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Written Cantonese refers to the written language used to write standard Cantonese using Chinese characters.

Cantonese is spoken and not usually written since it doesn't enjoy the status of the national language. Literate Cantonese speakers of older generations often used Classical Chinese, or now Mandarin-based Vernacular Chinese (or "standard Chinese"). Written Chinese spoken word for word in Cantonese sounds quite unnatural because Vernacular Chinese expressions are ungrammatical and unidiomatic in Cantonese. As a result, modern Cantonese speakers have developed their own written script, sometimes creating new characters for words that either do not exist or have been forgotten in standard Chinese. A good source for well documented written Cantonese words can be found in the scripts for Cantonese opera. "Readings in Cantonese colloquial: being selections from books in the Cantonese vernacular with free and literal translations of the Chinese character and romanized spelling" (1894) by James Dyer Ball has a bibliography of printed works available in Cantonese characters in the last decade of the nineteenth century. A few libraries have collections of so-called "wooden fish books" written in Cantonese character. Facsimiles and plot precis of a few of these have been published in Wolfram Eberhard's "Cantonese Ballads." See also "Cantonese love-songs, translated with introduction and notes by Cecil Clementi" (1904) or a newer translation of these Yue Ou in "Cantonese love songs : an English translation of Jiu Ji-yung's Cantonese songs of the early 19th century" (1992). Cantonese character versions of the Bible, Pilgrims Progress, and Peep of Day as well as simple catechisms were published by mission presses. The special Cantonese characters used in all of these was not standardized and shows wide variation.

With the advent of the computer and standardization of character sets specifically for Cantonese, many printed materials in predominantly Cantonese spoken areas of the world are written to cater to their population with these written Cantonese characters. As a result, mainstream media such as newspapers and magazines have become progressively less conservative and more colloquial in their dissemination of ideas. Generally speaking, some of the older generation of Cantonese speakers regard this trend as a step backwards and away from tradition. This tension between the traditional and colloquial is a reflection of a transition that is taking place in the Cantonese-speaking population.

Before the 20th century, the standard written language of China was Classical Chinese, which has grammar and vocabulary based on the Chinese used in ancient China, Old Chinese. However, while this written standard remained essentially static for over two thousand years, the actual spoken language diverged further and further away. Some writings based on local vernacular speech did exist but these were rare. In the early 20th century, Chinese reformers like Hu Shi saw the need for language reform and championed the development of a vernacular that allowed modern Chinese to write the language the same way they speak. The vernacular language movement took hold, and the written language was standardized as Vernacular Chinese. Because they had the largest amount of speakers, the Mandarin dialects were chosen as the basis for the new standard, despite the various dialects spoken in the country.

The standardization and adoption of Vernacular Chinese as standard written Chinese pre-empted the development and standardization of other vernaculars based on other Chinese varieties. No matter what dialects one spoke, one still wrote in standard written Chinese for everyday writing. However, Cantonese is unique among the non-Mandarin spoken varieties in having a widely used written form. Since Cantonese speaking Hong Kong as a British colony had been isolated from the rest of Mainland China, a lot of her citizens do not speak Mandarin, and so Written Cantonese was developed as a means of informal communication. Still, Cantonese speakers have to use standard written Chinese, or even literary Chinese, in most formal written communications, since written Cantonese may be unintelligible to speakers of other Chinese spoken variants.

Historically, written Cantonese has been used in Hong Kong for legal proceedings in order to write down the exact spoken testimony of a witness, instead of paraphrasing spoken Cantonese into standard written Chinese. However, its popularity and usage has been rising in the last two decades, the late Wong Jim being one of the pioneers of its use as an effective written language. Written Cantonese has become quite popular in certain tabloids, online chat rooms, instant messaging, and even social networking websites. Although most foreign movies and TV shows are subtitled in Standard Chinese, some, such as The Simpsons, are subtitled in written Cantonese. Some tabloids like Apple Daily are written largely in Cantonese, other newspapers (e.g. Hong Kong Economic Journal) may have editorials or columns that contain Cantonese discourses, and Cantonese characters are increasing in popularity on advertisements and billboards. Written Cantonese remains limited outside Hong Kong, even in other Cantonese-speaking areas (including Guangdong, China, where the dialect originated from). Hence there are concerns that becoming used to written Cantonese would affect one's command of standard written Chinese.

• 
  A Hong Kong Billboard in Written Cantonese with a mix of English words in typical code switch style of Hong Kong speech.
• 
  A Hong Kong political advertisement written with Cantonese
• Sign Board in Written Cantonese
  Sign Board in Written Cantonese
• 
  Political Banner in Written Cantonese

Written Cantonese contains many characters not used in standard written Chinese in order to transcribe words not present in the standard lexicon. Despite attempts by the government of Hong Kong in the 1990』s to standardize this character set, culminating in the release of the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set for use in electronic communication, there is still significant disagreement about which characters are "correct" in written Cantonese.

Some characters used to represent words in Cantonese are simply synonyms of words used in standard written Chinese. For example, the character for "not" (不), which is simply replaced by 唔, and the third-person pronoun (他 "he/she"), which is replaced by 佢. The plural pronoun marker (們) is replaced by 哋. The possessive particle (的) is replaced by 嘅. For instance:

There are certain words that share a common root with words in standard written Chinese. However, because they have diverged in pronunciation, tone, and/or meaning, they are often written using a different character. One example is the doublet 來 loi4 (standard) and 嚟 lei4 (Cantonese), meaning "to come." Both share the same meaning and usage, but because the colloquial pronunciation differs from the literary pronunciation, they are represented using two different characters, 嚟 and 來, respectively. Some people argue that representing the colloquial pronunciation with a different (and often extremely complex) character is superfluous, and encourage using the same character for both forms since they are cognates (see Derived characters below).

Some Cantonese words have no equivalents in Mandarin-based standard modern Chinese (though equivalents may exist in classical or other varieties of Chinese). Cantonese writers have from time to time reinvented or borrowed a new character if they are not aware of the original one. For example, some suggest that the common word 靚 (leng3), meaning pretty in Cantonese but also looking into the mirror in Chinese, is in fact the character 令.[1]

Today those characters can mainly be found in ancient rime dictionaries such as Guangyun. Some scholars have made some "archaeological" efforts to find out what the "original characters" are. Often, however, these efforts are of little use to the modern Cantonese writer, since the characters so discovered are not available in the standard character sets provided to computer users, and many have fallen out of usage.

New characters have been created to represent new concepts or loanwords.

Examples:

• Lift/Elevator

車立 (single character "𨋢") /lip1/,^{[needs IPA]} composed of the radical 車 ("car", symbolising a transportation vehicle) and the phonetic component 立 /lɐp6/.^{[needs IPA]}

Cantonese particles may be added to the end of a sentence or suffixed to verbs to indicate aspect. There are many such particles; here are a few.

• 咩 - "me1" placed at end of sentence to indicate disbelief
• 呢 - "ne1" placed at end of sentence to indicate question [2]
• 未 - "mei6" placed at end of sentence to ask if action is done yet
• 嚇 - (more correctly should be 吓) "ha5" placed after a verb to indicate a little bit, ie "eat a little bit"; "ha2" used singly, to show uncertainty or unbelief
• 緊 - "gan2" placed after a verb to indicate a progressive, ie "I am eating"
• 咗 - "zo2" placed after verb to indicate a completed action, ie "I finished eating"
• 埋 - "maai4" placed after verb to indicate a future tense, ie "I will finish eating"
• 譁/嘩 - "wa3" wow!

In Chinese, distinction is made between single syllable characters, which may represent either a word, morpheme, or particle, and multi-syllabic words. Characters are generally represented by a unique character, while a word may be composed of two or more characters, which may not be necessarily related in meaning. Thus, some Cantonese words may use existing characters to form words which do not exist or possess different meaning in Mandarin.

Also, some existing Chinese words are used differently in Cantonese than they are in Mandarin. For example, the word for "to eat" in Mandarin is 吃 (e.g. 吃飯 - to eat a meal). However, 吃 is never used in Cantonese. Instead, the word 食 is used in Cantonese to mean "to eat" (e.g. 食飯 - to eat a meal). 食 is also used in Mandarin, but not as a verb; instead, it is a noun mainly meaning "food". So when writing in Cantonese, it is necessary to use the appropriate Cantonese word. Some examples include:

• Mandarin: 吃 (v. eat) - Cantonese: 食 (as in Classical Chinese)
• Mandarin: 喝 (v. drink) - Cantonese: 飲(as in Classical Chinese) (Mandarin has since adapted this from Hong Kong.)
• Mandarin: 看 (v. look) - Cantonese: 睇 (as in its Classical Chinese counterpart, 睼)
• Mandarin: 怎麼 (adv. how) - Cantonese: 點
• Mandarin: 像 (v. resemble, adv. like) - Cantonese: 似
• Mandarin: 還 (adv. still) - Cantonese: 仲 (zung6; as in Classical Chinese)

Some Cantonese loanwords are written in existing Chinese characters.

see [3] for a list of loan words in Cantonese.

Cantonese characters, as with regular Chinese characters, are formed in one of several ways:

Some characters already exist in standard Chinese, but are simply reborrowed into Cantonese with new meanings. Most of these tend to be archaic or rarely used characters. An example is the character 子, which means "child". The Cantonese word for child is represented by 仔(jai), which has the original meaning of "young animal".

Many characters used in Cantonese writings are formed by putting a mouth radical (㗎, 口) on the left hand side of another more well known character, usually a standard Chinese character. This indicates that the new character sounds like the standard character, but is only used phonetically in the Cantonese context. (An exception is 咩, which does not sound like 羊 (sheep), but sounds like the sound that sheep make.) The characters which are commonly used in Cantonese writing include:

• 㗎 gaa3 (function word)
• 嚇 haa5/haa2 (function word)
• 吔 jaa3/jaa6 (function word)
• 呃 ngaak7 (v. cheat, hoax) Standard Chinese: 騙
• 噉 gam2 (function word like this) Standard Chinese: 這樣 e.g. 噉就死喇
• 咁 gam3 (function word like this) Standard Chinese: 這麼 e.g. 咁大件
• 咗 zo2 (function word past tense) Standard Chinese: 了
• 咩 me1 (function word) 嗎
• 哂 saai3 (function word complete e.g. 搬哂 moved all, finished moving) Standard Chinese: 掉, 完
• 哋 dei6 (function word; to show plural from of pronoun) Standard Chinese: 們
• 呢 ni1/nei1 (adv. this) Standard Chinese: 這
• 唔 m4 (adv. not, no, cannot; originally a function word) Standard Chinese: 不
• 唥 laang1 (function word)
• 啱 ngaam1 (adv. just, nearly) Standard Chinese: 剛; (adv. correct, suitable) Standard Chinese: 是
• 啲 di1/dit7 (genitive, similar to 's but pluralizing i.e. 呢個this one->呢啲these, 快點=快啲=hurry) Standard Chinese: 的, 些, 點
• 喐 yuk7 (v. move) Standard Chinese: 動
• 喥 dou6 (adv. there, here) Standard Chinese: 裡
• 喺 hai2 (prep.) At, in, during (time), at, in (place) Standard Chinese: 在
• 嗰 go2 (adv. that) Standard Chinese: 那
• 嘅 ge3 (genitive, similar to 's; sometimes function word) Standard Chinese: 之的,底
• 嘜 mak1 (n. mark, trademark; transliteration of "mark")
• 嘞 laak3 (function word)
• 喇 laa3 (function word)
• 嘢 ye5 (n. thing, stuff) Standard Chinese:, 事物
• 嘥 saai1 (v. waste) Standard Chinese: 浪費
• 嚟 lei4/lai4 (v. come, sometimes function word) Standard Chinese: 來
• 嚡 haai5 (function word)
• 嚿 gau6 (function word, piece of)
• 囖 lo1/lo3 (function word)
• 唞 tau2 (v. rest)
• 喊 haam3 (v. cry) Standard Chinese: 哭
• 咪 mai6/mai5 (v. not be, contraction of 唔係 m4hai6, used following 係 in yes-no questions) Standard Chinese: 否, 非; also other uses

There is evidence that the mouth radical in such characters can, over time, be replaced by a Signific, which indicates the meaning of the character. The new character is then a semantic compound. For instance, 冧 (lam1, "bud"), written with the signific 冖 ("cover"), is instead written in older dictionaries as 啉, with the mouth radical.

The development of new Cantonese characters is interesting linguistically, because they have never been subject to government standardization, in contrast to Standard Chinese, which has been regulated for over 2000 years. Therefore, a better understanding can be gained of the linguistics of how Chinese writing evolves, and how the script is modelled perceptually by the Chinese reader.

Other common characters are unique to Cantonese or are different from their Mandarin usage, including: 乜, 冇, 仔, 佢, 佬, 俾, 靚 etc. The characters which are commonly used in Cantonese writing include:

• 冇 mou5 (v. not have). Originally 無. Vernacular Chinese: 沒有
• 佢 keoi5 (pron. he/she/it). Originally 渠. Vernacular Chinese: 他
• 乜 mat1 (pron. what) often followed by 嘢 to form 乜嘢. Vernacular Chinese: 什麼
• 仔 zai2 (n. son, child, small thing). Originally 子.
• 佬 lou2 (n. guy, dude)
• 畀 bei2 (v. give) Vernacular Chinese: 給
• 靚 leng3 (adj. pretty, handsome). Originally 令. Vernacular Chinese: 漂亮
• 曬 saai3 (adv. completely; v. bask in sun)
• 瞓 fan3 (v. sleep). Originally 困. Vernacular Chinese: 睏, 睡
• 攞 lo2 (v. take, get) Vernacular Chinese: 拿
• 脷 lei6 (n. tongue) Vernacular Chinese: 舌
• 攰 gui6 (adj. tired) Vernacular Chinese: 累
• 埞 deng6 (n. place) often followed by 方 to form 埞方. Standard Chinese: 地方

The words represented by these characters are sometimes cognates with pre-existing Chinese words. However, their colloquial Cantonese pronunciations have diverged from formal Cantonese pronunciations. For example, 無 ("without") is normally pronounced mou4 in literature. In spoken Cantonese, 冇 (mou5) has the same usage, meaning, and pronunciation as 無, except for tone. 冇 represents the spoken Cantonese form of the word "without", while 無 represents the word used in Classical Chinese and Vernacular Chinese. However, 無 is still used in some instances in spoken Cantonese, such as 無論如何 ("no matter what happens"). Another example is the doublet 來/嚟, which means "come". 來 (loi4) is used in literature; 嚟 (lei4) is the spoken Cantonese form.

As not all Cantonese words can be found in the current encoding system, or their encoding or input method may be obscure, some Cantonese writers use simple romanization (e.g. use D as 啲), symbols (add a Latin letter "o" in front of another Chinese character; e.g. 㗎 is defined in recent versions of Unicode, but will not display in many browsers due to lack of proper fonts or the browser's failure to use the correct fonts, hence the proxy o架 is often used), homophones (e.g. use 果 as 嗰), and Chinese characters with that have different meanings in Mandarin (e.g. 乜, 係, 俾; etc.) For example, "你喺嗰喥好喇, 千祈咪搞佢啲嘢。" is often written in easier form as "你o係果度好喇, 千祈咪搞佢D野。" (character-by-character, approximately 'you, being, there (two characters), good, (final particle), thousand, pray, don't, mess with, him, (genitive particle), things', translation 'You'd better stay there, and please don't mess with his/her stuff.')

This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please help improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (April 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• Snow, Donald Bruce (1991). "Written Cantonese and the culture of Hong Kong: the growth of a dialect literature", PhD thesis, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International.
• ——— (1994). "A short history of published Cantonese: what is dialect literature?" in Journal of Asian Pacific Communication, 4(3), pp. 127–32.
• ——— (2004). Cantonese as Written Language: The Growth of a Written Chinese Vernacular Hong Kong University Press, ISBN 962-209-709-X

Cantonese edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• S. L. Wong's A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced according to the Dialect of Canton, by the CUHK
• A Chinese Talking Syllabary of the Cantonese Dialect: An Electronic Repository, by the CUHK
• Modern Standard Mandarin and Cantonese conversion, by the CUHK
• Yueyu.net
• Cantonese Association
• Learn Cantonese!
• Orthographic Change: Yue (Cantonese) Chinese Dialect