Saving the Cantonese Language

[Laan Yaa Mo]

Owing to uncertainty over the future use of the Cantonese language in Hong Kong and its limited use in Guangdong schools in China, Cantonese speakers in Canada's Province of British Columbia are doing their best to keep Cantonese alive. The former language of Shanghai has largely disappeared, and Cantonese speakers want to avoid that happening to their language and culture.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british- ... -1.6961355

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1008922

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society ... youngsters

[deankham]

My wife is fluent in Cantonese as she lived in Hong Kong for almost 15 years. (Speaker I should say, she cannot read traditional Chinese).

Since she left HK she very rarely has the opportunity to speak it. I think the last time was at my parents local Chinese take away in York, England about 2 years ago!
Oh she does like to shout at me in Cantonese occasionally, which is lovely.

While I find Mandarin not pleasant to hear I enjoy listening to Cantonese being spoken, even though I don't understand 99.5% of what is being said.

[Laan Yaa Mo]

My wife is fluent in Cantonese as she lived in Hong Kong for almost 15 years. (Speaker I should say, she cannot read traditional Chinese).

Since she left HK she very rarely has the opportunity to speak it. I think the last time was at my parents local Chinese take away in York, England about 2 years ago!
Oh she does like to shout at me in Cantonese occasionally, which is lovely.

While I find Mandarin not pleasant to hear I enjoy listening to Cantonese being spoken, even though I don't understand 99.5% of what is being said.

I think most of the Chinese speakers in Thailand understand Teochiew.

Is Teochew similar to Thai?
Obviously, there's a ton of loan words from Chinese - but given that Thai Chinese are predominantly Teochew, it makes sense that many of these more modern loan words would come there (e.g. guay dtiaao for noodles).

Linguists say that Thais originated in southern China. Perhaps that is why counting to ten in Thai and Cantonese is similar. Cantonese is closer to the original Chinese language than Mandarin, but it is difficult to learn with its 10-11 tones.

Cantonese preserves more features of Ancient Chinese than do the other major Chinese languages. Most of the final consonants remain the same from the ancient language, and the dialect preserves the ancient number of 6 tones, which is in contrast to the 4 tones found in Mandarin.

- wiki

The term "Cantonese language" is sometimes used to refer to the broader group of Yue Chinese languages and dialects spoken in Guangdong and Guangxi, although it is used more specifically to describe Gwóngjāu wah (廣州話), the prestige variant of Cantonese spoken in the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton). Gwóngjāu wah is the main language used for education, literature and media in Hong Kong and Macau. It is still widely used in Guangzhou, despite the fact that a large proportion of the city's population is made up by migrant workers from elsewhere in China that speak non-Cantonese variants of Chinese and Standard Mandarin.[38] Though in recent years it is slowly falling out of favour with the younger generation [39] prompting fears in Cantonese people that the language may die out. Cantonese language's erosion in Guangzhou is due to a mix of suppression of the language and the mass migration of non-Cantonese speaking people in to the area.

Because of its tradition of usage in music, cinema, literature and newspapers, this form of Cantonese is a cultural mark of identity that distinguishes Cantonese people from speakers of other varieties of Chinese, whose languages are prohibited to have strong influences under China's Standard Mandarin policy. The pronunciation and vocabulary of Cantonese has preserved many features of the official language of the Tang dynasty with elements of the ancient Yue language.[40] Written Cantonese is very common in manhua, books, articles, magazines, newspapers, online chat, instant messaging, internet blogs and social networking websites. Anime, cartoons and foreign films are also dubbed in Cantonese. Some videogames such as Sleeping Dogs, Far Cry 4, Grand Theft Auto III and Resident Evil 6 have substantial Cantonese dialogues.

- wiki

When your wife yells at you in Cantonese, yell back, 'Gow meng a', which means HELP!!! or 'mo mun tai' = never mind.