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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.
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.
Cantonese (traditional Chinese: 廣東話; simplified Chinese: 广东话; Jyutping: Gwong2 dung1 waa2; Cantonese Yale: Gwóngdūng wá) is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family, which has over 85 million native speakers. [1]
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.
Cantonese: 粤语/广东话/广州话 粵語/廣東話/廣州話 粵語/廣東話/廣州話 粤语 粤语 粵語 Mandarin: 国语/普通话 國語/普通話 國語/普通話 华语 华语 國語 potato: 土豆, 马铃薯, 地蛋, 洋芋 薯仔 薯仔 马铃薯 马铃薯 馬鈴薯, 洋芋 pineapple: 凤梨/菠萝 菠蘿, 鳳梨(only in 鳳梨酥 ...
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.
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.
Snow wrote that the different vocabulary systems are the main difference between written Mandarin and written Cantonese. [5] Ouyang Shan made a corpus-based estimate concluding that one third of the lexical items used in regular Cantonese speech do not exist in Mandarin, but that between the formal registers the differences were smaller.