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Cantonese is an analytic language in which the arrangement of words in a sentence is important to its meaning. A basic sentence is in the form of SVO, i.e. a subject is followed by a verb then by an object, though this order is often violated because Cantonese is a topic-prominent language.
In English, the term "Cantonese" can be ambiguous. "Cantonese" as used to refer to the language native to the city of Canton, which is the traditional English name of Guangzhou, was popularized by An English and Cantonese Pocket Dictionary (1859), a bestseller by the missionary John Chalmers. [6]
However, Cantonese is unique amongst the non-Mandarin varieties in having a widely used written form. Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong used to be a British colony isolated from mainland China before 1997, so most HK citizens do not speak Mandarin. Written Cantonese has developed as a means of informal communication.
Cantonese: 師奶 (si1 naai1) English: Housewife: C9 Example: 你著到成個C9咁. English: You dress like a housewife(C9). The word C9 should be pronounced in English "C nine", which is very similar to Cantonese si1 naai1. It is an easier form of typing the word "師奶" without changing the meaning in Cantonese.
Although texts in Hong Kong-style Chinese are read in Cantonese phonology, its grammar and lexicon are largely derived from the Mandarin-based Modern Standard Chinese. Consequently, people proficient in other varieties of Standard Chinese, like Beijing Mandarin or Taiwanese Mandarin , are able to understand it at least in writing.
Meanwhile, structure words like determiners, conjunctions and auxiliary verbs almost never appear alone in the predominantly Cantonese discourse, which explains the ungrammaticality of two節 (does not make sense, but literally means 'two parts'). English lexical items, on the other hand, are frequently assimilated into Cantonese grammar.
Scholars say it is closer to ancient Chinese than Mandarin is — a Tang Dynasty poem would sound more like the original if read in Cantonese. The two languages share a common writing system.
In the tables, the first two columns contain the Chinese characters representing the classifier, in traditional and simplified versions when they differ. The next four columns give pronunciations in Standard (Mandarin) Chinese, using pinyin; Cantonese, in Jyutping and Yale, respectively; and Minnan (Taiwan). The last column gives the classifier ...