If you have been making searches such as “English to Cantonese” and “Cantonese translator”, then you have come to the right place!

Cantonese or Guangdong is a variant of the Yue Chinese dialect. This variant is prestigious as it is active mainly in cities such as Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau and in southern China. In fact, it is the official dialect of Hong Kong and Macau. However, the official dialect of China is Mandarin. It is the fourth most popular dialect in the country, with Mandarin in first place, Wu in second place and Min in third place.

The origins of the language are unclear, as there are no historical records of this dialect. However, during the Tang dynasty (from 618 AD to 907 AD) Cantonese already possessed linguistic characteristics that set it apart from any other Chinese dialect.

LINGUISTIC ASPECTS

Cantonese is the only ideographic script that has survived to the present day and is still in use today. Its characters are more than 5000 years old and come from the Han dynasty. However, some places use phonetic transcription to make it easier for foreigners to understand. This happens thanks to pinyin, i.e. the phonetic transcription of Chinese characters into Western letters.

This language, unlike many others, does not use articles. The order of the sentence is the same as in English: subject, verb and object. However, in Cantonese Chinese, the subject is predominant, so the order can sometimes be altered.

This dialect indicates tense, gender and number through adverbs, aspect markers and particles. When these elements do not appear, it is because the mark is obvious from the context. Verbs, for example, are marked by aspect, i.e. they mark whether an event has begun, is in progress or has ended. The tense, present, past or future, is marked with adverbs.

In addition, there are final particles that mark moods and meanings of the utterance. Sometimes these particles can combine and convey multiple moods. Interestingly, since there would be many particles to explain, the particles used in questions are always the last ones.

This dialect differs from Mandarin Chinese mainly in pronunciation. Although both dialects are tonal, Mandarin has five tones and Cantonese has nine. However, both dialects are mutually intelligible.

IMPORTANCE OF CANTONESE AND THE ECONOMY

Today, China is the world’s second largest economic power: it has accumulated the largest manufacturing and production capacity and is the number one supplier to most markets. On track to overtake the world’s leading economic power, the United States, Chinese is expected to become more important than English in business.

China is also in a key position in the Ukrainian war, as it has a neutral role between Russia and NATO. Chinese therefore plays a key role in international relations, business exchanges and cultural exchanges. In addition, both learning Chinese and translating Chinese content facilitates communication for one seventh of the world’s population.