More Materials

The History of the Cantonese People

• Part 1 of a documentary produced by aTV (本港台), a TV station in Hong Kong
• Another Part of the documentary

The Origin of the Cantonese Language

• A documentary produced by aTV
• Tone correspondences between Cantonese and Mandarin

The Origins of Common Cantonese Expressions

• An episode of a TV show produced by Foshan TV
• Another episode of the same show

Debate about Cantonese

• 2010-07-12 TVS Background to the "Defend Cantonese Protests" in Gwóngjāu
• 2010-07-25 TVB Report on the "Defend Cantonese Protests" in Gwóngjāu
• 2011-12-18 BBC "廣東規定媒體使用方言播音需報批"
• 2014-01-28 TVS "廣東方言播音需報批，點解大家咁大反應?"
• 2013-08-29 UPenn Language Log "Spoken Hong Kong Cantonese and written Cantonese"
• 2016-03-27 RTHK "鏗鏘集：廣東話 VS 普通話"
• 無線電視 "内地廣州有小學製教材教粵語"
• 2015 有線寬頻 "【一首香港廣東話歌】掀起內地保衛粵語爭論"
• Is Cantonese a dialect or a language?
  • China Digital Times, 2014, "Is Cantonese a Dialect or a Language?"
  • UPenn Language Log, 2016, "Uyghur, Cantonese, and other valuable languages of China"
  • BBC, 2017, "Cantonese v Mandarin: When Hong Kong languages get political"
  • UPenn Language Log, 2014, "Is Cantonese a language, or a personification of the devil?"
    • Both log entries written by renowned sinologist Professor Victor Mair, who proposed the term "topolect" for regional Chinese languages (方言).
  • The Economist, 2014, "How a dialect differs from a language"
  • The Atlantic, 2016, "What’s a Language, Anyway?"
  • The UCLA Language Materials Project: Cantonese Profile
  • The British Museum
• Only Live Once, 2018, 港大教授：廣東話正面臨很大威脅

Using Mandarin to teach Chinese (普教中) in Hong Kong

• 2016-06-26 【經緯線】"普教中 進與退"
• 2016 "港府推行「普教中」八年，為何父母仍憂心忡忡?"
• 2016 US-China Today, USC "The State of Cantonese Language in Hong Kong 香港的粤语使用现状"

Cantonese and Classical Chinese

• 2017-01-07 【澳門大學】粵語專家鄧景濱談如何傳承粵語
• 2017-04-06 The Stand News 是「樽」不是「瓶」，是「凍」不是「冷」 — 訪粵語專家鄧景濱

Synchronic Sound Change in Cantonese

Sound change is a natural phenomenon. In Cantonese, the initial /n/ is gradually being replaced by /l/ and the final /ng/ being replaced by /n/ or /m/. However, resistance to such change is also a normal reaction by the general public, which misconstrues such change as lazy pronunciation (嬾音). The items listed below start with papers describing typical changes in Hong Kong Cantonese, followed by links to 粵講粵啱, a popular show produced by Radio Television Hong Kong to address legitimate mispronunciation as well as perceived "errors":

• Production and perception of a sound change in progress: Tone merging in Hong Kong Cantonese by Peggy Mok, Donghui Zhou, and Peggy Wong
• Innovative sound changes in Hong Kong Cantonese by Mary Chan
• Cantonese sound change across subgroups of the Hong Kong speech community by Yanyan Sui
• Podcast: 粵講粵啱一分鐘
• An episode of 粵講粵啱 on TV
• Another TV episode