Why Cantonese is Closer to Ancient Chinese than Mandarin

[Music] ah Cantonese it's the cool Chinese so cool it can make a 1980 cell phone look like the latest

iPhone play some Kanto pop and the girls instantly like you and of course they have the best curse words yeah but did you know that cantones

compared to Mandarin is actually closer to the form of ancient Chinese spoken during China's golden age of the tongue Dynasty and in this video we are going

to tell you why this is the ancient origins of Cantonese so cantones is one of China's principal dialects referred to as Y in this map it

is spoken in Guangdong Province and in Hong Kong and has been exported to just about every Chinatown in the World Scholars have described Cantonese as a fossil of ancient Middle Chinese which

was spoken during the northern and southern dynasties the sway Dynasty and the tongue Dynasty an ancient Middle Chinese was the lingua Franco of those times I.E the language that everyone

times I.E the language that everyone spoke to communicate with each other even if they spoke different dialects basically the equivalent of what Mandarin is today so why is Cantonese

closer to the lingua franka of ancient times than Mandarin is well we can look at three areas vocabulary grammar and pronunciation let's start with vocabulary many of the words used in

Cantonese especially verbs are exactly the same as what was used in ancient China if you have studied classical Chinese you will easily notice this and these verbs are no longer in use in

Spoken Man for example let's talk about verbs to do with eating food the verb to eat in Cantonese is SE this is used in classical Chinese too but in modern

Mandarin they use the newer verb the verb to drink in cantones is Yum but in Mandarin they now use the word h but those characters SE and yam and in

Mandarin they pronounced sh and Yin they still retain their original meanings in Mandarin and they're now just more formal ways of saying eat and drink you wouldn't really use them in spoken Mandarin but you can also see them in

two character words like the word for food in Mandarin is literally eat things or things that you eat then what about other verbs well the verb to be in Cantonese is hi whereas in modern

Mandarin they use the word sh but if you look back only a couple of hundred years you can see that same character hi in cantones which is pronounced she in Mandarin was in use in books like the

classic novel Hong monk or dream of the red chamber that book was written in the vernacular I.E spoken Chinese and based

vernacular I.E spoken Chinese and based on the Beijing dialect of the time yet you see this character used as the verb to be many times in the text so the Beijing dialect which evolved into

modern Mandarin lost that usage of that character but it was retained in cantones now let's look at nouns Cantonese retains more Single Character nouns than Mandarin which were inherited

from ancient Chinese for example the word for cup is Bo in Cantonese but in Mandarin they add a on the end so it's B the word For Eyes in Cantonese is Nan

and that same character is pronounced yen in Mandarin but they add another character behind it for the word for eyes to be y now let's look at one more expression the word to ask how many in

Mandarin it's door but in cantones it's gor and you can see that exact word in the final line of this poem Punch or pond in a bowl by the Tongue Dynasty

poet Han waiting for the night to be deep and the bright moon to go having a look swimming around how many stars can be seen gor all right so we have

established that many words in Cantonese are directly from ancient Chinese way more than in Mandarin now let's look at

grammar so it's much harder to know how close the grammar of Cantonese is to the spoken Chinese of ancient times and that is because historically Chinese people do not write in the same way that they

speak what was written down was formal classical Chinese that would be grammatically different from what was spoken but there are some Clues to similarities for example in Mandarin the

word for rooster is gji but in Cantonese they will say it the other way around gong then another example is the phrase for thank you very much in Mandarin we

say like extremely thank you but in Cantonese they say with the Sai at the end playing the role of extremely or very much this is a structure that

existed in ancient Chinese where the ad verb was added at the end of a sentence as a supplement all right so that is the grammar the part we have least information about now let's get into

talking about pronunciation and we'll tell you why ancient Chinese poems are more likely to rhyme when you read them in cantones so with pronunciation there are

two aspects to speak about we have the tones and we have the actual sounds of the words themselves let's talk about the tones first all Chinese dialects are tonal languages and tones in Cantonese

are way more obvious in my opinion than in Mandarin listen to this clip of chaun fat in God of gamblers in cantones now listen to the same scene dubbed in

[Music] Mandarin I think most people will feel the Cantonese sounds way more sing songy way more tonal and you would be right because modern Cantonese has six basic

tones whereas Mandarin only has four but actually in Cantonese there are three more tones called entering tones or Y or R if you pronounce it in Mandarin that

don't exist anymore in modern manner in Chinese if we add those in we get nine tones what exactly are these entering tones well if you look at them on this chart they appear to be the same as tone

1 3 and six but they're not because they are words ending in the letters of P e t or K in what is called a glottal stop where it feels as if the sound is cut

off like the word but which means pen you can hear how the T isn't really pronounced fully that sound can then be voiced in high medium and low tones b b

b i remember my cantones professor in Cantonese 101 in University used the entering tone word which is spelled Fu K to demonstrate the three entering tones

and repeated it over and over again to much laughter from us college students anyway what are we talking about here oh okay how the tones of Cantonese are more similar to ancient Chinese so the Chun

is an ancient Chinese rhyme dictionary that was published in 16001 ad during the sway Dynasty the book was edited by a man named Luen this book recorded the

correct pronunciation and tone of individual Chinese characters at the time of writing modern Cantonese has nine tones and like we said that can be lowered to six if you incorporate the three entering tones but these nine

tones are identical to the tone system recorded in the Chun so modern cantones preserves the tonal structure of tongue Dynasty Chinese The Poets of the tongue Dynasty wrote their Works according to

the pronunciation standards laid out in the Chun and its revised versions thus if one reads tongue poems in Cantonese the tonal structure will very likely match the original and the poem is also

more likely to rhyme the tonal structure of tongue Dynasty regulated verse or split the tones into two categories level tones and oblique tones cantones

has three different level tones High mid and low all of which could be placed in the level tone category yet Mandarin now has only one level tone so when tongue poems are read in Mandarin the level

tone category includes Mandarin Rising tones as well in the oblique tone category were placed all other tones so Rising tones falling tones and entering tones these Rising tones still

correspond to the two Rising tones in can KN but in Mandarin they now correspond to the third tone a fall and then a small rise the falling tone still corresponds to Falling tones in both

dialects while the entering tone is still present in cantones it is completely absent in Mandarin words that would have been entering tones are now distributed amongst the four Mandarin

tones and thus between level and oblique tones when poems are read using Mandarin pronunciation there are set tone structures in tongue regulated verse that poets adhere to here is one of the

them on screen now those characters represent level and oblique tones if we now look at the first couplet of du's poem enjoying the rain on a spring night

it reveals how cantones preserves the original tonal structure due to the fact that it preserves the entering tone this character is pronounced fart in

Cantonese no not fart but fart completely different and it is an entering tone which would fit into the oblique tone category that is required by the structure of this poem yet in

Mand in it is pronounced far and would thus be a level tone which would go against the tonal structure of the poem it is worth noting that this character which is pronounced C in cantones and Sh

in Mandarin goes against the tonal structure in both Mandarin and cantones this may be an example of the poet breaking the rules or the Chinese character changing tones in Cantonese as well since it was written yet this

example shows that while Mandarin has two tones that differ from the original tonal structure cantones only has one thus showing that by preserving the entering tone Cantonese remains closer

to the tones of ancient Middle Chinese than Mandarin does so that is the tones but what about the actual pronunciation of the words didn't I say that ancient poems are more likely to rhyme in

canones let's talk about that so in addition to tones the actual rhyming structures in tongue poems are preserved better in Cantonese than in

Mandarin let's check out this poem by Lee bite the broad virtue of delivering Han to serve the Emperor is it Han Solo no I don't think so anything H it's Han

but that's okay in cantones these three characters are pronounced Wing King and Ming and thus rhyme I'm not adding the tones okay just for Simplicity yet in Mandarin the first character is

pronounced wrong and thus it leaves the first line out of the rhyming structure while two of the characters do still rhyme in Mandarin cantones preserves

three rhyming characters which is likely the complete original rhyme structure as the third line was often left out of the right so all this shows you that Cantonese sticks closer to how the

language may have sounded in ancient China it's also not 100% the same since it's over a thousand years since the end of the tongue Dynasty I'm sure many characters still changed their

pronunciation over time even in Cantonese but the structure of the language in its tones and the verbs that it uses and some of the pronunciation still stick very close to what was used

in the tongue Dynasty I think that's why many scholars have called it a fossil of ancient Chinese the structure is preserved but the look and feel of it may have changed somewhat what was once

bone has turned to rock but you can still see what it is in the case of a fossil I hope that metaphor makes sense now if you have learned Mandarin don't feel bad go read a tongue Dynasty poem

in Mandarin and you will find that many of the poems do still rhyme as well just not quite as many as in cantones and although the tones are different if you don't look too deeply into how the tones

were orig originally supposed to be then you won't be able to tell the difference anyway but one thing's for certain if you only speak Mandarin you're never going to be as cool as CH and

[Music] F okay I realized he didn't actually speak any Cantonese In that clip but it's a classic clip from a classic Cantonese movie that you should

definitely check out all right guys that is the video for today don't forget if you want to see Chinese culture brought to life on stage my co-host Jared is still on tour with shenyun perform in

arts they have eight companies currently touring the world and they have shows coming up at Lincoln Center in New York and a load of other places across the world in the next few weeks so click the link below to watch the trailer and if

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you in the next video bye-bye