Cantonese and English Cantonese use widely in the south of China and is the language that most people use in the United State Chinatown. In China, there are about more than 80 dialects and more than 30 kinds of word. Mandarin is the official language, and Cantonese just one of the most usage dialects in Chinese. According to a news report in 2011, there are around 120 billion people speak Cantonese in all over the world, which included Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, Macao, and the people who in the other countries like the United State, Canada, Singapore, and Malaysia etc. As an international student from Guangzhou, Cantonese is my first language and all my family members speak Cantonese as well. In this paper, I interviewed my father to answered …show more content…
In Chinese, we don’t have tense for the words. Words are firm and will not show the tense change in the past time or in the future time. In order to show tense, we would add some word instance of changing words. In Chinese, the pronoun of “he”, “she”, “it” are written in different way but, they have the same pronunciation. There are more active voices than the passive voices in Chinese sentences, and people usually use short sentences instance of long sentence. In Chinese, if people use a long sentence, it would be easy to make mistake and lead other people misunderstand what he means. If people separate the sentences in different place, it could have different meaning of the same sentence. For the subordinate clause, there are some firm format to fix into the sentences. For example, if we want to talk about the causal relationship, we would use “because…, so…”, “although…, but…” “if…, then…” etc. All these kinds of format in the sentence are firm, and it will not have any change for the order or it would not make any …show more content…
There are a lot of words meaning were changed or created, but in Cantonese, it has its own culture. For the traditional culture, it usually passes down by the older generation. The older generation usually show it to their children by themselves, unless they are too old to do it. In this situation, as the older generation people do the same thing every year, it would make their children become a habit to do all that traditional things. For instance, three days before the Spring Festival, we have “flower street” for people to buy and sell flower to celebrate Spring Festival. As my hometown is very near Hong Kong, we learn many new things from them. In my memory, when I was young, we usually watch the Hong Kong TV Channel. We receive news and entertainment from it. After I coming to the United State, my father usually would ask me about the differences that I found out. Whatever I found out from the school or the habit that people stay in here. There are plenty of differences, for example, driver would stop and let pedestrian go first in the daily life, man usually would hold the door for woman, and there are consist of many different things in the final grade in
Cantonese influence comes from Guangdong, southern part of China nearby Hong Kong and Macau geographically. Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. Due in part to its closeness to the China Sea, a lot of the ingredients used in Cantonese cuisine is fresh seafood.
young Chinese really trying to find their own ways, or just copying what looks to
Since Canada and China have two diverse cultures language would be another contrasting feature. As a Canadian, I mostly speak in English and many people around me speak English as well, French. Since Canada is comprised of many other subcultures there are other languages that are spoken. In China the language differs with Canada, several of Chinese dialects are used, although the majority of the population speaks
With her mother, she uses “broken” English. With her colleagues, she uses correct English grammar. Similarly, Wong also grew up in America with a traditional Chinese mother. In contrast, Wong’s upbringing involves her mother forcing her into attending two different schools. After her American school day, Wong continued on with Chinese school to learn about both cultures.
China has gone through many changes in its history. Changes include economic, political, and social. In the early 1500 and throughout history, mostly all social classes followed Confucianism. Confucianism is a type of religion based on an ideal society (Chang 2012, 22). China was molded though Confucianism but that slowly deteriorated as years went on. One main group that has been a main part in these changes is the Chinese literati. The Chinese literati include the higher-class people such as officials and scholars. The Chinese literati were the dominant social class during the 1500’s but their power slowly decreased throughout history. Throughout my paper, I will explain the Chinese literati involvement as centuries passed.
For example, they speak English, Cantonese, and many of other languages which I did not understand, and these things I did not get from our class. Before I did this field trip, I thought that they only speak Cantonese and English. “Most residents are Chinese American, but there are other Asians, especially Vietnamese Americans, and a scattering of whites, Indians, and other ethnic groups. San Francisco’s Chinatown is the largest Chinatown in the United States, the largest cohesive community of Chinese Americans outside of China. Then I saw that there were many Chinese retail stores, and the retailers they do not speak English at all. These retail stores may import many of goods from China, like they import Chinese herbs, Chinese snacks; whereas, for the American brand companies, like Wells Fargo, Citi Bank, Chase, Bank of America, T-Mobil, Verizon, Sprint, AT&T; these American companies they put English and Chinese together on the boards and doors, and the staff can speak Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, but speaking English is not required. I think that the targets are to give people who live in Chinatown better service. Surprisingly, I did see a store which was selling
In every culture as time progresses things change. These changes can be linked to globalization, acculturation, or just the need to adapt to a constant change in environment and it's sociological platform.
China has a long history of language reformation, where the Chinese language becomes one of the most successful and radical amendments for the whole nation to adopt several changes along the way. In this essay, a discussion of major components in the language reform, specifically the Mandarin language, in China will be explored with the social, culture, and political issues that have influence the changes. A history and pattern of language used in China- starting from the days of language in the imperial court, to the communist revolution during Mao’s regime, until the language and speech pattern in the twenty first century era- will be explored throughout the essay. This essay will also feature the analysis of the dwindling standard style language by the Han dynasty into the widespread official speech from north China, which became the basis for the Standard Chinese in the modern days. Speech pattern and the underlying social reformation of the Red Guards, due to the shift of political power in the bourgeoisie and proletarians society of China’s population will be explored as well. The success of the implementation of a single national language by the government of China throughout the country will be mentioned. Finally, how and why the language in China has differed greatly from one era to another will be analyzed in the essay, especially the power reason behind the changes in China’s language system.
Families changed overtime by becoming more Americanized as they resided here. Few families still carried normal Cambodian traditions, but they had the
This is evident in the persistence of elderly characters, such as Grandmother Poh-Poh, who instigate the old Chinese culture to avoid the younger children from following different traditions. As well, the Chinese Canadians look to the Vancouver heritage community known as Chinatown to maintain their identity using on their historical past, beliefs, and traditions. The novel uniquely “encodes stories about their origins, its inhabitants, and the broader society in which they are set,” (S. Source 1) to teach for future generations. In conclusion, this influential novel discusses the ability for many characters to sustain one sole
Lindo Jong provides the reader with a summary of her difficulty in passing along the Chinese culture to her daughter: “I wanted my children to have the best combination: American circumstances and Chinese character. How could I know these two things do not mix? I taught her how American circumstances work. If you are born poor here, it's no lasting shame . . . You do not have to sit like a Buddha under a tree letting pigeons drop their dirty business on your head . . . In America, nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you. . . . but I couldn't teach her about Chinese character . . . How to know your own worth and polish it, never flashing it around like a cheap ring. Why Chinese thinking is best”(Tan 289).
China is a high context culture. “In high context cultures, information is either in the physical context or internalized in the person (Iowa State University, 2015).” In China they depend more on understanding each other’s meanings rather than having to speak to communicate. “In these cultures, members tend to use a more indirect style of communication (Iowa State University, 2015).” This is probably due to the strong accents that the Chinese have.
The United States and China are two very large countries that have cultures that are well known throughout the world. There are many differences between the United States and China, but there are many contributing factors that shape the cultures of these two countries. Language is universal, but there are different meanings and sounds, which vary from one culture to another. In China, citizens speak many languages, but about 94% speak the Chinese language. The difference in dialects was overcome by the written word and eventually a version of Mandrin became the “official speech” (The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, 1996, p.304).
Based upon the interview, students are confusing about the tense in the second conditional sentence. What students have learnt in the previous class is that past tense only used to describe things took place in the past. Therefore, they find it difficult to understand why past tense verb should be used in the if-clause to express something happen in the present or future in imaginary situation. Moreover, we may easily observed that Chinese people seldom change tenses and modality in verb phrase to differentiate the conditional situation because there is only one verb tense in Chinese language. (Zhang, 2005:18)
When the old or existing factors make something new for need, it is called the innovation. For examples, baskets can be reformed to clay pots. Innovation may happen by accidents or on purpose. If the society or group gets affected and change by innovation, it is called an acculturation. Acculturation can happen in both positive and negative affect. Languages can also change. Today’s modern language is a changed form that comes from their language family. For example, Nostratic, which is an earlier language, have developed to Turkish. When the languages evolve, different versions of the language may come out. Different versions of language are called dialects. It shows changes in speeches that is closely related to social structures, geography, and many other. One of the examples of dialect would be the Boston accent in the United