Speak Like the Local if You know the Cantonese Lazy Accent
What Is lazy accent pronounced?
First, we must define what is lazy tone. In ancient China, dynasties alternated frequently, people kept moving to escape wars or natural disasters, cultures of different ethnic groups were infected with each other, and languages evolved. Cantonese lazy accent refers to the flow of the internal laws of the Cantonese voice.
People who insist on correct pronunciation criticize lazy pronunciation for causing language misunderstanding, one of the examples they often cite:
The teacher taught me today (lou5 si gam jat6 gaau3 ngo5)
to speak into
The teacher sexually assaulted me today (lou5 si gam jat6 gaau2 ngo5)
In Cantonese, gaau3 means to teach and gaau2 means sexually assaulted, but the truth is this has no such lazy accent, that is the wrong pronunciation but not a lazy accent if we pronounce gauu3 into gauu2. Cantonese speakers always understand different lazy accents.
Is it a sin to speak with a Cantonese lazy accent?
Lazy sounds may be educated in the case of no formal contact with standard pronunciation or even affected by rural sounds. Many people think that this is the natural evolution of language, and it will often occur in other languages. For example, there are many kinds of phonetic changes in Korean, so there is no need to worry too much.
Cantonese lazy sounds generally appear on the soundtracks and vowels, and some lazy sounds appear in complex consonants and tones. There are also referring to the Hong Kong Cantonese lazy tone including the nasal sound rhyme finals [ŋ] change [m], Sai Yinyun finals [k], [t] mixed, round lip tongue root sound [kw], [gw] round lip ingredients fall off, back nasal sound [n] changes such as [l].
The Hong Kong style of Lazy Pronunciation generally appears at the onset, almost never in Cantonese 9 tones pronunciation. eg, You”nei5"/”lei5", Female”neoi5"/”leoi5", etc.
Recently, the Cantonese language in Guangdong often sends GW (GU) into G, and KW (KU) is sent into K. This phenomenon is also common in Hong Kong and Macau.
So is it a sin to talk Cantonese with some lazy accent? Should we insist on speaking in standard pronunciation? What kind of learning disability does this make? Let’s discuss it here.
How many accents of Cantonese?
In the midland of China, there have the provincial capital, Xiguan, Dongshan, Henan (Haizhu), Shunde, Taishan, Enping, Kaiping, South China Sea, Panyu, etc., moreover, there still have Hong Kong, Malaysia and other over accents, It makes one of the difficult factors of learning Cantonese.
The controversy over orthodox Cantonese
In ancient times, the Cantonese language used the pronunciation of Guangzhou (Provincial City) as the standard. Outside the west gate of the city, people called their Xiguan.
Xiguan accent, also known as the Xiguan dialect, is a sub-dialect (or accent) of Cantonese. Cantonese is based on Provincial City accents but Cantonese Opera (Guangdong Opera) is performed with a Xiguan accent.
Due to the proximity of the Nanhai, the Xiguan accent and the South China Sea accent have the same phenomenon of indistinguishable n and l. However, compared with the Nanhai accent, the merging phenomenon of the Xiguan accents n and l is relatively slight. Xiguan accent pronounces all zero initials as (ng) initials, for example, “house (uk7)” is pronounced as “nguk7”, and love (oi3)” is pronounced as “ngoi3”. This phenomenon also occurs in the Nanhai accent.
It was different from other areas of Guangzhou, the terrain of Xiguan is low and flat, on the verge of the Pearl River, and the canals cross over there, Ancient Xiguan is the hub of Guangzhou city’s external traffic.
During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, the Qing Government adopt a policy of seclusion, (the other two seclusions were during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty to prevent Japanese pirates from stealing, and the other time was to prevent the coastal residents from communicating with Taiwan during the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty), Guangzhou became the only legal region for trading with the foreign country in China, knowns as Thirteen Hong. As a trading port, the Thirteen Banks monopolize the right to operate China’s foreign trade.
This makes Xiguan people more and more wealthy. Xiguan people like to enjoy Cantonese opera, and later it became more popular inside the Provincial City. Since Cantonese opera generally uses a louder Xiguan accent, the Cantonese accent in the Provincial City also changes accordingly, which is generally considered to be the source of lazy accents.
After the founding of the Republic of China, Dongshan was the military and political center, especially in the era of Chen Jitang’s rule, there was the golden age of Guangzhou. The wealthy residents made trading more frequently everywhere in China, and the said traditional accents became mixed.
The recent situation of Cantonese in Guangzhou
After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, a large number of people from the north migrated to Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other places in the south, and residents who originally spoke Cantonese became a minority. In addition, the state implemented the Mandarin policy. Schools stipulated that teaching must in Mandarin, and some schools even prohibited students from communicating in Cantonese in the school. Although civil have actions to protect Cantonese recently, it is not a mainstream policy, the result is not too obvious. At present, Cantonese spoken by people in Guangzhou is often spoken with accents from Shunde, Panyu, or other provinces, and some children even do not know how to speak Cantonese at all.
The Hong Kong Style of Cantonese accent became the mainstream of Cantonese
Before the opening of Hong Kong’s port, there were three groups of original residents, namely Cantonese Weitou people, Danjia people (fishermen), and Hakka people. of which Weitou and Danjia are also branches of Cantonese. The English translation of the word Hong Kong “Hongkong” is derived from the pronunciation of Danjia.
Influenced by immigrants from all over China, Hong Kong Cantonese has also absorbed accents from different regions. The most common is to pronounce the initial n as l, ng as o, and gw as g. In addition, Hong Kong is an international financial center and has long coexisted with foreigners, many words are directly translated from English pronunciation, such as Taxi “dik si6”, Bus “Baa si6”, chocolate “yz gu lik” etc.
In the 1840s, the Qing Dynasty ceded Hong Kong to the United Kingdom, then a large number of civilians from Guangzhou and Jiangmen poured into Hong Kong. Most of the people who arrived in Hong Kong in the early days were coolies and construction workers, as well as businessmen, and many Guangzhou people worked in Hong Kong. From ancient times to the Qing Dynasty, Cantonese has always been the official language of South China. Therefore, in the urban area of Hong Kong, Cantonese has always been the main language of citizens.
In the age of colonial, Hong Kong’s administrative, judicial, legislative, press release, and other executives generally require that they have the ability to speak Cantonese or English before they can hold public office. News TV, radio, administrative agencies, etc. will also serve the majority of users who have already stereotyped languages (Cantonese, English) first. If necessary, the Legislative Council and other government information offices will provide interpretation in Cantonese, English, and Beijing dialect. The school also uses biliterate and trilingual teaching, and the school can fully teach other subjects in English or Cantonese.
Hong Konger also developed many funny Cantonese phrases, slang, and words that you even can find in some Cantonese online courses.
Hong Kong films have been widely known to foreigners since Bruce Lee. Since then, from the 1980s to the early 2000s, Hong Kong’s film, television, and pop music industries have been extremely prosperous. It is known as Oriental Hollywood, and wherever there are Chinese in the world, they will watch Cantonese movies, and sing Cantonese pop songs. In addition, Hong Kong’s shipping, trading, manufacturing, financial, and accounting service industries play a pivotal role in the world.
Before China’s reform and opening up, foreigners who wanted to learn Chinese first thought of learning Cantonese instead of Mandarin, so Hong Kong-style Cantonese has become the mainstream of Cantonese.
Conclusion
The famous Linguist John Lyons from Cambridge University points out that, “any criteria of evaluation applied to language development, must be built upon an understanding of the many duties a language ‘is called upon to play in the society which uses it.”
Any language has its development process like life, even if English or Spanish are the two most spoken languages in the world, it is not difficult to find the difference between 100 years ago and now. The lazy accent of Cantonese we are referring to now may only be part of the process of language development in the next few thousand years. After all, the purpose of learning a language is to communicate with most native people. When everyone talks with the lazy accent as normal, but we insist speak the “standard pronunciation”, will it give the other a very strange feeling?
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