User Comments - bastienmw
bastienmw
Posted on: Away on Business
September 25, 2009, 06:15 AMA snippet from Wiki-pedia:
Prior to the introduction of Hanyu Pinyin, the province was known as Kwangtung Province. One should note that Canton, though etymologically derived from a Portuguese transliteration of "Guangdong", only refers to the provincial capital instead of the whole province, as documented by authoritative English dictionaries. The local people of the city of Canton and their language are still commonly referred to as Cantonese. Because of the prestige of Canton and its accent, Cantonese sensu lato can also be used for the phylogenetically related residents and Chinese dialects outside the provincial capital.
Posted on: Away on Business
September 25, 2009, 05:38 AMWhy is it that "你不在北京？" does not end with 吗？It could be mistaken as a statement as there are no other words in the sentence that imply a question.
Posted on: Away on Business
September 25, 2009, 07:04 AMWell... I live in Guangzhou and the people here are pretty stubborn about Cantonese as well. It pretty much gets crammed down your throat by the locals.
My personal opinion is that cantonese sounds pretty cool but after watching the local news and dealing with people on a daily basis it becomes gratingly irritating . Maybe I am completely wrong but even the simplest things that do not require any sort of emotion require people to say things in contorted patterns. Everything seems to be overly exaggerated.
In my observations the people in Guangzhou speak way differently than people in Hong Kong or even cities that are in the surrounding area. I have lived in Huizhou, and spent a lot of time in Dongguan and Shenzhen. And locals from these cities do not seem to have the same thick accent.
Someone tell me if I am completely mis-guided.