese. Although most foreign movies and TV shows are subtitled in Standard Chinese, some, such as The Simpsons, are subtitled using written Cantonese. Newspapers have the news section written in Standard Chinese, but they may have editorials or columns that contain Cantonese discourses, and Cantonese characters are increasing in popularity on advertisements and billboards.

Written Cantonese advertising banner in Mainland China It has been stated that Written Cantonese remains limited outside Hong Kong, including other Cantonese-speaking areas in Guangdong Province; e.g., (Snow, 2004). However, colloquial Cantonese advertisements are sometimes seen in Guangdong, suggesting that written Cantonese is widely understood and is regarded favourably, at least in some contexts.

Some sources will use only colloquial Cantonese forms, resulting in text similar to natural speech. However, it is more common to use a mixture of colloquial forms and Standard Chinese forms, some of which are alien to natural speech. Thus the resulting "hybrid" text lies on a continuum between two norms: Standard Chinese, and colloquial Cantonese as spoken.

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Some Cantonese Learning Resources

• Cantonese Basic Course: https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/FSI/fsi-cantonese.html
• 粵語審音配詞字庫 http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-can/
• 《粵語音韻集成》電子版 http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Canton2/
• 粵語空中課堂 http://www.chiculture.net/0604/html/b05/0604b05.html
• 粵語網路課堂 http://www.ilc.cuhk.edu.hk/Chinese/pthprog1/index_flash.html
• 粵語學習中心 http://www.clc.com.hk/
• 俗語趣談 http://www.rthk.org.hk/elearning/lautinchi/index.htm
• 妙趣廣州話 http://ifiles.tvb.com/ifiles/fun/fun39.html
• 粵普字詞配對 http://www.chiculture.net/0603/html/d03/0603d03.html
• 樂在詞中 http://www.dragonwise.hku.hk/dragonwise_main/index.html

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Other References

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilingualism_in_Hong_Kong
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Chinese
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Cantonese

Answer 2

It's not really that Cantonese people are unwilling to write the language; It's simply because the language is very oral-oriented where many slangs are involves mainly for effectiveness purpose.

It's similar to English when people use phase like "What ya'll doing?", which you won't see on most learning material for English or CNN news. In fact, written cantonese is commonly used in instant messaging tools, like what Mathaholic wrote in the comment.

Here's some learning material from another post:
https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/FSI/fsi-cantonese.html.

As for being defensive of the language, it's because there are signs with chances of the language being...extinct. Just imagine when you speak English and your next generations are only lectured in French, whereas in a 100 years no one will speak English on Earth. It is a little exaggerating but it gives you an idea.

Answer 3

Awtho tradeetional Cantonaese haes been spaken fer a long tym, its spellin isna sae strict as in Mandarin, n aften hasna been teached at the schuil. Tradeeition haes it that the auld 文言文 was uised maist pairt in wrutten leid. Wrutten Cantonaese haes only been uised since the 20th yeirhunder, n resoorces aboot hou tae applee the leid in a conseestant mainer ar scairce. Wird order, dimeenuteeves n definit airtikils ar differin. Fer the maist pairt, thaim fowks that bruikit regional leid have haed no staudartised graimmar, leadin til mair speelin variation.

Answer 4

The modern written Chinese (白話文) is based on Mandarin, by the way of 我手寫我口 (I write what I say, 講乜寫乜).

Imagine a dialog:

we'll go for shopping, then have buffet, will you join?

no, my iPhone is dead, but i don't have money for repair, what can i do?

What do we say actually in Cantonese (講乜), if I write it down (寫乜):

我哋一陣去 shopping, 然後食 buffet, 你嚟唔嚟?

唔去啦, 部 iPhone 瓜咗, 又冇錢整, 點算?

Do you accept the above 2 lines as "written Cantonese"?

Then, is this an "English" sentence :-)

माफ गनुस्, why we need to pay for this haute-costume, cui bono?

Answer 5

I'm a born Cantonese and I live in Hong Kong.

The simple answer for not writing in Cantonese is because: it is not as useful as writing in Written Vernacular Chinese.

The Brief History

It has been a custom to write in Literary Chinese in the ancient times as you know, and people used to speaking in their own dialects. Because written records were so well kept, Literary Chinese never changed much. While the most of the people, who didn't know how to read and write, changed the form of their spoken languages. The difference gap was originally small, but as time passed, illiterate people began to not be able to understand Literary Chinese. But Literary Chinese was still used, why? Because knowing it gained you social status and because it was the universal language which all dialects can use to communicate.

Eventually, Written Vernacular Chinese was used because the people wanted to use it, as they thought it was easier to use and to comprehend than Literary Chinese.

The Conclusion

Why not use written Cantonese?

• Because writing in and comprehending Written Vernacular Chinese is not that frustrating. The contrast of Cantonese and Written Vernacular Chinese is not as much as the latter and Literary Chinese.
• It has been a tradition to write in Written Vernacular Chinese and culture and politics say it is informal to write in Cantonese.
• Written Vernacular Chinese has become the standard of communication, just like English in European countries.
• Cantonese is oral-orientated, it might be harder to write when one is not trained to write it.

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P.S. Even as a born Cantonese, because I learned to read in Written Vernacular Chinese, it takes more time for me to understand written Cantonese. On the other hand, I can instantly read out Cantonese from Written Vernacular Chinese.

Answer 6

I don't understand why you said Cantonese is not used in writing literature. You do understand that all written Chinese can be read using Cantonese orally?

If you are talking about historical literature, if you use Cantonese to read it, the poems would rhyme, but when you use Mandarin to read it, the poem for the most part will not rhyme.

Cantonese has a longer history in China than the current Mandarin taught in Mainland China.

With such limited time and if one were to learn how to read, it is better to write in proper Chinese characters with the correct grammar rather than using the Cantonese Oral to write, since you will need to know how to read the newspapers, and other official documents. This is similar to when you had to take English Literature in school, you would not read a book with no proper grammar and spelling in a English Literature class.

Jin Yong - the author who wrote the famous wuxia stories, he wrote it in Hong Kong for the Cantonese readers. However, as a novel, I would expect it to have correct grammar and poetic sentences and not a "Ya'll" or a "wussup" or a "betcha" in there.

Answer 7

I think the Beijing dialect of Haney uses slangs that sound like slurs; it is very hard to understand if you don't speak that dialect even for Mandarin speakers.

I think with Hanyu(the Chinese language) you can read, write, and speak it. But there is a huge problem with the reading and writing since most of the Chinese in the old days say 500 to 2000 years ago did not go to school--they were illiterate. They use slangs to talk to others; slang words were invented or borrowed from others. Hek, these slangs are still widely used in Cantonese which makes perfect since to a Cantonese person, but hard to understand for non-Cantonese person.

Slangs are not standard Hanyu (Chinese) that is why it is not used in writing; it is used only in a local area for speaking.

So what is Standard Hanyu? I would say these are the words found in the Hanyu or Chinese Mandarin or Cantonese dictionary. The Hanyu words has not changed in thousands of years; the meanings and usage has remained the same; but the pronunciations some are similar and some are different. Some people may think this pronunciation is a big issue; Since the writing words in both Cantonese and Mandarin are still the same and its meaning remain the same, I tink in the long run it is not an issue.

if I may add: In English, 1 + 1 + 1 = 3; In Cantonese 1 + 1 + 1 = 3; In Mandarin 1 + 1 + 1 still equal to 3.

the math meaning and concept has not changed. Each group of speaker can understand it. So the math language is still the same. Like wise, Hanyu (the standard Chinese language over the past couple thousand of years is still the same notwithstanding the slangs of course) is like this math, it just sounds a bit different when it is read out by each group.

Slangs was created because the older generation of people were working in the farms, they did not go to school, and most of them were wen mang. Yes, Cantonese people love to speak in slangs, which are passed down for generation to generation. I think the Chinese does not like people speaking in slangs because they don't understand it.