So I finally have a concrete example of a way in which Cantonese is more 'old school' than Mandarin. On my couple of trips to Hong Kong, I'd sort of figured out that shi (to be) in Cantonese was hai. I'd assumed it was their way of pronouncing the word written 是.
But it's not! They actually use the really old word 系 xi, which you can still find in old texts (like the Three Kingdoms). Can mean the same as shi in certain contexts. Like the phrase I just read:
融曰：“我系李相通家。” Rong said "I'm a relative of Minister Li"
This piece of the puzzle just clicked now when I found the Cantonese word in the Wenlin definition. So that's why it popped up all the time in those HK gangsters films I've been watching.
I've just started dipping my toe into Cantonese properly by the amazingly awesome website designed for mainland Mandarin speakers learning Cantonese, 520hai. Something tells me it may not be entirely legitimate, as there are expensively produced videos up there entirely for free...but hey, their lessons are really useful. I'm still at the stage where I'm gaping at the fact that there's 9 tones, and trying to get my ears and eyes linking up to the new pinyin system.
Well, you know that saying, I think it's something like 千里之行， 始于一步 (the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step- let me know if I have that wrong). Or maybe something like 九声之语， 始于阴平 in this case. (a language of nine tones begins with the first tone- my classical Chinese sucks do please point out if that's wrong, anyone- Jeremiah? Sunny? Laurie?)
Anyway, I hope someone finds the 520hai link useful- I'm amazed such a site exists.
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3 comments:
I was just thinking about that the other day. I also assumed hai must be the same character as shi. Now that you mentioned it I just had a look at my early Cantonese text book and see your are correct - it's a totally different character.
That's one more character learnt - just a few thousand more to go to attain basic proficiency. BTW I'm impressed you're delving into the Cantonese Dialect - does this mean we might see more of you in HK soon?
千里之行，始于足下
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