{"id":27,"date":"2008-08-17T17:50:17","date_gmt":"2008-08-17T17:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chinesebay.com\/blog\/?p=27"},"modified":"2009-12-26T22:56:37","modified_gmt":"2009-12-27T06:56:37","slug":"cantonese-vs-mandarin1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinesebay.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/cantonese-vs-mandarin1\/","title":{"rendered":"Cantonese vs Mandarin:(1)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Cantonese vs Mandarin or Mandari vs Cantonese Series (1)<\/strong><br \/>\nAlthough Cantonese use the same set of Chinese characters (almost&#8230; maybe 5% difference), there are a lot of differences between Cantonese and Mandarin. Not just the differences in pronunciation, but also in grammar and word usage.<\/p>\n<p>Today, we are starting a series to show the differences for those who are interested.<\/p>\n<p>For beginners of Chinese, we do not encourage learning both Cantonese and Mandarin at the same time. You need to learn the one that you think is the most useful for you currently for one or two years and master the basic before you move onto the other.<\/p>\n<p>I hope this series is useful for those Mandarin-speaking and Cantonese-speaking learners who want to learn the other one.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t stress it enough: do not learn both languages at the same time. Master one first.<\/p>\n<p>1) First major difference is pronunciation between Cantonese and Mandarin<br \/>\n     A)Cantonese has at least 6 tones (some said 9 tones) while Mandarin has only 4 simple tones plus a neutral tone, which does not exit in Cantonese<br \/>\ne.g.<br \/>\nHere&#8217;s the tone comparison between Cantonese and Mandarin:<br \/>\n<strong>Cantonese:<\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mdbg.net\/chindict\/chindict.php?page=chardict&#038;cdcanoce=1&#038;cdqchi=fu1%E5%A4%AB++fu2%E8%99%8E+fu3%E5%AF%8C++fu4%E6%89%B6+fu5%E5%A6%87+fu6%E8%B4%9F%0D%0Afrom+ChineseBay.com+CantonesePod.com&#038;cddmtm=0&#038;cddytm=0\" target=\"_new\">fu1\u592b  fu2\u864e fu3\u5bcc  fu4\u6276 fu5\u5987 fu6\u8d1f<\/a> (click for details)<br \/>\n<strong>Mandarin:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mdbg.net\/chindict\/chindict.php?page=chardict&#038;cdcanoce=1&#038;cdqchi=fu1%E5%A4%AB+fu2%E7%A6%8F+fu3%E6%96%A7+fu4%E5%AF%8C%2F%E8%B4%9F%0D%0Afrom+ChineseBay.com+CantonesePod.com&#038;cddmtm=0&#038;cddytm=0\" target=\"_new\">fu1\u592b fu2\u798f fu3\u65a7 fu4\u5bcc\/\u8d1f<\/a>     xing4fu <a title=\"Look up in ChineseBay Cantonese and Mandarin Pronunciation Dictionary\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/chinesebay.com\/py\/%E5%B9%B8%E7%A6%8F\">\u5e78\u798f<\/a>=happy\/happiness<br \/>\nNote that Mandarin xing4fu<a title=\"Look up in ChineseBay Cantonese and Mandarin Pronunciation Dictionary\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/chinesebay.com\/py\/%E5%B9%B8%E7%A6%8F\">\u5e78\u798f<\/a>  is pronounced as hang6fuk1<a title=\"Look up in ChineseBay Cantonese and Mandarin Pronunciation Dictionary\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/chinesebay.com\/py\/%E5%B9%B8%E7%A6%8F\">\u5e78\u798f<\/a> in Cantonese<br \/>\nAny Mandarin word with tones from 1 to 4 may become a neutral tone (some mark it with 5) when it is the 2nd character of word. e.g. <a title=\"Look up in ChineseBay Cantonese and Mandarin Pronunciation Dictionary\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/chinesebay.com\/py\/%E6%AC%BA%E8%B4%9F\">\u6b3a\u8d1f<\/a> qi1 fu5  = to bully<\/p>\n<p>Cantonese tones become one of the hardest thing to learn for Mandarin-speaking people, but if enough  listening and practice are done, it can be overcome more easily.<\/p>\n<p>Please bookmark this series for more updates soon.<br \/>\nWe use Jyutping for all examples of Cantonese words, and Pinyin for Mandarin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Cantonese vs Mandarin or Mandari vs Cantonese Series (1) Although Cantonese use the same set of Chinese characters (almost&#8230; maybe 5% difference), there are a lot of differences between Cantonese and Mandarin. Not just the differences in pronunciation, but also in grammar and word usage. Today, we are starting a series to show the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[79,21,4,55],"tags":[87,9],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesebay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesebay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesebay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesebay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesebay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/chinesebay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222,"href":"https:\/\/chinesebay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions\/222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinesebay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesebay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinesebay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}