Cantonese Romanization

Tionghoa   Mon Sep 21, 2009 5:40 am GMT
>>>...... So, the Classical Chinese as a language is really died. ......<<<

what a subjective fallacy! of course, you can say that classical chinese really means nothing to those uneducated chinese illiteracy (who never get to know poetry, essays, idioms, & articles), or those foreign learners who're merely at beginner's level in both written and spoken chinese. if so, i'll admit that classical chinese has "truly" died out.
S.V   Mon Sep 21, 2009 11:57 am GMT
Chinese chararacters were meant for the Chinese languages themselves. The Koreans, Japanese and Vietnamese simply adapted to it as all three peoples were heavily influenced by the middle kingdom. Personally, as annoying as it is to have to memorise thousands of characters, the Chinese script should be kept and the Chinese languages should not have to give in to “modernisation” and “globalisation”. It should do just fine without having to toss away a vital part of its proud culture. Japanese creatively adapted to the script by producing new characters and their own scripts – hiragana and katakana. The Koreans have adopted their own “alphabet” of which they are proud of – they still do use Chinese characters but to a lesser extent than Japanese. As for Vietnamese, they adopted a modified Latin alphabet to suit their language. There are many reasons for why this happened – ease and simplicity is one of them (even though its writing system is more complex than it seems). However, one of the key reasons was due to the colonisation of the region by the French. It was the French who decreed the disuse and abolition of Chinese characters in the late and early 19th and 20th centuries respectively. Interestingly, at the turn of the 20th century, Vietnamese had 3 official languages: French, Chinese and Vietnamese. They still had Chinese civil service examinations even in 1900 but due to the French, that was abolished.
Throughout its history, Vietnamese has used at least 3 different writing scripts. Apart from the modern day alphabet which was created around the 16th and 17th centuries by European missionaries, it has also used Chinese-style characters. Although official governmental publications were done in Classical Chinese, some of the most famous literary works were done in a mixed script known as Hán-Nôm literally “Chinese-Vernacular” – in other words combining native Chinese characters with newly coined ones specifically for native Vietnamese words. Since at least 50-60% of Vietnamese words were directly borrowed from Chinese, these were written in the original Chinese character. Although this system existed for about 700-800 years, Vietnam never truly standardised the script. There was one period called the Tây Sơn period around the late to early 18th and 18th centuries in which certain scholars put forward the idea of standardisation and adoption of the Chinese-mixed script but the ruling king refused and from there on Vietnam was in turmoil.
Here’s a list of various countries written in English, Vietnamese and Romanised Cantonese. Notice how the later 2 seem to be quite close. This may be due to the fact that the Cantonese peoples derive just north of Vietnam in the southern Chinese regions. There is no doubt Vietnamese’s loanwords are more similar to Cantonese than Mandarin as Mandarin has merged so many sounds.
Finland, Norway, Netherlands, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, France, Switzerland. United States, Hong Kong, Greece.
Fān Làan, Nò Wāi, Hò Lāan, Gā Nà Daai, Öi Yí Làan, Dāk Gwök, Pòu Tòu Ngà, Seoi Dîn, Dāan Maak, Fäat Gwök, Seoi Si. Méi Gwök, Hēong Gông, Hēi Laap.
Phần Lan, Na Uy, Hà Lan, Gia Nã Đại, Ái Nhĩ Lan, Đức Quốc, Bồ Đào Nha, Thuỵ Điển, Đan Mạch, Pháp Quốc, Thuỵ Sĩ. Mỹ Quốc, Hương Cảng, Hy Lạp.
NB: Note that Vietnamese ‘ph’ is like English ‘f’, ‘qu’ in Northern Vietnamese is like ‘gw’ and ‘c’ is like English hard ‘g’.
.