Bauer, R. S. (2018). Cantonese as written language in Hong Kong. Global Chinese, 4(1), 103-142.
香港書面粵語，以非標準方式用標準漢字，加埋獨特粵語字 (非標準方言字)、 以及英文字母，唔出奇中國大陸同台灣講普通話嘅人嚟香港就幾乎睇唔明書面粵語。(p.104)
Not surprisingly, the combination of standard Chinese characters used in non-standard ways with uniquely Cantonese (nonstandard, dialectal) characters and English letters in a text of written Cantonese renders it almost unintelligible to Putonghua speakers from mainland China and Taiwan. (p.104)
The development and use of Cantonese in its spoken and written forms differ greatly in these two sociopolitical environments: steep decline in the former since the 1950s, but still thriving in the latter even after returning to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. (p.105)
when Cantonese-speakers read – either aloud or silently to themselves – a text of standard Chinese, they typically paraphrase it by translating certain standard Chinese words into their Cantonese semantic and functional equivalents. (p.106)
At the outset we should make one thing crystal clear: the Cantonese language is not simply the standard Chinese characters cloaked in Cantonese pronunciation. Innumerable differences between their sound systems, vocabularies, and grammars, have made the spoken forms of Cantonese and Putonghua, or Mandarin, the national language of mainland China, to be two mutually unintelligible Chinese speech varieties. (p.109)
Five distinguishing features of the Hong Kong Cantonese languages:
1. Distinctive lexical items and localised Chinese characters.
2. Phonetic features that are associated with the colloquial Cantonese pronunciation, and non-standard phonetic variations in initial consonants, rimes, and tones which have been widely observed, identified as so-called 懶音 laan5 jam1 ‘lazy pronunciations’.
3. English loanwords that have been borrowed into the Cantonese lexicon primarily through phonetic transliteration.
4. Traditions of Cantonese lexicography and Cantonese romanization.
5. noteworthy development, conventionalization, and widespread use throughout the speech community of the written representation of Cantonese speech across many domains. (p.109-110)
there are numerous special linguistic features, including phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic, and social, which give Cantonese its unique identity and so distinguish it from all other Chinese varieties of southern China。(p.110)
Although one might think that it should go without saying, I believe I had better say it
here anyway: the Chinese characters do not equal the Cantonese language (or even the standard spoken Chinese language, or any other Chinese speech variety). This is because the scope of the spoken Chinese language is not only far broader than the set of Chinese characters for writing it, but also because speech is dynamic by constantly changing and evolving. However, even more importantly, as we will see in the analysis and discussion of written Cantonese that follow, is the inescapable fact that the Chinese characters on their own are simply inadequate for unambiguously transcribing Cantonese speech in its fully expressed form. The Cantonese language includes a number of indigenous morphosyllables which cannot be linked to their etymological (or original) Chinese characters. (p.113)
Four solutions for writing such unwritable lexical items:
1. Borrowing standard characters for their similar or homophonous pronunciations (and ignoring their associated meanings);
2. Creating Cantonese characters;
3. Using individual letters of the English alphabet or combinations of them for their homophonous or similar pronunciations as a kind of ad hoc romanization;
4. Using the “empty-box” 囗 as the last resort to indicate the lack of a Chinese character, either standard or nonstandard (dialectal), with which to write the morphosyllable, and also as a kind of place-holder in a line of Chinese text. (p.113)
Three main layers or strata of the Cantonese Lexicon:
1. The Hong Kong Chinese Standard and Literary Layer includes many lexical items that overlap with those in modern standard written Chinese language of mainland China; however, while some items have identical meanings in modern standard Chinese, their collocations differ when they are used in Hong Kong Cantonese; in addition, there are some distinctively Hong Kong lexical items that do not occur in standard Chinese, or if they do so, they have quite different meanings in Cantonese.
2. The Colloquial Cantonese Layer includes uniquely Cantonese words that are etymologically unrelated to their semantic equivalents in modern standard written Chinese; some of them are written with so-called “dialect” characters and some with standard Chinese characters that have been borrowed solely for their homophonous (or near homophonous) pronunciations.
3. The English Loanwords Layer comprises lexical items that have been borrowed from the English language: (1) phonetically transliterated using Chinese characters with suitable Cantonese pronunciations; (2) semantically translated using standard Chinese characters with appropriate meanings; (3) the combination of phonetic transliteration with semantic translation; (4) represented in a kind of ad hoc romanization with individual English letters pronounced with Cantonese syllables; and (5) transcribed with their original English spellings which are pronounced with Cantonese syllables. (p.115)
written Cantonese is any text that was deliberately written to be read by the Cantonese-speaking reader and included in it at least one Cantonese lexical item – the written form of which could be represented by a standard Chinese character, Cantonese character, or letter of the English alphabet. However, today the author would clarify the definition by recognizing that such texts that include one or more Cantonese lexical items can be written in standard Chinese for the intended audience of Hong Kong Cantonese-speaking readers. (p.117) **I doubt that**
Snow, on the other hand, adopted a subtler, more fine-grained analysis of the issue by recognizing that Hong Kong Chinese texts can vary in the amount of Cantonese lexical material they contain, so that these texts actually range along a continuum: at one end are texts that are written essentially in modern standard Chinese but still include one or more Cantonese lexical items; at the other end are texts that are written entirely in Cantonese. At the same time, Snow has drawn our attention to a particularly interesting “mixed” code (or style) of writing that one often finds employed in some Hong Kong newspapers, magazines, and even comic books for their Cantonese-speaking audience; that is, the writers tend to adhere to a division of labor between standard written Chinese and written Cantonese, although one cannot describe this division as being completely clear-cut: In general, the main text of narration and description is written in standard Chinese, while the quoted speech that was uttered by Cantonese-speakers is transcribed verbatim just as it was said in Cantonese. (p.117)
writing in Cantonese is perceived by writers and readers as conveying the writer’s message with a greater degree of informality, directness, intimacy, friendliness, casualness, freedom, modernity, and authenticity than writing it in standard Chinese, which is the formal language the Hong Kong Cantonese-speaker learns to read and write in school, but its spoken counterpart s/he does not ordinarily use when speaking with coworkers, friends, and family members. (p.122)
In analyzing the written form of Cantonese, we should keep in mind that the conventions of written Cantonese cannot produce a fully accurate transcription of the spoken language but only an approximate representation of it. As matters currently stand, we will discover in the following discussion that the Chinese characters are not fully adequate for writing the Cantonese language. (p.123)
To enhance and improve the writing system, Cantonese writers have even taken to supplementing the Chinese characters with letters of the English alphabet to romanize the pronunciations of some “unwritable” Cantonese morphosyllables. (p.123)
【IMO: 呢種可能同新三及第個種既英文用法唔同，要小心分開處理。】
觀頤齋書話 