曾傑成：對不起！上文改錯字：【坎頭理】→【坎頭埋牆】。

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Michael 忠仔
我查過兩本錄有“札低”一詞的廣州話詞典。根據那兩本詞典，原來它的發音係 “zaap3" , 而用的字不是習，乃是札。要否改換原來的字卻把讀音變為"zaap"第三聲。

http://win2003.chi.cuhk.edu.hk/hanyu/chetio.asp?chetio=11657 shows zaap3 for 札. Likewise 劄 looks like the traditional for 札.

-Tony

A friend is mat at me can someone please translate this phrase to english for me ?
太耐無行街，對著d sales 口嘖嘖唔知點感。。。

I've been told that in the Silicon Valley region of the Bay Area that almost all Chinese there speak Mandarin and Taiwanese and that finding Cantonese speakers in that region is quite rare and difficult? Thus if you wanted to communicate Cantonese with someone or if you wanted to find HK/Cantonese food, you have to drive 45 minutes north to San Francisco or Oakland to do so? Can someone confirm if this is true or false?

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Simon Pettersson
To KeeFung: there's a difference between "older" and "more conservative". Both Mandarin and Cantonese have an unbroken history of continuous development all the way back to the first proto-language they both developed from. Thus none can be older than the other since they were once one and the same.

Regardless of who came first and who came second, Cantonese and Mandarin have gone long far enough to the point that the languages can be essentially different. YES, Mandarin Chinese Writing can be read by Cantonese only speakers, however Cantonese itself has an entirely different grammatical structure, system, word usage, etc. To say that some things in Cantonese sound like Mandarin and group them all together would be like saying we have things in Korean and Japanese that sound similar to that too.

For example: 時間 for Time
Mandarin: Shi Jian
Cantonese: Si Gan
Japanese: Ji Kan
Korean: Si Gan

Or another example: 字母 for Letter (alphabet)
Mandarin: Zi Mu
Cantonese: Ji Mo
Japanese: Ji Bo
Korean: Ja Mo

But not all things are created equal:
Example -> What?
Mandarin: 什麽 Shen Me?
Cantonese: 乜野 Mat Yeh?
Japanese: 何 Nani?
Korean: (I actually don't know this one)

Personally, I don't have any hatred towards the Mandarin Language, only hatred towards ignorant peoples who say "Cantonese is not important/not a language" That personally just means you're denying us of our existence.

Oh and the forum... I want it to be a more interactive community that can work together to promote Cantonese and culture. I feel this one only discusses about "Why We Like It" or "Why it's going down"

By the way, what other forums are you part Simon? Are they Cantonese or? ..?

For the nursery rhyme in Flying@ http://www.flying-w.net/knowledge/Cantonese/nursery_rhyme.html
年卅晚，摘槟榔

The only couplet that does not rhyme in Cantonese in that poem is:

菩荙苦，买猪肚

苦 and 肚 do not rhyme. (btw, 菩荙 is 苦gwa)

Have you seen this thread yet? It seems like you might have some useful information. How do you determine the "orthodox" characters? Did you research them yourself or use a source that lists them?
Nevermind. I thought you were the author of that site.

I see Simon. That's interesting. Although I don't understand as much, but by interchanging the logic around, I think it works. But I am also too used to saying the latter since that's how I was raise, and it's how things are said in almost every single TVB drama, haha, and in most of HK programmes and Cantonese programmes.

To Simon: Then if you want to say it like that, I can also say that every language in this world is basically a dialect of one another? Since we all came from Africa by scientific discoveries, our languages would all fall back to African languages, you can't say that African language or culture is the same culture each nation has today. I agree, that you may not be able to predict or prove (at the moment) which came first, but by the evidence provided, there has yet to be anything that Mandarin could be used for to study the past, which means that Mandarin was either not used much back then, as far as Cantonese was, or Mandarin did not exist as the same Mandarin it was now, and was not named, 'PuTongHua' 'Language of the Officials' or 'Country's Language'. 'Mandarin' was never an official language of China until the early Ming Dynasty. The traces of Mandarin by oral, and grammar, can go back as far as Ming Dynasty, which is around the 1300's. Cantonese has a traceable past that goes back to around 600's.

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Barack Obama
Do you think Simplified Characters can Ruin Cantonese Developement?

A nation that forgets its past has no future.

I am inspired even more to fight simplifications!