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The characters used for Mandarin and Cantonese\u00a0share the same roots in ancient Chinese<\/strong>, but Mandarin now uses\u00a0simplified characters<\/strong>, which were set as the standard by the Chinese government in the 1950s, while Cantonese speakers still tend to use\u00a0traditional characters<\/strong>. As the name implies, simplified characters are less complex,\u00a0and have fewer character strokes than traditional characters.<\/p>\n Those who read traditional characters are usually able to figure out simplified characters, but those who read simplified have a difficult time understanding traditional characters.<\/p>\n As an example, \u2018dragon\u2019 is written like this in Mandarin (simplified characters): \u9f99, but like this in Cantonese (traditional characters): \u9f8d. The Mandarin version has 5 strokes, but the \u201cCantonese version\u201d has 16 strokes! (Taiwanese, i.e. their Mandarin dialect, Hokkien, and other Chinese languages in Taiwan, also use traditional characters.)<\/p>\n Another example is Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, which is written as \u5e7f\u5dde in Mandarin, but \u5ee3\u5dde in \u201cCantonese\u201d. You can tell there are a few similarities, but that it would also be difficult for a Mandarin speaker to understand Cantonese writing.<\/p>\n Written Cantonese<\/strong><\/p>\n With the spread of electronic communication,\u00a0a form of written Cantonese<\/strong>\u00a0was introduced to represent idiomatic sounds and words in Cantonese. These words and characters have no connection with classical Chinese words\/characters but are widely used in informal occasions, like online chat, instant messages, network websites, and local magazines, etc.<\/p>\n Examples of Idiomatic (Informal) Cantonese:<\/strong><\/p>\n Source: www.chinahighlights.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Different Characters for Written Mandarin\/Cantonese The characters used for Mandarin and Cantonese\u00a0share the same roots in ancient Chinese, but Mandarin now uses\u00a0simplified characters, which were set as the standard by the Chinese government in the 1950s, while Cantonese speakers still tend to use\u00a0traditional characters. As the name implies, simplified characters are less complex,\u00a0and have fewer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":12707,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-language"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernlanguage.com.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernlanguage.com.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernlanguage.com.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernlanguage.com.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernlanguage.com.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/modernlanguage.com.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernlanguage.com.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/modernlanguage.com.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernlanguage.com.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/modernlanguage.com.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n\n
\n Gloss<\/th>\n Classical Cantonese<\/th>\n Idiomatic Cantonese<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n \n They<\/td>\n \u4ed6\u5011\/taa1 mun4<\/td>\n \u4f62\u54cb\/keoi5 dei6<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Know<\/td>\n \u6703\u4e0d\u6703\/wui6 bat1 wui5<\/td>\n \u8b58\u5514\u8b58\/sik1 m4 sik1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Speak<\/td>\n \u8aaa\/syut3<\/td>\n \u8b1b\/gong2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n ? (question indicator)<\/td>\n \u55ce\/maa3<\/td>\n \u5440\/aa3<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n