Teach Yourself Japanese
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Subject: Mandarin and Cantonese
From: Lawrence (Theman5697
hotmail.com)
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 16:12:14 GMT
Hello all,
I was wondering which of the two languages, Mandarin (Putonghua) and Cantonese (Guangdonghua), actually comes from ancient Chinese? Also, I have read that Mandarin is a relatively new langauge (about 800 years old) so, how did it sound when it was first introduced? Was it moderately or drastically different than the Mandarin of today? My hunch is that Cantonese is closer to ancient chinese than is Mandarin, but my problem is, why then does Cantonese require horrible-looking invented characters with the "mouth" radical at the side, if it was closer to the original language? You would think that there would be characters already in existence for such words.
Thanks, any help would be appreciated.
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