Hi all,
I'm a native HK-Cantonese speaker - as I have been intrigued by your intense discussion I have been asking my friends around - 'have you ever seen/written an article in full Cantonese?'
The answers vary but in sum, none of us have ever written anything in full Cantonese in the context of article-writing. Contrary to what you may believe, it is actually hard to write in full-Cantonese without mixing in formal Chinese in a passage. But on an interpersonal level - that is much easier and we do write short memos an notes to one another in Cantonese.
On the other hand, in Hong Kong, most subtitles we have on TV or movies are in formal Chinese, which can be another example showing how accustomed we are to converging from Cantonese to formal Chinese and vice versa.
Of course my perspective can be skewed - but from the perspective of a native speaker, it is hard to write in full Cantonese.
And btw, mainland Cantonese is not the same as HK Cantonese. We have extra terms that mainland Cantonese wouldn't understand and vice versa. So my belief is that unless we are talking about a cultural jamming hub, it will not be too hard to foresee that the Cantonese page will have a hard time in retaining the critical mass in sustaining a viable Cantonese page.
Finally, we were taught Classical and formal Chinese in Cantonese - and actually some of the famous ancient poems which still recited by most of us were written by Cantonese. I am proud of my mother-tongue and at the same time I do not see that having to write in formal-chinese is an insult to us. Simply because there are some terms in Cantonese we don't even know how to write - Cantonese is a verbal language and we base on the tone to communication. But of course, I love to see more Cantonese speakers voice out their opinions on this.
-cathy
On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 17:37:41 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan felixwiki@earthsphere.org wrote:
On Thu, February 17, 2005 12:30 pm, Mark Williamson said:
Hi Felix,
Many of the responses there anger me because they almost go so far as to say that Cantonese is worthless as a language.
What about the guy who said something like "You will hardly get 50 characters in without wondering why Cantonese has so much 'junks'"?
Or the people who said "Cantonese should only be used for informal things." without giving a valid reason?
[snipped]
That is what I have said: I expect fierce opposition from Chinese, even native Cantonese speakers. It is not easy to unlearn. ^_^ Compared to those responses, people here are quite enlightened and respecting.
However, also look at the brighter side. If there was not such a debate, I may not have done so much research and found this group of enthusiasts: http://www.cantonese.org.cn/
There are some excellent articles on why we should encourage Cantonese speakers to write their own speeches: http://www.cantonese.org.cn/ungoo/article/writemyhand.htm http://www.cantonese.org.cn/ungoo/article/poorcantonese.htm The first one is written in Cantonese, the second in standard Chinese (Mandarin).
They have even compiled a list of Cantonese specific words, with references, and they stated on the web site to release the following two pages to the public domain: http://www.cantonese.org.cn/ungoo/master/dictionary1.htm http://www.cantonese.org.cn/ungoo/master/dictionary2.htm
Those can be a good starting point for the orthography of the potential Cantonese Wikipedia.
Felix Wan
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