Cultural and Language Differences--Proverbs in Cantonese

[alfreda89]

"阿塗(Ah To), a graphic designer and part-time cartoonist who concerns about the survival of Cantonese in Canton and Hong Kong, has just published a comic called “The Great Canton and Hong Kong Proverbs” on Hong Kong independent media “Passion Times”. The cartoon contains illustrations of 81 Cantonese proverbs."

This blogger is attempting to make a table of each proverb shown in the cartoon, and its meaning--both literally and how it would translate to an English concept. I'm guessing that his offered meanings are in Cantonese, but they might be in Mandarin, which is overtaking Cantonese and Manchu as the dominant language in Chinese.

I'm very interested in discoveries like this--it's a big part of the world's cultural heritage, and it could just slip away soon. A poster of this would be wonderful, with the table pasted on the back of the framed art!

Anyone know if the specific proverbs are Cantonese, Mandarin, or still another language?

Comments

[tylik.livejournal.com]

I've heard a few of these in Mandarin, but not most of them. (OTOH, I wouldn't call my knowledge of idioms particularly broad.)

I'm curious about your reference to Manchu - AFAIK, it's never been nearly as large a language as Cantonese of Mandarin. (The Tungis languages are fairly close relatively to the Altaic languages, like Kazakh and Uzbek, that I spoke, so I hung out a far bit with people who studied them. Which reminds me of the Mongolian urban dog hunting saga...)

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

I think this was the report I heard, while driving once. From PRI--talking about how Manchu was the language of the ruling dynasty until the beginning of the 20th century, but that the language itself is about to die out. There are still millions of people of Manchu descent alive--but Manchu is not their first language.

This caught my attention since I thought that having my dragon very careful when speaking to native Chinese, because the dominant language is not the same as when he was living on an island off the mainland, might be useful. But I haven't explored it yet. (Dragons, once fledged, understand all languages. But that doesn't mean they get all nuance or slang. He has this trait, but since he doesn't shift, doesn't know why.)

desperance thinks these are Cantonese.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, they're definitely Cantonese - but some proverbs are used in a lot of Chinese dialects, and I suspect most of these do not appear in Mandarin.

The thing with Manchu is that even during the Qing dynasty Manchu wasn't widely spoken. The Manchus, unlike most other non Chinese groups that conquered China, actually worked pretty hard at staying ethnically distinct. Manchu was preserved - but except at the highest levels the bureaucrats still mostly spoke various forms of Chinese, because most of them weren't Manchu. (And of course the regional dialects were spoken in their various regions.)

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

So to a certain extent, they, like other conquerors, were themselves absorbed by the immense subcontinent of China?

I note this one: (don’t care that three sevens are twenty one)

1. used to reject an objection to a course of action, “I don’t care”
2. regardless, irrespective

This sounds a lot like some Americans lately--they don't care what the truth is, they reject it for their own truth?

[tylik.livejournal.com]

They were less absorbed than anyone else, but, yeah. Everyone else pretty much conquered China and was never heard from again. (And that's like a third of the dynasties.) The Chinese bureaucracy is mighty. My recollection is that the language and rituals were somewhat preserved - to different degrees among different people. But a lot of Chinese cultural trappings were adopted.

(This is part of the subtext when Jen in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, says that she's Manchu, not Han - both she and Lo are sort of cultural outsiders.)

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

(This is part of the subtext when Jen in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, says that she's Manchu, not Han - both she and Lo are sort of cultural outsiders.)

Ah!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

The transliterations are certainly not Mandarin/pinyin, so I'd put money on Cantonese, given the Canton/HK provenance.

And thank you for the link! This is really interesting...