ACUPUNCTURA: 12/12/06

Examples of Dialect Differences Between
Peking, Shanghai and, Canton

In the table superscript numbers are the tones, and brackets contain Pinyin writings (with superscript tones where HTML does not contain the appropriate diacritic).

	Shanghai	Peking
p-	pu¹ "wave"	po¹ [bo¹]
p'-	p'u¹ "slope"	p'o¹ [po¹]
b-	bu² "old woman"	p'o² [pó]
t-	tong¹ "east"	tong¹ [dong¹]
t'-	t'ong¹ "be open"	t'ong¹ [tong¹]
d-	dong² "be alike"	t'ong² [tóng]
k-	kuong¹ "light"	kuang¹ [guang¹]
k'-	k'uong¹ "frame"	k'uang¹ [kuang¹]
g-	guong² "mad, wild"	k'uang² [kuáng]
	Cantonese	Peking
-t/0	kat^7a "cough"	k'e² (sou⁴) [ké(sòu)]
-t/0	pat^7a "brush"	pi³ [bi³]
-t/0	yüt^7b/8 "moon"	yüeh⁴ [yuè]
-t/0	yat^7a/8 "sun, day"	jih⁴ [rì]
-k/0	paak^7b "hundred"	pai³ [bai³]
-k/0	sik^7a "color"	(yen²)se⁴ [(yán)sè]
-k/0	kwok^7byü⁴ "national language"	kou²yü³ [guóyu³]
-p/0	t'aap^7b "pagoda"	t'a³ [ta³]
-p/0	yap⁸ "enter"	ju⁴ [rù]
-p/0	sap⁸ "ten"	shih² [shí]

The Wu dialect of Shanghai is noteworthy because it retains the distinction between voiced and unvoiced, aspirated and unaspirated stops that existed in T'ang Chinese. In Mandarin the voiced stops have disappeared. In these examples, the voiced stops have seen assimilated to the aspirated ones.

Cantonese is noteworthy because it retains from T'ang Chinese a greater variety of finals. In Mandarin, a syllable must end in a vowel or in n or ng. In Cantonese, syllables can also end in p, t, k, or m as well. Words borrowed from Chinese into Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese often also preserve evidence of the older final consonants. Thus "China" (Mandarin Zhongguó, "Middle Country") in Korean is Chung-guk and in Japanese Chû-koku. Both of them have an extra consonant in "country" where Mandarin doesn't -- but Cantonese (Jòong-gwok) does.

I had a lingustics professor once who said that you could get a kind of "instant Proto-Indo-European" by combining Greek vowels and Sanskrit consonants. Well, we can get a kind of "instant T'ang Chinese" by combining Shanghai initials and Cantonese finals. The evidence is poor for older versions of Chinese. Cantonese also preserves the larger number of tones that T'ang Chinese had. Mandarin only has four now, but Cantonese has six, or even nine if the tones of finals that end in stops are counted separately, which they sometimes are.

The most daring theory is that the Chinese of Confucius's day didn't even have tones. Evidence for this is that other members of the Sino-Tibetan language family do not have tones, while the nearby family of the Daic languages (like Thai) all have tones. In another adjacent language family, the Austroasiatic (Mon-Khmer) group, some languages have tones (like Vietnamese) and others do not. It is tempting to see the phenomenon as a South-East Asian Sprach Bund where the Daic tones have influenced some languages in the Sino-Tibetan and Austroasiatic families.

At left are examples of the Cantonese tones, using the notation in Teach Yourself Cantonese by R. Bruce [Teach Yourself Books, Hodder and Stoughton, 1970, 1976, pp.12-13]. Different tone symbols are not needed for the 7th, 8th, and 9th tones (in other treatments, as in the table above, the 7th and 8th tones are styled 7a and 7b, while the 9th tone becomes the 8th). These words will look different in A Concise Cantonese-English Dictionary by Yang Mingxin [Guangdong Higher Education Publishing House, 1999]. First of all, the latter uses an adapted Pinyin alphabet, where "x" is used for "s" and "g" for final "k." Second, although Pinyin introduced the use of Greek-like accents to show tones, the Dictionary reverts to the old Wade-Giles way of simply numbering the tones with superscripts. Also, the Dictionary uses simplified forms of some of the characters. I have used the unsimplified characters in Bruce where these are available. The Yale system of Romanization, with discussion of some alternatives (though not the Pinyin) is used in the English-Cantonese Dictionary, by Kwan Choi Wah, et al. [The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 1991].

Dictionaries or grammars of Shanghai Chinese in English seem to all be out of print.

A nice example of a difference between Mandarin and Cantonese is a surname. This is Wú in the former, Ng in the latter. The Cantonese name is one of many words that are simply a syllabic ng. There is also a syllabic m in Cantonese, which is , "not," in Mandarin. That is the only word with that pronunciation in A Concise Cantonese-English Dictionary [pp.260-262]. Although it seems like there ought to be, there is no syllabic n in Cantonese. There is more than one character used for the Cantonese surname. At right, we see the traditional character first, then a recent simplified one to the right of the pronunciation. This was also the name of the Kingdom of Wu, one of the states of the Three Kingdoms Period in Chinese history, and of the modern language of Shanghai. At far right is an alternative character used, at least in Cantonese, for the surname. My only question is that the first character (with its simplification) and the second are pronounced differently. In Mandarin, the first has a 2nd tone, the second a 3rd. In Cantonese, the first has a 4th tone, the second a 5th (with the symbols used in Teach Yourself Cantonese). I originally learned of the two possible characters from a young woman whose name actually was Ng, but I didn't know then to ask about the different tones. Perhaps someone can help me out.

Note that the Cantonese spellings in the table above are from Teach Yourself Cantonese, while, as noted, A Concise Cantonese-English Dictionary uses a form of Pinyin adapted from Mandarin. Thus, words traditionally ending in t/k/p are written d/g/b in the latter.

Conhecer a Escrita Chinesa

The Contrast between Classical and Modern Chinese

Although both ancient and modern Chinese are written with the same characters, the modern daughter languages have become very different from the ancient one. One of the most conspicious differences is just that the terse, monosyllabic nature of Classical Chinese has given way to many more particles, polysyllabic words, and periphrastic idioms. The following story, given in both Classical Chinese and a translation into modern Mandarin, illustrates the difference. This is also a salutary example for one's view of government, as Confucius indeed makes clear to his students. [I am unaware of the origin of this text.]

The modern Mandarin pronunciation is given for the Classical characters because the ancient pronuncation, indeed the pronunciation before the T'ang Dynasty, is unknown. Even that of the T'ang is reconstructed and uncertain. The extreme simplifiction of Mandarin phonology, which would render the Classical language ambiguous if used as a spoken language today (too many words now being pronounced the same), explains the polysyllablic character of the modern language and the reduction of many characters to morphemes.

The same Classical text that can today be read as Mandarin could as well be read with Korean, Vietnamese, or Japanese versions of the Chinese words, or the Korean, Vietnamese, or Japanese translations of the words. None of those languages is even related to Chinese, but since mediaeval, or even modern, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Japanese often wrote in Chinese, without, however, really speaking the language, their own renderings of the characters was customary. Since the ancient pronunciation of the Classical language is unknown, Sino-Korean, Sino-Vietnamese, and Sino-Japanese reading are really just as "authentic" for Classical Chinese as a Modern Mandarin reading. Indeed, much of our evidence for the T'ang pronuncation of Chinese is from the Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese readings, which were contemporary borrowings.

For example, the character for "mountain," now read shan in Mandarin, turns up as san in Korean, in Vietnamese as so^. n or núi, and in Japanese as san, sen, zan, or yama -- the last versions in Vietnamese and Japanese being the native words. Similarly, we find the name of Japan itself, "Sun Source," as Rìben [Wade-Giles Jihpên] in Mandarin, Yatbóon in Cantonese, Ilbon in Korean, Nhâ.t-Bàn in Vietnamese, and Nippon or Nihon in Japanese. The Cantonese word is, of course, cognate to the Mandarin. The Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese are all borrowings from Chinese, pronounced in the local manner. Native words for "sun" are hae in Korean, ma.t giò^. i ("face of the sky") in Vietnamese, and hi in Japanese (e.g. hi-no-maru, "circle of the sun," "sundisk"). The Japanese borrowed word for "sun" in isolation is nichi, but this is just the pronunciation of niti, where the final i as been added because Japanese syllables cannot end in t. In compounds, the i can drop out, so nichi-hon (*hi-moto in the unused pure Japanese reading) becomes nit-hon. At that point different things can happen. The t can be lost in assimilation to the h, getting us Nihon, OR the h can revert to its original p, with the t getting assimilated and doubled with it, getting us Nippon.

Another example concerns the present capital of Japan. The Míng capitals of China were Nánjing (Nanking) and then Beijing (Peking), which simply mean, respectively, "Southern Capital" and "Northern Capital." The capital of Japan from 794 to 1868 was Kyôto, which meant "Capital District." Then the capital was moved to Edo, which was renamed the "Eastern Capital." In Chinese that would be Dongjing. In Japanese, however, that is pronounced Tôkyô. In Vietnamese it is Ðông-Kinh (or Tonkin). The Vietnamese version preserves more of the Chinese consonants, but both Japanese and Vietnamese versions reveal that "capital" originally started with a k, which has become palatalized (to a j) in Mandarin. The k is also preserved in early modern Western versions of Chinese words, like "Nanking" and "Peking" themselves.

Chinese departments in colleges sometimes expect students to learn Mandarin even though they only want to read Classical Chinese or Sino-Korean, Sino-Vietnamese, or Sino-Japanese. This imposes a vast unnecessary burden on them, but even teachers and scholars of Chinese sometimes have trouble accepting that the ancient language is not the modern one and that the ancient language is part of the civilization of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan as much as of modern China. It is as though students of Latin were told they would have to learn Italian as well.

Once when Confucius was passing near the foot of Mount Tai in a chariot, there was a married woman weeping at a grave mound, and dolorously too. Confucius politely rested his hands on the front rail of the chariot and listened to her weeping. He sent Zilu (Tzu-lu) to inquire of her, saying; "From the sound of your weeping, it seems that you indeed have many troubles."

Classical Chinese:

Mandarin Translation:

Then the woman said; "It is true. My father-in-law died in a tiger's jaw; my husband also died there. Now, my son has also died there." Confucius said, "Why do you not leave this place?" The woman said: "Here there is no harsh and oppressive government."

Classical Chinese: