Very Short Update

It’s not that I don’t want to work with you, it’s just I don’t think you’re going about Cantonese language reform in the right way. I don’t think people care enough about “correct” or “original” Cantonese – I think they just want to communicate easily and effectively.

Most people, if they need to communicate by writing things down, will use a computer. Hong Kongers have a disadvantage compared to Mainlanders in that there’s neither teaching of Cantonese PingYam, nor a readily-available Cantonese PingYam input method available. (Plus, certain characters can’t be input anyway on many devices.)

The idea of getting people to use Cantonese-specific characters that are more complicated than the ones in actual use is a non-starter. It’s pointless, and no-one will do it.

What you should be pushing for, at the very least, is widespread adoption of Cantonese PingYam systems. However, even this is far from ideal, because Chinese speakers do not like writing or reading romanisation, for much the same reason as you wouldn’t read English rendered in Chinese characters.

You could also try to aim for standardised Cantonese-specific characters, with the eventual aim of having them taught in schools. Characters that have the mouth radical where it doesn’t belong (哋，for example, is not consistent with 們, with the 企人邊) could usefully be corrected.

The next logical step would be to have written Cantonese taught and practised as an acceptable alternative to Written Mandarin, at least in Hong Kong. We could then expect a boon in the literature written in and translated into Cantonese.

Personally, what I think would be best would be an IPA-equivalent that’s graphically compatible with “normal” Chinese characters, such that standard Chinese characters and phonetic characters could be freely mixed without the whole thing looking a total mess.

This would save people (especially Cantonese-as-a-second-language-learners) the hassle of having to learn hundreds of characters not used by the vast majority of Chinese-language speakers. A sentence might look like this: 我우日早우린로 (where the Hangul are arbitrary representatives of the proposed phonetic transcriptions in the sentence 我琴日早啲返嚟.)

This system could be extended and adapted for all non-Mandarin languages, with phonetic components used systematically for different dialects. In other words, there would be a vast array of components, only some of which would be used for each dialect – in much the same way as the IPA.

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HouHou Reply:
November 15th, 2011 at 8:41 pm

Eldon and I have a very similar idea for what we’d like for the language to become, but I’m a little confused by this:
__________
Personally, what I think would be best would be an IPA-equivalent that’s graphically compatible with “normal” Chinese characters, such that standard Chinese characters and phonetic characters could be freely mixed without the whole thing looking a total mess.

This would save people (especially Cantonese-as-a-second-language-learners) the hassle of having to learn hundreds of characters not used by the vast majority of Chinese-language speakers. A sentence might look like this: 我우日早우린로 (where the Hangul are arbitrary representatives of the proposed phonetic transcriptions in the sentence 我琴日早啲返嚟.)
__________

My English is not good; so from what I understand, you’re suggesting that new characters be created for serving as phonetic representation, which could be used alongside Chinese characters in a way like how Japanese works?

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Canton 168 Reply:
November 16th, 2011 at 7:57 am

Eldon, did you get my e-mail?

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Eldon Reply:
November 16th, 2011 at 8:13 am

You betcha!

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My English is not good; so from what I understand, you’re suggesting that new characters be created for serving as phonetic representation, which could be used alongside Chinese characters in a way like how Japanese works?

______________

Yup, exactly. But, with the phonetic components of each character squeezed into the space of the character it represents, as in Hangul. This is because Bopomofo looks long and messy, whereas Hangul are consistent with “real” Chinese characters.

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HouHou Reply:
November 16th, 2011 at 7:54 am

That’s an incredible idea, I’ve always wanted to find a suitable replacement for Cantonese phonetics such as 嗰、噉、咁、嘅、㗎、啦、喇、囉、呢、咩、乜、嘢 and all that stuff, but could never come up with one that can make sense and still stick to a character-based layout. It’s either one or the other. I know little about the Hangul system, but the way you explained it, it meets both my “logical” and “character-based” requirements. Placement of each phonetic component within the space of one character would probably be an issue though. I need an expert on this lol.

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Eldon Reply:
November 16th, 2011 at 8:19 am

I think it depends on how you break up characters into sounds. For example: you could break up “coeng” into c, oe and ng as three separate components. Or, you could break it up into just c and oeng. The first method would create more cramped characters, and the second would require more phonetic components.

But even two or three components can fit easily into the space of one character – 囉, for example, has four distinct components, yet is still readable even with a small font size.

I might try and mock up some potential sample characters this week, then it’d be easier to get to grips with~

Uh, can I also take the opportunity to ask what your Cantonese background is exactly, by the way? Just out of interest

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HouHou Reply:
November 16th, 2011 at 9:43 am

Hm? What do you want to know exactly? I have a Hakka mom and a Cantonese dad, but I can only speak Cantonese. Wish I knew some Hakka too lol. So my 爺爺/嫲嫲 were from Guangdong, 公公 was from Hong Kong but he was a Hakka. Don’t remember much about my 婆婆.

I’d love to see your sample characters, seriously I was going to ask for some examples but didn’t want to give you too much trouble. I know that the components can easily fit into the size of one character, but it’s the specific placement of each component that I’m concerned about. I guess I will need to see an example and perhaps know how they make characters up in Hangul to understand this. I’m under the impression that odd numbered components would be harder to fit together as we may need to consider the overall shape of the “complete” look of one phonetic character.

Some ideas here:

http://eldonreeves.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/cantonese-characters-reborn/

I didn’t spend a lot of time proportioning the characters carefully, so I guess there’s room for improvement.

Also, I don’t think characters with an odd number of components would be especially difficult, provided the components themselves were well thought out.

RE your Chinese, I was just interested in whether or not you were a native speaker, which it seems you are

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