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 world's 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 (http://durban.lti.cs.cmu.edu/cantonese/background.html). Although not officially documented, by the time of the Tang Dynasty, Cantonese had all of the linguistic characteristics to distinguish it from the other varieties of Chinese dialects. This period in Chinese history is seen as one of the most glorious to the Cantonese people and is why they refer to themselves as Tong yan, or literally people of the Tang dynasty.

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 Gardner's 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 (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Cantonese-language#Cantonese_versus_ Mandarin). The Saamyap dialect of Cantonese, which literally means "Three districts", is spoken in the three cities of Naamhoi, Punyu, and Sundak. To Taishanese people, their dialect is referred to as Seiyap, or the "Four districts" dialect and is spoken in the three cities of Sanwui, Toisaan, Hoiping, and Yanping. These two dialects are important because, "For the last 150 years, Guangdong Province has been the home of most of the Chinese emigrants; one county near its center, Taishan, alone may have been the home to more than 60% of Chinese immigrants to the US before 1965, and as a result, Guangdong dialects such as Seiyap and what we understand to be mainstream Cantonese (with a heavy Hong Kong influence) have been the major spoken dialects abroad," (http://www.nationmaster.com/en cyclopedia/Cantonese-language#Cantonese_versus_Mandarin). Currently, there are an estimated 64 million speakers of Cantonese compared to the 1 million Taishanese speakers in Taishan and over 1.3 million Taishanese speakers in other places such as the United States, Canada, and Australia.

Even though Seiyap is a sub-dialect of Saamyap, people who speak the standard have a hard time understanding the harsher, village dialect of Taishanese. This is due to the difference in tones and the changing of certain consonants either before or after words. In order to more carefully evaluate the differences between the two dialects, I asked native speakers of each to give me sample readings of the same passages. I recorded their voices in hopes of identifying the major differences in word usage and pronunciation.

One striking difference between the two was that in conversation, Taishanese used a more literal approach as opposed to Cantonese, where the spoken language is very different from the written form. In Hong Kong, the government has what they call the Hong Kong Special Character Set (HKSCS) in which there are over one hundred Chinese characters unrecognizable to Chinese living in the Mainland. These characters are reserved for use mainly in Hong Kong newspapers and in many comics. Since the 1950's the government of the People's Republic of China has developed a system for writing to make it easier for people to write difficult characters that would usually involve remembering the order of a great deal of strokes. Is it known as the Simplified Chinese writing system (gaan tai ji) but the governments of both Hong Kong and Taiwan has opted to stick to the Traditional Chinese writing system (faan tai ji). Taishanese on the other hand uses the same characters as Mandarin without the addition of any new ones. The main point is that speakers of Cantonese use formal writing in their daily lives but speak with a very different colloquial form.

Cantonese always thought of to be a lively language and speakers are often times mistaken to be arguing with each other when in fact they are carrying on a normal everyday conversation. Hong Kong and Guangzhou Cantonese differ in the sense that Hong Kong Cantonese is filled with slang and newly developing expressions while Guangzhou Cantonese remains pretty much constant. Because the