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Cantonese: Cantonese Mandarin
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Cantonese (Gwong2 Dung1 Wa2)... known as Yue, is a member of the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family, and is one of the top 20 most spoken languages in the world. Cantonese is the most influential Chinese dialect after Mandarin, and despite the fact that it has less total speakers, the geographical spread of Cantonese has historically been much greater and largely remains so to this day. While Mandarin is often seen by Cantonese people as merely a tool for use in government and business, Cantonese is lively, colorful, and fun to speak. The abundance of slang, unique culture, and distinctive sense of humor make it a highly enjoyable language to learn.
As one of the Chinese languages, Cantonese belongs to the Sino Tibetan language family, which ... includes Tibetan and Lolo Burmese and Karen (both spoken in Burma). The major linguistic distinctions within Chinese are Mandarin, Wu, Min, Yue (Cantonese), and Hakka (See Li and Thompson 1979). Cantonese is more closely related to Min and Hakka than it is to Mandarin and Wu.
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In some ways, Cantonese is a more conservative language than Mandarin, and in other ways it is not. For example, Cantonese has retained consonant endings from older varieties of Chinese that have been lost in Mandarin.
Over 120,000 entries, eight methods of character input and English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese voice features make this slim pocket translator one of the most powerful language tools available. It includes all kinds of handy resources to manage your travels, studies, and business meetings, too.
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The term "Cantonese" derives from the name given by Westerners to the capital of the province Guangdong, "Canton". Cantonese usually refers to the people, dialect or cuisine of Canton. The Chinese name of Canton is "Guang3zhou1" (廣州) in Mandarin and "Guong-zeo" in Cantonese (pronunciation issues are dealt with below), and hence Cantonese is sometimes called "Guong-zeo-wa" ("Language of Canton") or "yue4 yu3" (粵語).
Several romanization systems represent spoken Cantonese. Among those most widely used are the Meyer Wempe system, the Chao Barnett system, the Yale system, and the Pinyin system created in 1958 and used in China (see Li and Thompson 1979). By definition Pinyin is reserved for Mandarin. The Defense Language Institute/Foreign Language Center uses its own system in all its teaching materials in Cantonese (including the Cantonese variant of Taishan). The major differences among these systems are found in their ways of representing the vowels and marking the tones of Cantonese.
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