Cantonese Vs. Taishanese: A Study of the Two Most Ubiquitous Dialects in Chinatowns Worldwide
Essay title: Cantonese Vs. Taishanese: A Study of the Two Most Ubiquitous Dialects in Chinatowns Worldwide
As the well known and revered Chinese-American historian remarked, “When the Chinese arrived in America, they brought their language along as cultural baggage as well as mores and customs that had evolved in one of the worlds great civilizations” (Louie, 1). The history of the Cantonese, or Yue, language is more than 2,000 years old, making it older than Mandarin, the official language of China, which only has 700 to 800 years of history. Around the time of the Qin Dynasty, Cantonese became more established as a language with its own distinct features, the direct a result of the Hans moving from Northern to Southern China. Mountains and rivers isolated the North from the South, which continued to allow differences between Mandarin and Cantonese to grow (
The fact that Cantonese has anywhere from six to nine tones and keeps the final consonants of the older language makes it the closest out of all the other Chinese dialects to Ancient Chinese. Learners of any tonal language find themselves at a disadvantage because saying one word in a different tone can take on an entirely different meaning and could be perceived in the wrong context (Lau, 9). For example, the word fu can have than ten different meanings just by saying it with the high, mid, or low level tone or anywhere in between. Being that Cantonese has retained its full set of tones reiterates the fact is the language most similar to the classical hanyu (Chinese language). In general, Cantonese is considered to be the most conservative of dialects, which is referring to its similar pronunciation of different words that appear to have the same radical.
Romanizing the Cantonese language has always been debated on because there is no form that could represent all of the tones used in speaking. The most commonly seen is the Yale system, which was developed at Yale University by both Parker Huang and Gerald Kok, which is considered the easiest for Western students to use because it is actually based on American English. (Huang XVI). As a result, I have decided to use the Yale romanization to represent the Cantonese words that appear throughout the course of this essay. The other systems used to romanize Cantonese are Meyer-Wempe, Sidney Lau, Jyutping, and Penkyamp. Currently, there have been moves to establish a formal romanization system, just as how Mainland China has pinyin as its official system. Romanizing Taishanese has been a different story because of the big difference in the number of speakers compared that of Cantonese. All of the earlier Taishanese romanization systems have fallen by the wayside except for J. Endicott Gardners modification of the previously established Jones method. Both Gardner and Jones were Chinese interpreters that notices that lack of a standard spelling system caused some serious problems (Louie, 118-119).
The Yue dialects usually are divided into four subgroups: Yuehoi, Seiyap, Gouyeung, and Gwainaam. The dialect of Cantonese that I am comparing to Taishanese is Yuehoi, which refers to the Cantonese that is spoken in and around the cities of Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau, Zhongshan, and Dongguan. Yuehoi is generally considered the standard and usually is what meant when one refers to Cantonese (
Even though Seiyap is a sub-dialect of Saamyap, people who speak the standard have a hard