![]() ![]() However this text is not usually recognizable to Mandarin speakers, and not commonly used for official documents, academic communication, or governmental purposes. These are a one-to-one transliteration of the Cantonese audio, making it much easier to understand the original Cantonese. Recommended for Chinese audiences in Taiwan and Hong Kong.It is also not a very direct representation of the original Cantonese audio. This version is also essentially a translation of the original Cantonese audio, but is more recognizable to Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong and Taiwan. ![]() Recommended for international Chinese audiences.However this is not the right solution if you want to have a more direct representation of the original Cantonese. This way, the text is easily readable by Chinese speakers in China and Singapore. If you transcribe Cantonese audio into Mandarin Simplified characters, you are essentially translating the original Cantonese audio into a new language (Mandarin). How Do You Know What Kind of Cantonese Transcription to Order?Ĭantonese transcriptions can be written with: Mandarin Simplified Characters This way, it can easily be read by a Cantonese speaker in Cantonese. If you choose to write (or transcribe) in Cantonese (instead of Mandarin), you will be using a writing system that includes these unique Cantonese characters, and you’ll be using the word order and grammar of Cantonese. These two words come from a completely different ancestor, and are written with very different characters (The Cantonese is “乜嘢”). The word “what in Mandarin is “shen me” (什麼) but in Cantonese is “mat yeh”. However, Cantonese has a few extra characters and words that don’t exist in Mandarin, for example: Therefore, many of the characters used to represent Cantonese are the same ones used for Mandarin.įor example, the word for “you” in Mandarin is pronounced “ni” and Cantonese is pronounced “lei” but they are written using the same character (你) because they share the same common ancestor: Since characters do not represent sound, they can easily be used for several different languages (in fact, Vietnamese and Korean both used to use Chinese characters as well!) You might already be aware that Cantonese is written using meaning-based characters instead of a sound-based alphabet. There are a few exceptions: blogs, subtitles for television shows, newspaper columns, and transcripts of legal depositions are often written in Cantonese. Most business and legal documents are written in Mandarin, using Mandarin vocabulary and Mandarin syntax (word order is not always the same between the two languages). That means that when Cantonese speakers go to school, they are usually reading books in Mandarin, and writing their essays in Mandarin. Yet even in majority Cantonese-speaking regions of the Sinosphere, Mandarin is exclusively used as the language of academia and government. When you write them down, you can choose to write (either of them!) in either Simplified, Traditional, or Cantonese characters.Ĭantonese is a Chinese language spoken mostly in the South of China, Hong Kong, and as heritage languages throughout Malaysia and Singapore. Mandarin and Cantonese are different languages – they sound different, they have different grammar, they’re not mutually intelligible, and they are written differently. These are just writing systems, not languages. We’re not talking about the difference between Simplified and Traditional characters. And when it is written, it is often written using…Mandarin! This is mostly due to the fact that Cantonese is very rarely written. It is also the preferred language of nearly 62 million consumers, who are increasingly expecting to find technology, media, and communications in their mother tongue.īut ordering a Cantonese transcription is not as simple as ordering one in say, Korean or Japanese. What is Cantonese?Ĭantonese is a language spoken throughout Southern China and Hong Kong. We’ll take you through the different ways Cantonese is written, so you can figure out what works best for your purposes. Have you ever needed Cantonese transcription? Were you confused by all the options?
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