Cantonese or Mandarin?

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Wing Chun
21

You forgot the best Dim Sum dish Lie Wong Bao :smiley:

david

22

David Peterson???

I must be slipping. I didn’t read your initial post where you said,…“The pronunciation represented by the phonetic spelling “Wing Chun” is Cantonese.” Then what dialect is, 'Yong Chun?
Phil

23

Alpha dog

Man, as hard as Cantonese was for me, I give you big props.
Chinese speakers of other dialects have asked me why I learned Cantonese. They said it is too difficult. Why don’t you learn Mandarin? It is the national language of Communist China. Mandarin has only 4 tones. Cantonese has 7. (According to the Yale romainzation). Mandarin is a lot easier for Westerners and Chinese alike. Go figure.
Phil

24

‘Yong Chun’ is the Pinyin phonetic spelling for the Mandarin pronunciation of the system. The full term would be ‘Yong Chun Quan’, for ‘Wing Chun Kuen’.
DMP

25

Mandarin or Cantonese?

Could someone let me know which language is used in Wingtsun
thanks in advance
Peter

26

cantonese. it’s a southern art, y’all.

27

Thanks RTB
Peter

28

But if you were to ask what language is used in 'Yong Chun", that’d most likely be Mandarin!

29

And it’s pronounced, Wing Chun in Cantonese.

30

I think in the mandarin dialect, their are no such words as “Lap” and “Gum”. However, Cantonese has them, even in written form (some Cantonese words are hard to find in dictionaries). Not sure about other dialects such as Fujianese.

31

i have a follow on question:
you know that cantonese doesnt have an english alphabet, and when we write a word like bong or tan we are just using english letters to approximate the phonetic sound… am i right so far?

so why arent all cantonese words written phoneticly in english? i mean take the ‘surname’ LEE - its phonetic, but also take TSE - its pronounced SHAY so why not spell it in english that way!!!

also other words like QI… cant think of others right now but they exist!

any thoughts?

32

So if Wing Chun is Southern and Cantonese, is it Kung Fu or Gong Fu, and if it is Kung Fu as I think it may be how come Bruce Lee called it Gong Fu
Regards
Peter

33

Wing Chun Kung Fu mixes two dialects of Chinese, Cantonese and Mandarin. It should be Wing Chun Gung Fu, and Yong Chun Kung Fu.

34

peter,next time you meet a savage looking chinese girl,say
this to her.
“hey baby,ying tong yiddle i po”.

the results should prove intersting for you.

Russ

35

Russ the sad thing is I remember buying that!!
regards
Peter

36

Pick up lines

“Siu Gie, Lei Ho Leng” will get you further.

Better yet: “Wo yi jing ai le ni shi bei ze le!”

But the best is: “Xiao Jie, ni you she me dong xi ka zai ni ya chr shang ne?”

37

what if she goes Pak Sau on your face and says:

“Sai Haam Sop Lo!”

38

Hi,

>>>>foolinthedeck i have a follow on question:
you know that cantonese doesnt have an english alphabet, and when we write a word like bong or tan we are just using english letters to approximate the phonetic sound… am i right so far?

I believe that English and other European laguages use the Roman alaphabet - hence representing Chinese characters using the roman alphabet is called Romanization.

>>>so why arent all cantonese words written phoneticly in english?

The same letter can represent different sounds in different languages - for example “j” in Spanish being pronounced like “h” in English. Romanizing Cantonese phonetically using English would not convey the correct Cantonese pronounciation to non-English speakers.

>>>also other words like QI… cant think of others right now but they exist!

Qi is pinyin a Romaniztion of Madarin, the same word in Canronese is hei prounced like the English word “hay”. As Phil mentioned in his post, people tend to mix Cantonese and Mandarin when talking about wing chun particularly - when a Mandarin word such as Qi is more common in usage among non-Cantonese speakers.

>>>>any thoughts?

Pick one of the existing Cantonese Romanization schemes and learn it. The 7-tone Yale system or the modified 6 -tone Yale system (devised to fool Harvard students who were sent to spy on Chinese language classes in New Haven :slight_smile: )
seems to be the most common on the internet . I personally prefer jyutping which is the system used by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong which was developed in the 1990s I believe. There are other systems as well.

39

Chris

I speak Cantonese and learned the Yale Romanization which is still used by the the US Dept of State Foreign Service Institute. I think the 7 tones is a more accurate depiction of Cantonese for an English speaker. I started the Yale University Wing Chun club in 1989. One of my students in New Haven still keeps the club going at Payne Whitney. I was just there a few months ago. I’m not sure if Yale is still teaching Cantonese now. Good for those Harvard guys.
Princeton ss but Harvard sw**s…grin.

40

Hi Phil,

I have been learning Cantonese for about a year and half - making slow but steady progress. Most of the materials (particularly written material) I use employ 6 tones - I have enough trouble trying to distinguish between 6 tones - adding the 7th might be more than I can take.

My summer intern goes to Yale and she is going to check her course catalog to see if Cantonese is still taught. She is an interesting story - she was born in Shanghi - and came to the U.S. at age 5 speaking only Shanghinese. She can now speak English and Mandarin and started attending Yale at age 16.

It is nice that the Wing Chun club you started lives on.