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 Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 10:23 am
(Not sure if this is in the right subforum)
After mentioning the use of the character, 食 in both Cantonese and Japanese to mean 'eat', I thought it'd be interesting to discuss some strange differences and similarities in the two languages (Chinese and Japanese). Maybe not as much similarities, since most of them will have similar meanings, but some interesting differences.
I only have 1 at the moment, as my Japanese is extremely basic:
Japanese: 勉強 (benkyou) - study
Cantonese: 勉強 (min5 koeng5) - force, or forcedly (is this a word?).
Of course, it's probably the same meaning in Mandarin, but I don't know.
Anyway, I think it's kinda funny. Especially since the Japanese are known for their pressuring, serious studying. It's like they took the verb intentionally with that meaning, as if they saw studying as something which you had to force yourself to do gruellingly. xd
That's how I see it anyway, but maybe it had a different meaning back in the day.
Anything else?
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Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 10:38 am
I remember seeing tons of parallels between them when I was studying both at the same time. I remember asking my Chinese teacher about that exact same word in Chinese, and I got a similar answer as you did, so its probably safe to say that they mean the same thing in Cantonese and Mandarin. I think its simply that in the time between when the Japanese adapted Chinese characters and now, the meanings have changed.
This is somewhat unrelated, but I notice that Cantonese seems to have a lot more single character words, compared to Mandarin, where most every word was a compound of some sort. For example, the phrase "do you know" in Cantonese which I believe is "你知唔知", where the verb is 知, and the Mandarin "你知不知道", where the verb is 知道, instead of just 知. That kind of thing seems to happen a lot when comparing the two. I guess since Cantonese has more tones, it can have more monosyllabic words with less risk of confusion.
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Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 11:36 am
Actually, 知 and 知道 are both acceptable in Cantonese, pretty much interchangeable, I think. That's off the top of my head anyway, there're probably situations where one is more suitable than the other.
Is there anything else you were thinking about? Actually, I agree, because in a lot of Mandarin words, you have 子 at the end of it that wouldn't have in Cantonese I think.
Was it me that mentioned that? Or did you see that somewhere else? I want to make a note of explaning that if so.
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Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 3:53 pm
Ah yes, tons of Mandarin words use that dang 子. It don't know why, it seems useless.
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Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2007 4:02 pm
Yeah, I agree. Quite few Cantonese words have it. The only example I can think of right now is 筷子.
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Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 6:52 am
I came across something today that would fit in this topic. Correct me if I'm wrong though:
In Japanese, 愛人 means 'lover', but 情人 means 'spouse'.
However, in Mainland China, 愛人 means 'spouse' but 情人 means 'lover'.
Weird eh?
Note: In Hong Kong (and possibly other Chinese-speaking places too), both of those terms mean 'lover'.
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Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 5:58 pm
Unfortunately, I don't speak either of the languages. However, I'm currently in a class dealing with ancient history and I can say that it's rather intersting how all the similarities came about. It was mostly Prince Shotoku who brought Chinese idealogies and aspects of the language to Japan during the Kofun Period (the Yamato State). It's really quite interesting.
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Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2008 6:22 pm
excuse me if i'm thinking of another sound, I RARELY see written chinese, but that 'dang' you mentioned reminds me of a cantonese sound is used when you're describing a verb. kind of a sharp 'ta'
lesse...a quick example..."I speak cantonese well" would (pardon my romanization) be something like "Ngo guangtonghua gong ta hou hou" with 'gong' being the word for speak, and 'ta' following it.
savak I suck at writing it out. Speaking is my only real skill XD
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Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 12:10 pm
That sentence is kinda strange.. Did you mean 我講廣東話講得好好? Ngo gong gong dung waa gong dak hou hou.
Just to confirm though, I think the 'ta' sound mentioned is actually 'dak' (得) right?
If you can't read Chinese, but speak Cantonese, then it should be sound like the dak in words like "dak haan" (free/not busy), “dak gwok" (Germany) and "dak ji" (pronounced duck yee; cute).
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Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 2:11 pm
Oh the similarities between Japanese and Chinese (Mandarin, anyway) are very helpful to me. :3 (I'm learning Japanese.)
I find that, in my class, those who know Chinese (or maybe Korean too, I'm not sure) understand concepts of words that are used in these East Asian languages more easily. For instance, how to use "jibun (自分)" is pretty much the same as "zìjǐ (自己)" in Mandarin, but we don't really have a word like that in English. The best word would be "oneself" but we don't use it nearly as similarly as the Japanese and Chinese do.
They're mostly little similarities like that. The idea of counter words is very familiar to the Chinese-speakers in my class.
Basically, simple Japanese reminds me a lot of reordered simple Chinese, which is very helpful for learning purposes.
It's mostly the cases of characters (like the examples you gave) which are similar-yet-different-enough that are interestingly confusing.
Oh, and, for on-yomi (音読み), sometimes it's really similar enough to be easy to remember words for me. Especially if they're using to-on (唐音_ reading. For instance, densha (電車) sounds close enough to "dian che" in Mandarin and shinbun (新聞) sounds pretty close to "xin wen".
There are really so many more examples. 3nodding
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Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 9:18 am
chi and swui, both water
ai, love
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Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 5:08 pm
Lawrencew (Not sure if this is in the right subforum) After mentioning the use of the character, 食 in both Cantonese and Japanese to mean 'eat', I thought it'd be interesting to discuss some strange differences and similarities in the two languages (Chinese and Japanese). Maybe not as much similarities, since most of them will have similar meanings, but some interesting differences. I only have 1 at the moment, as my Japanese is extremely basic: Japanese: 勉強 (benkyou) - study Cantonese: 勉強 (min5 koeng5) - force, or forcedly (is this a word?). Of course, it's probably the same meaning in Mandarin, but I don't know. Anyway, I think it's kinda funny. Especially since the Japanese are known for their pressuring, serious studying. It's like they took the verb intentionally with that meaning, as if they saw studying as something which you had to force yourself to do gruellingly. xd That's how I see it anyway, but maybe it had a different meaning back in the day. Anything else? *sits dejectedly in corner* I just realised I skipped two pages of kanji. sweatdrop I noticed that example too. I haven't learned the first kanji for it yet, but I did find the second kanji kind of misfitted. The Chinese one would make more sense to me.
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Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 8:11 pm
Japanese and Chinese are two totally different languages. They share a writing system but Chinese uses more characters and they pronounce them differently. There are some words in common though due to contact between them for instance
電話 Telephone
Japanese: Denwa
Chinese: Dian hua
So yes there are some similarities but all in all they're different languages.
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