The difference is that most of them have different pronunciations, different epidemic areas, different historical development and different users.
Cantonese preserved the earliest "Mandarin" in China.
To discuss the origin of Cantonese, we must first find out where Cantonese comes from. Some people think that Cantonese originated from the "Baiyue" language in the south of Zhan Chaoling, which is incorrect. Cantonese does retain some elements of the ancient Baiyue language in Lingnan, but its main source is the elegant language in the ancient Central Plains.
Yayan is based on the primitive Chinese used by the Chinese tribal alliance headed by the Yellow Emperor. In the Zhou Dynasty, it developed into the national lingua franca around the Central Plains, which can be said to be the earliest "Putonghua" in China. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the dialects of various vassal States were different, and elegant words were used in official exchanges, scholars' lectures and sacrificial activities. Confucius once said: "Confucius speaks politely, and poetry and calligraphy are polite." The Qin dynasty conquered the land of Baiyue and recruited fugitives from the former six countries, as well as their husbands and wives, to be "squatters" in Lingnan. These settlers "come from all corners of the country", so they must use elegance in communication. However, because the settlers settled in the fields alone, their language was only transmitted from village to village, but not throughout Lingnan. Until South Vietnam was established in Zhao Tuo, Baiyue indigenous costumes and customs were adopted, and Baiyue indigenous language was spoken. It can be seen that Yayan has not been spread in Lingnan, but there are several "Yayan Island" with small area. The spread of elegant ci in Lingnan began after the Western Han Dynasty. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty set up a "toe-toe secretariat" to supervise the county. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, he withdrew his toe secretariat and set up a state of communication. Toe Secretariat and Jiaozhou are both Han regimes, so official communication must be polite. Most of the time, the Department of Cross-toe Secretariat and the State House were located in Guangxin (now Fengkai and Wuzhou), and Guangxin was the first to use Yayan. Guangxin was also the early commercial center of Lingnan. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty sent envoys from Xuwen and Hepu to open up the Maritime Silk Road and bought back overseas treasures such as pearls, glazed pottery and stones with silk and porcelain. , and through the Nanliujiang-Beiliujiang and Jianjiang-Nanjiang trade channels, it is imported into Guangxin, and then exported to the Central Plains through Hejiang-Xiaoshui. Elegant words introduced from the Central Plains gradually spread in this area through commercial activities.
Guangxin was also the early cultural center of Lingnan. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, a large number of scholars took this as a position to carry out cultural activities, set up museums and teach students. Among them, the most prominent scholars are Chen Yuan and Shi Xie. Known as "Linghai Confucianism", Chen Yuan returned to Guangxin to run a school in his later years and became one of the pioneers of Lingnan culture. Shangxie served as the magistrate of Jiaotoe County for more than 40 years and was once the "Governor of Seven Counties". Many scholars in the Central Plains have come to attach themselves to his name, and they take traveling, crossing toes and giving lectures as their profession. What these literati used to spread China culture in the Central Plains was, of course, the elegant words with Chinese characters as the recording symbols. While learning China culture and Chinese characters, the aborigines also learned elegant characters. The languages of these aborigines are very different. They can't communicate with each other and have no written language. Therefore, in addition to using elegance in communication with Han people, tribes also use elegance in communication. In this way, elegance and vulgarity have become the common language of all indigenous tribes, just as elegance and vulgarity were used in the contacts of various vassal States in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, forming a bilingual system, using their own mother tongue in their own tribes and elegance and vulgarity in foreign exchanges. At the same time, some factors in ancient Baiyue language were also absorbed by the language of Han immigrants, thus gradually forming a dialect of Chinese-Cantonese.
At the beginning of the formation of Cantonese, there was no obvious difference between Cantonese and Central Plains Chinese. After the Jin Dynasty, there was the "Five Chaos in China", followed by the partition of the north and the south for more than 200 years. The nomadic people in the north entered the Central Plains, which had a great influence on the culture and language there, and the elegant words that have been the common language of all ethnic groups have gradually disappeared since Zhou Dynasty. Here it is. During this period, the Lingnan region maintained a relatively stable situation, and Cantonese, which evolved from elegant words in the Central Plains, did not change as much as Central Plains Chinese, and maintained its original phonology. As Professor Li Rulong said; "The differentiation of initial consonants of medieval affricates, the confluence of nasal vowels, the weakening and shedding of initial consonants of affricates, and the three tones of voiced sounds and entering tones are common in many dialects, but they are all rejected by Cantonese." Therefore, Yayan has disappeared in today's north and central plains, but many of its factors have remained in today's Cantonese.
The stop sound in Fengchuan dialect: a living fossil of early Cantonese
Cantonese retains a large number of factors that occupy the elegance of generations, which can be confirmed by the comparison between Cantonese and Qieyun. Qieyun is China's earliest phonological work. The book was written in the early years of Sui Dynasty, which recorded the phonology of scholars in the Southern Dynasty, that is, the phonology in the late period of Yayan. Comparing the phonology of Qieyun with the seven dialects of Chinese today, we can see that Cantonese is the most complete phonology. Take the ancient milk students as an example. Influenced by nomadic languages, northern Chinese dialects are generally out of rhyme. So people in this field don't know what lactation is all about now. Although other Chinese dialects retain some entering tones, they are not complete. Cantonese abandons the tone sandhi rule of "Rushan Tone", so it retains the whole set of Rushan Tone in ancient times, which corresponds neatly to nasal rhyme.
In the areas where Cantonese was formed, the factors of the phonology of quaint words were more clearly preserved. There is a group of voiced initials in the phonology of Qieyun, which has disappeared in most Chinese dialects and in Cantonese today. However, this set of voiced cold initials is completely preserved in closed Cantonese. What's more noteworthy is that when Cantonese is opened, not only the words Bing, Ding and Qun which are pronounced as voiced consonants in Qieyun are still pronounced as voiced consonants, but also some words Bang, Duan and Jian which are pronounced as voiced consonants in Qieyun. As we know, "voiced and unvoiced" is a law of the evolution of Chinese initials. According to this law, the more developed the initial consonants of voiced consonants are, the longer their age will be. The voiced stop of Fengkai Cantonese is more developed than the cut rhyme, which shows that it preserved the rhyme earlier than the cut rhyme, that is, the rhyme of elegant words in Han Dynasty. Therefore, it is a rare living fossil of quaint words, and it is also a living fossil of early Cantonese, and it is a witness to the formation of ancient Cantonese.
Also known as Cantonese, commonly known as Cantonese and Guangfu dialect, and called vernacular by local people, it is a dialect with complicated language phenomena, more ancient sounds and characters and less internal differences among the seven major Chinese dialects.
Guangzhou dialect is popular in Guangdong and Guangxi, centering on Guangzhou dialect. The user population is around 40 million.
Mandarin is the common language of modern people in China and all ethnic groups in China. Putonghua takes Beijing dialect as the standard pronunciation, northern dialect as the basic dialect, and typical modern vernacular as the grammatical norm.
The word "Putonghua" appeared as early as the late Qing Dynasty. 1902, Wu Rulun, a scholar, visited Japan, and the Japanese suggested to him that China should carry out Putonghua education to unify the language. The name "Mandarin" was mentioned in the conversation. 1904, when Qiu Jin, a modern female revolutionary, was studying in Japan, she organized a "lecture liaison meeting" with students studying in Japan, and drew up a booklet, in which the name "Putonghua" appeared. 1906, Zhu, a scholar who studied word segmentation, divided Chinese into "Chinese" (classical Chinese), "Putonghua" and "common sayings" (dialects) in his book Jiangsu Xin Xin. He not only put forward the name of "Mandarin", but also gave a clear definition of "Mandarin". In 1930s, Qu Qiubai put forward in the article "War beyond the Gate of Hell" that "the task of literary revolution is by no means limited to creating some new styles of poems, novels and plays. It should establish a modern Mandarin accent for China. " "Modern Mandarin, a new Chinese language, should be common in all parts of China, with modern' human words', polyphony and ending ..."
The definition of "Putonghua" has been unclear for decades before liberation, and there are also different views. After the founding of People's Republic of China (PRC), during the National Conference on Character Reform and the Academic Conference on Standardization of Modern Chinese held in June 1955, the official name of the common language of the Han nationality was officially defined as "Putonghua", and at the same time, its definition was determined, that is, "Beijing dialect is the standard pronunciation and northern dialect is the basic dialect". 195510/On 26th October, People's Daily published an editorial entitled "Strive to Promote the Reform of Chinese Characters, Popularize Putonghua and Realize the Standardization of Chinese", which mentioned: "The common language of China people is Putonghua with northern dialect as the basic dialect and Beijing accent as the standard pronunciation." 1956 On February 6th, the State Council issued an instruction on the promotion of Putonghua, adding the definition of Putonghua as "taking Beijing dialect as the standard pronunciation, northern dialect as the basic dialect, and typical modern vernacular as the grammatical norm". This definition clarifies the standard of Putonghua from three aspects: pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, which makes the definition of Putonghua more scientific and thorough. Among them, the meaning of "Putonghua" is "universal" and "common".
Putonghua is the common language of modern China people, with Beijing dialect as the standard pronunciation, northern dialect as the basic dialect, and typical modern vernacular as the grammatical norm. This was decided at 1955 National Conference on Character Reform and Academic Conference on Standardization of Modern Chinese. This definition essentially puts forward the standards of Putonghua from three aspects: pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, so how to understand these standards?
"Taking Beijing dialect as the standard pronunciation" means taking the phonetic system of Beijing dialect as the standard, and not copying all the pronunciations of Beijing dialect. Putonghua is not equal to Beijing dialect. There are many local accents in Beijing dialect. For example, old Beijingers regard the conjunction "he (hé)" as "hàn", "butterfly (húdié)" as "húdiěr" and "tell (gàosu)" as "gàosong". These local accents are difficult for people in other dialect areas to accept. In addition, there are different pronunciations in Beijing dialect, such as the word "aggression", some people pronounce "q τ nLü è" and others pronounce "Q τ NLü è"; Some people pronounce the word "nearby" as "fǔ j ? n", while others pronounce it as "fǔ j ? n", which also brings a lot of trouble to the popularization of Putonghua. Since 1956, the pronunciation of Beijing dialect has been revised many times, and the standard pronunciation of Putonghua has been formulated. Therefore, at present, the phonetic standard of Putonghua should be based on the Pronunciation Table of Putonghua with Different Pronunciation published by 1985 and the Modern Chinese Dictionary published by 1996.
As far as vocabulary standards are concerned, "dialect based on northern dialect" in Putonghua is based on the common sayings in the vast northern dialect areas, and at the same time, it is necessary to absorb the vocabulary it needs from other dialects. There are also many dialects in northern dialect words. For example, Beijingers describe "evening" as "being late for a long time", "cursing" as "whispering" and "being stingy" as "being stingy". In many northern areas, corn is called a stick, soap is called a pancreas, and steamed bread is called a steamed bun. Therefore, we can't treat all the words in the northern dialect as words in Mandarin, so we should have a choice. Some dialect words in non-northern dialect areas have special meaning and expressive power, and there are no corresponding synonyms in northern dialect, so these words can be absorbed into Putonghua vocabulary. For example, words such as "fuck", "garbage", "embarrassment" and "gimmick" often appear in written language and have already joined the ranks of Putonghua vocabulary. The words chosen in Putonghua are generally popular and have been used in writing for a long time. In recent years, the State Language Committee is organizing manpower to compile a Dictionary of Modern Chinese Standardization, which will further standardize the vocabulary of Putonghua.
The origin of putonghua
The grammatical standard of Putonghua is "taking typical modern vernacular works as grammatical norms", which includes four meanings: "model" means excluding atypical modern vernacular works as grammatical norms; "Vernacular" means excluding classical Chinese; "Modern vernacular Chinese" means rejecting the early vernacular Chinese before the May 4th Movement. "Work" refers to the written form of Putonghua, which is based on spoken language, but it is not equal to ordinary spoken language, but a processed and refined language.
Mandarin was once the official language of ancient northern officials. Because Beijing has visited the capital many times, the official language is closer to Beijing dialect. Today's Nanjing dialect is different from other southern Jiangsu areas, because Nanjing has been to the capital many times, so it is a little close to the official language.
The word "Putonghua" was first put forward by Zhu in 1906. Later, Qu Qiubai and others also put forward the word "Putonghua" and argued with Mao Dun about the actual meaning of Putonghua. Since the May 4th Movement, the status of Beijing phonetics has been established and consolidated in the vernacular movement, catchword movement and Putonghua movement.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, at the "National Conference on the Reform of Chinese Characters" held in 1955, Zhang Xiruo explained in the theme report of the conference that the common language of China people has existed for a long time, and now it is named Putonghua, which needs to be further standardized and determined. "What is this actually has gradually formed the common language of the Han nationality? This is Putonghua with northern dialect as the basic dialect and Beijing dialect as the standard pronunciation. " "For simplicity, this national language can also be called Mandarin."
1On February 6th, 956, the State Council issued the Instruction on Popularizing Putonghua, which supplemented and improved the meaning of Putonghua, and formally determined that Putonghua "takes Beijing dialect as the standard pronunciation, northern dialect as the basic dialect, and typical modern vernacular as the grammatical norm". The word "Putonghua" has been widely used and has a clear connotation.