Mandarin and Cantonese - How far apart?

Geoff_One   Mon Mar 06, 2006 1:20 am GMT
From my readings:

a. A PhD Chinese linguist assessed that the two languages were
approximately as far apart as English and Swedish.

b. Another expert (or a person who appears to be an expert and has
written extensively on the subject) assessed that the two languages
were only approximately as far apart as Spanish and French or even
closer.

Does anyone have any further information on this matter and what is it?

Thanks in advance
Shiny   Mon Mar 06, 2006 3:26 am GMT
They're different languages.

They share the most of the spellings, but the pronunciations, phases, grammars and tones (Mandarin has 4, Cantonese maybe have 8 or more) are different.
CHINESE   Mon Mar 06, 2006 4:31 am GMT
Mandarin is much more important and useful than Cantonese anyway!

Cantonese is only spoken by people in HongKong, MaCao, and in GuangDong Province, as well as some Oversea Chinese people abroad.

If a foreigner can master Mandarin in 2 years, maybe he need 3-4 years to master Cantonese, because Cantonese has much more Ancient Chinese Phenomenas, and has many strange self-made vocabularies of Which is very nonstandard or abolished in Mandarin's point of view.
*CarloS*   Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:11 am GMT
>>>CHINESE
<<<Brazil will become a Spanish speaking country adding to more power to Spanish as a world language.>>>

Excuse me, GODOT, I'm very curious about why you've always despise Portuguese and ignore its existence condition, you detest Portuguese?<<<

"Excuse me, CHINESE, I'm very curious about why you've always despise CANTONESE and ignore its existence condition, you detest CANTONESE?"

We are talking about grammatic/vocabulary/etc. difference between Mandarin and Cantonese, not saying which one is more important, and MUCH LESS UNDERESTIMATING CANTONESE.
CHINESE   Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:25 am GMT
*CarloS*

OK, I would like to accept your criticism because you have reason to give me a rhetorical question.

In fact, Cantonese sounds much like Vietnamese and Thai.
CHINESE   Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:33 am GMT
CHINESE   Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:36 am GMT
Cantonese is spoken by about 66 million people mainly in the south east of China, particularly in Hong Kong, Macau, Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan. It is also spoken in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines and among Overseas Chinese communities in many other countries.

In many schools in Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese is the medium of instruction, though the students are taught to read and write standard Chinese, which they read with Cantonese pronunciation. Cantonese is also the main language of business, the media and government in both Hong Kong and Macau.

Cantonese has appeared in writing since the 19th century. It is used mainly in personal correspondence, diaries, comics, poetry, advertising, popular newspapers, magazines and to some extent in literature. There are two standard ways of written Cantonese: a formal version and a colloquial version. The formal version is quite different from spoken Cantonese but very similiar to Standard Chinese and can be understood by Mandarin speakers without too much difficulty. The colloquial version is much closer to spoken Cantonese and largely unintelligible to Mandarin speakers.

Colloquial Cantonese is written with a mixture of standard Chinese characters and hundreds of extra characters invented specifically for Cantonese. Some of the characters are rarely used or used differently in standard Chinese. The extra characters are included in the Hong Kong Supplementary Characters Set (HKSCS).
CHINESE   Mon Mar 06, 2006 7:27 am GMT
Brennus

1, Mandarin Chinese is an updated modern official language, so it's really far apart from ancient Chinese in many respects. Mandarin is just like Italian or Spanish, and Ancient Chinese is just like Classical Latin.

2, Cantonese is not invariable either, with the time goes by, the Cantonese of GuangDong Province was not considered as the Standard Cantonese, instead, the Cantonese spoken by HongKong people was recognized as the fashionable Standard Cantonese.

3, In Mandarin:

How are you? = 您好吗? (formal)
or= 你好吗? (informal)

What's your name? = 您贵姓? (formal)
or=你叫什么名字? (informal)
CHINESE   Mon Mar 06, 2006 10:59 am GMT
I forgot to mention the source of my above quotation:
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/cantonese.htm
Collins'   Mon Mar 06, 2006 1:17 pm GMT
Mandarin and Cantonese are much closer than spoken Brazilian Portuguese and Continental Portuguese or spoken Afrikaans and Dutch or spoken Swiss German and High German.
CHINESE   Tue Mar 07, 2006 4:44 am GMT
Standard Mandarin Introduction

http://www.answers.com/topic/standard-mandarin?method=6


But this website also has some falsehoods, for example: Republic of China doesn't exist, it should be Taiwan province of China (P.R.China).
Actually   Mon Apr 03, 2006 10:21 am GMT
Cantonese is much closer to classical Chinese, and in that sense it most certainly was NOT written first in the 19th century -- try the 6th.

Mandarin is a much "further evolved" or "corrupted" form of ancient Chinese.

In that sense Cantonese is closer to Vietnamese and its p[ronoucniation is closer to Japanese pronounciation of words loaned from Chinese.

We could say that Cantonese is like Scnadinavian, whereas Mandarin is like English which took forms from Danish and Norwegian (during "DaneLaw") and changed the pronoucniation and meaning.
Trawicks   Mon Apr 03, 2006 2:17 pm GMT
Interestingly, Actually, your analogy is quite literally apt from a phonological standpoint.

Standard Mandarin frequently features the vowels /V/, /3/, and /r\'/, all phonemes that are nearly unique to English among major European languages. Cantonese, on the other hand, features the very Scandinavian/German sounds of /8/, /9/ and /6/.
lu   Tue Apr 04, 2006 4:36 am GMT
Cantonese is just a local dialect of Chinese.There're so many different dialects exsisting in China and most of them are very difficult for those from other regions to understand.

As for the difference, it's no more different than ShangHainese comparing to Mandarin.The only advantage it has is the popularity.You can learn to speak it very soon if you can speak Mandarin.
Zhang   Sun Apr 09, 2006 7:20 am GMT
I'm sorry, CHINESE, but, Cantonese is superior to Mandarin in every aspect. Our pronounciation is much easier to listen to, and, unlike what you said about its similarities to Vietnamese and Thai, (which is down right disgraceful, and moreover insulting) and our written form is much more beautiful.

I am proud to speak Cantonese, and I look down upon lazy, sing-songy Mandarin.