What Is The Difference Between Mandarin And Cantonese

What is the difference between mandarin and cantonese.

There are some phrases specific to each language. Mandarin is the official state language of china and the most widely spoken chinese dialect in the country. In the teaching context mandarin pronunciation is usually romanized using the pinyin system or zhuyin bopomofo in taiwan where cantonese commonly uses yale romanization. Together that comes out to a whopping nine tones four more than mandarin.

Cantonese has 9 tones in total which can be divided into 6 open syllables and 3 checked syllables. Mandarin has 4 tones as shown below plus a neutral tone. Spoken mandarin and cantonese are not mutually intelligible. Mandarin has 4 tones.

Can mandarin chinese understand cantonese. Cantonese is one of many minority dialects and there are also many minority languages. Cantonese has six tones whereas mandarin has just four. Intonation is vital when trying to convey your meaning hence making cantonese harder to learn than mandarin.

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Another difference between mandarin and cantonese is the number of tones. For example gwai lo 鬼佬 in cantonese refers to a foreigner. Cantonese is older of the two languages being in existence 2000 years ago while mandarin is just 700 800 years ago. Cantonese on the other hand has six major tones and three additional high mid and low level tones.

While both mandarin and cantonese are tonal when it comes to the spoken word cantonese sounds completely different to mandarin. Mandarin utilizes four tones whereas cantonese has at least six and sometimes as many as nine. Though there are some who label cantonese as a dialect of mandarin there are vast differences between the two to classify as separate languages. Level of difficulty in speaking.

The number of tones in both cantonese and mandarin significantly marks the two with mandarin speakers using four different tones and cantonese speakers generally using six. And different tones have different meanings even when used for the same word. Mandarin is the majority chinese dialect in china. Where are the two languages spoken.

Mandarin comprises of five tones while cantonese has nine different tones. Both the mandarin and cantonese dialects are tonal languages where one word has many meanings depending on the pronunciation and intonation. Mandarin and cantonese are both dialects of chinese not different languages. In mandarin the phrase is lao wai 老外.

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Mandarin consists of four major tones but some linguists count the neutral tone as a fifth. Cantonese and mandarin are written in the same way though cantonese favors traditional chinese characters rather than simplified. Mandarin has only four tones per sound while cantonese has at least six and can have up to nine. While they are both tonal languages where different tones give different meanings to the same sound the number of tones is different.