Sammie Tsang Lok Man

Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a language that originated in the Canton (i.e., Guangzhou) in southern China. It is spoken by the majority of people in Hong Kong and Macau.

  Because Hong Kong is an international city, many different cultures exist in Hong Kong, so our language usually mixed with the words that is from other languages, especially we use English words and Cantonese in sentences.

  Cantonese shares much vocabulary with Mandarin, the two languages are not really the same because of pronunciation and grammatical differences. Sentence structure, in particular the placement of the verb, sometimes differs between the two languages. The use of vocabulary in Cantonese also tends to have more historic roots. The most notable difference between Cantonese and Mandarin is how the spoken word is written; Mandarin the spoken word is the same as written words, while Cantonese may not has the written word direct with the spoken words. This results in the situation in which a Mandarin and Cantonese text almost look the same, but both are pronounced differently.

Here are the examples of some dialects of Cantonese:

上堂: have lesson

班房: classroom

冷氣: air conditioner

巴士: bus

溫書: revise