Hey Cantonese lovers,

I've made a list of Cantonese-only colloquial characters. Useful if you know Cantonese and are tired of thinking in Mandarin to write something. Too formal.

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=140286670

Oh yeah, message me if you want to be a list admin to add characters.

hey jeff wong,

I tried clicking on the link. I got a message that the list is unavailable:

List Inaccessible
This is a private, unpublished list.
If this is your list, you'll need to login to view it.

You'll need to publish it so the rest of us can see.

Also, it doesn't appear to have any words in it? You'll need to add at least one word to each section before it can be published, so that it can be used.

I dropped a few words in there. Can someone try it now and see if it's published?

still says private unpublished

I have no idea how to publish a list that was started as private.

I would have expected to see it in the box for List operations (like Delete, Export, Add Words).

A little help?

It can't be published until it's got words in all the sections, the idea being that you can't publish a list that's unfinished (or at least not as unfinished). You'll need to add words to the conjunction section and then you'll be able to publish it.

I have added a bunch of conjunctions and published the list. The list can be used to store Cantonese words, but only if the characters of the word are not used in Mandarin.

This list is here to make Chinese more accessible to Cantonese speakers learn written Chinese and deal with the alienation that comes from Cantonese not being an instructional language.

Jeff, this really is an awesome project.

Thanks for the encouragement, much appreciated!

What a heroic action in spreading the Cantonese! Just get excited about this.

While looking at the list, I found quite a few entries that are exactly the same as the original Mandarin entries. For example, for the character 吓 in the verb section, the Cantonese definitions of /haa2/ “particle used for confirmation” and /haa5/ “Measure word for the number of times” are no where to be seen. Have these extra Cantonese definitions been already sent to Chris and are now waiting for approval? Or should someone append these additional definitions and sent them to Chris?

On second thought, will the Skritter community complain about this cluttering up of the definitions? (May be someone is already thinking about adding some Shanghainese, and those in Taiwan with 闽语.) Also, is Chris' reply an apprehension of the daunting task ahead?

May be a workaround is to extend Skritter's multilingual support to also support English/yue → Chinese, that is using English to define Chinese but in the angle of Yueyu (Cantonese). In this way, the Mandarin and Cantonese definitions are separated and will not interfere with one another. Also, we can bypass Chris and add the Cantonese definitions directly. Is this an option?

Interesting suggestion, pts! We'll talk about this.

pts: I added 吓. That's a good example thanks for that.

Yes, you are correct. I think the problem you're describing is when the character is used to represent the sound of a word in another dialect. The meaning of the word and the sound is different from "standard" Mandarin. But is this any different than how Kanji uses certain Simplified characters. Or did it happen the other way around?

The way I personally intended to use the list was to keep track of characters that are totally different from their use in Mandarin. It's assumed that the pronunciation is different and it's up to me to find those for myself. If someone is taking characters or words from this list, then they will know they need to lookup the Cantonese pronunciation if they need it. (because they visited the list)

If there was some way to create a personal note, that would work. But I think this is what the mnemonic can be used for.

Most of the new definitions and 2-character words don't exist or make sense in Mandarin, so there's no conflict there. Well, except when HK slang is copied to Taiwan and PRC.

Just making a list to keep track of the characters that are totally different from their use in Mandarin is not enough. For example, the first word in your list is 虽然. I've tried to look up its usage difference between Cantonese and Mandarin but to no avail. I really hope that it is written down. I'd suppose other persons using the list will also have difficulties finding the differences. Besides, memory leaks. I don't want to look-up the differences again and again. They are better written down. May be, writing a personal note in the mnemonic is enough. But then only I myself can see it. Moreover, what's the purpose of make the list public in the first place.

A public list has the advantage of utilizing the collective knowledge of the whole community. You can be benefited from the advice that it's not 咸家铲 but 冚家铲, not 无咗 but 冇咗 and 拮is used more often than 㓤, that studying alone cannot provide.

The differences between Cantonese and Mandarin is much wider than you think. Even characters as common as 房 and 屋 are different. Cantonese 房 = Mandarin 屋, and vice versa. And 车牌 in Mandarin means license plate only, but in Cantonese, it has the additional meaning of “driver license”. So are the simple and common words like 爱人、地牢、玩完、…… . The list can go on and on and count to the thousands. I do think that the Cantonese additions will be an eyesore to those not interested if this project reaches any success.

I have a passion with Cantonese, but I've my duty to support my family and can't spare any time with it. I see a courageous young man trying to promote Cantonese, so I gave some lip services. It's all up to you. It's your project and it ends where you want it.

@pts: We'll do it! Setting up Cantonese now as a source language. What should I put up there on the dropdown? That is, how do you write Cantonese in Cantonese?

scott: like how you have Italian to Chinese or Japanese? That's a clever workaround. Perhaps it's the simplest way for people who know Cantonese to learn characters.

However, it is good to help Cantonese speakers in China, HK, Malaysia, and elsewhere, especially if they don't do English. There are quite a few Cantonese in Vietnam, Indonesia, Latin America and elsewhere.

I would just write it in English "Cantonese" if you want to encourage Cantonese speakers outside of the Sinosphere to use this.

It's pretty hard to understand "廣東話" or "粵語" if you don't already know. But perhaps that's a localization issue?

Perhaps "Cantonese (廣東話)"?

I think that "yue" is the best abbreviated name for Cantonese, and 廣東話 seems to me to be the best way to write it out fully - for one thing, that's what's used on the cover of many Cantonese textbooks. 廣東話 does imply that we're focusing on the Standard Cantonese spoken in Guangzhou and Hong Kong, but I think that makes sense, since many of the Yue dialects are not mutually unintelligible with Standard Cantonese.

Do others agree?

"yue" on its own would refer to the province rather than the language, but either 广东话 or 粤语 means Cantonese. Although I am not sure if they are entirely synonymous, perhaps 粤语 is slightly more formal although that's just a hunch, it might also depend on whether you ask someone from Guangzhou or hk which one is best.

Cantonese as a source language? Isn't it a bit too ambitious since even the Mandarin definitions are now only sparingly filled? I doubt whether there is any one in this community who can do it. And even if the definitions were written, that there will be much users who can understand them.

Initially, I think an English/Cantonese → Chinese attempt is more practical, and may be we can add 繁體中文/廣東話-〉中文 if the first one is successful.

Back to the original question of how to write Cantonese in Cantonese.

粤语 is synonymous with 广东话. 广东话 is the spoken form while 粤语 is the written form. They can be use either in a broader sense to refer to all the Yue dialects or narrowly to only the lingua franca of the Guangdong province, standard Cantonese.

A more precise term for Standard Cantonese is 广州话, which is probably where the word Cantonese is derived from. (The 'Canton' in Cantonese is a former translation of the capital of Guangdong, Guangzhou (广州)). But this has a problem of being too precise, because the Hong Kong accent is deviating from the Guangzhou accent.

Both 粤语 and 广东话 should be all right for the dropdown menu. Many websites use 粤语. But 广东话 is more cozy. My feeling about Cantonese is that it's a cozy language, so I personally would prefer 广东话.

@pts: As I understand Scott, Cantonese as a source language is just a workaround - the definitions for the Cantonese words would be in English, with jyutping pronunciations.

@Antimacassar: The usage I intended for the abbreviation is just what you see in the upper-right hand corner of the screen, immediately to the left of the logout link. "yue" and "zh-yue" are standard abbreviations used for Cantonese. I think using "yue" makes a little more sense, because the definitions won't be written in Chinese characters, and it's more succinct.

http://zh-yue.wikipedia.org (Cantonese wikipedia)

http://www.iana.org/assignments/lang-tags/zh-yue (The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority reference)

http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp?order=639_3&letter=y (uses "yue")

Ah yes, since it's not actually going to have Cantonese in the definitions, it doesn't make sense to have the languages written in Cantonese too. We'll go with "English/Cantonese -> Chinese" then.