“Mandarin speakers can’t even read stuff written in colloquial Cantonese.” - Space Vampire
Just when I thought I had a tiny bit of understanding about this…
I had heard that Chinese has but one written language. I had thought the distinctions between the languages were mainly in tones and consonants, not the sort of thing I would think would show up in a non-phonetic ideographical (ideogrammic? I don’t know the actual word here) written language.
I wonder what I am missing here? Maybe I have just heard too many oversimplifications of this complex subject, which is probably my own fault to some degree.
I would say yes to the first part and no to the second. It’s hard to get a straight answer on some of these things without background in the language.
There is a standard written Chinese that everyone can read. Cantonese speakers can read it aloud and be understood. However, what Cantonese speakers say doesn’t match up with what they’d write at all. In order to match exactly the spoken form of Cantonese, characters have been modified with the “mouth” radical, indicating sounds, (or simply used in different ways, or even created out of whole cloth, I think) in order to match spoken Cantonese. This form is often used in comic books, advertisements, quotes, internet message boards, quick notes, and other places requiring less than formal language. This is generally not readable by other Chinese. Standard Chinese is the norm in papers, books, school, and other situations requiring formal language.
If you can read Big5, here is the simple sentence “let’s eat here, okay?” to show you the difference.
“Standard” Chinese:
§Ú̦b³o¨à¦Y¶º¡M¦n¤£¦n¡S
§Ú¦a«Y©O«×¹¶º¡M±oø±o°Ú¡S
Okay, my Chinese isn’t great, maybe they aren’t completely accurate, but they make my point.
Oh, it should be noted, though, that a Mandarin speaker could, without actually learning to speak Cantonese, probably get a pretty good grasp on informal written Canto by just learning ~30 key points.