I suppose each dialect group has its own distinctive features. I may be a proud Cantonese, but I'm sure glad I don't have that stereotypical Cantonese feature - the flat nose.

I suppose each dialect group has its own distinctive features. I may be a proud Cantonese, but I'm sure glad I don't have that stereotypical Cantonese feature - the flat nose.

In my personal opinion -through my observations and the people i have met - i find alot of Hokkien and Teochiu guys look like jay chou lol What is your opinion? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-77S5VjwbE

and the typical Cantonese girl (found in Guangdong and Hong Kong) looks like the girl in jay chou's MV Cellphone Romance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fqCmrKARpc

I think you mean the remote Malay-Austronesian features.

Really Administrator? All Cantonese have flat noses?

Uh? I have never seen a Cantonese with a flat nose. Really?

Not all, but it is a distinctive feature.



Indeed. My dad, his mother and my brother - all flat noses.

Does Chao Zhou people count?

My relatives call Hokkien > Fukien. Is there a difference? I've heard both.

I've never heard of Min Nan. Is this a Mandarin thing?

one of the things i noticed of cantonese people is their big round eyes. and the nose. my cantonese friends. they do look kinda different from northern chinese.

Hokkien is Fujian (province) pronounced in Fujian dialect.

Fukien is from postal map spelling (originally from Romanized spelling I guess) of Fujian.

Min3 (閩/闽) was the short name for Fujian. Nan2 means south. "Min Nan" means south of Fujian. Therefore, "Min Nan Yu3" means the dialect at the south of Fujian province. "Min Nan Yu" is also shortened into "Min Nan" or "Minnan" for the dialect at the south of Fujian province, which is also the common dialect for Taiwanese. Therefore, Taiwanese dialect is also called Min Nan Yu.

I understand that Hokkien is the local dialect's way of pronouncing their province., but in terms of linguistics doesn't necessarily mean only the language of Minnan but all Min dialects collectively right?

No, Hokkien is only Southern Min.

Malay-Austronesian feature is a very rare thing to see among the Hokkien and Cantonese. I have seen some Hokkien and Cantonese have that look, but it's very rare - once in a full moon. This is due to inter-mixing in the past between the majority Han and the few Bai-Yue that were left - mostly women and children.

It's actually not that rare, depending on which area people are from. Malay-Austronesian feature is not a bad thing and it concerns me that some people in China consider it as ugly.

Is it because Southern Min is the predominant Min language in Hokkien Province, which is why they name their dialect (of Minnan) after their province of Fujian? Just like Guangzhou speakers name their dialect after the province of Guangdong.. Guangdong Wah, even though there are many variants of Cantonese ie Taishanese, Zhongshanese, etc

Well there is also Min Dong (Fuzhou) and Min Bei (Nanping).

Malay-Austronesian feature is a very rare thing to see among the Hokkien and Cantonese. I have seen some Hokkien and Cantonese have that look, but it's very rare - once in a full moon. This is due to inter-mixing in the past between the majority Han and the few Bai-Yue that were left - mostly women and children. The majority of Hokkien and Cantonese have a Central Han Chinese look. But I know so many Teochiu and and Taiwanese who look like jay chou LOL Alot of Cantonese people also look somewhere between Hakka and Hokkien people.

I would say that the Baiyue look is taditionally thought of the most beautiful in China. Ever heard of Yue Nu meaning the Yue girl in Chinese literature, they are famous for being the most beautiful girl in China (i.e. Xishi in the Yue Guo story, around 500BC, she is the famous beauty who helped the Yue King to defeat the Wu King). In the 500BC time frame there were probably not a lot of northerner migrating down to the south yet (I do not use the word Han as it has not yet existed at that time). My theory was that originally the Yue people around that area are beautiful due to the geography (good weather, temperate climate, abundant food and good water) as it is today. Further south, in China, there are probably a mixture of the ancient Autro-Asiatic people mixing in with the Yue tribes of the north. The reality is that there are no one single Bai Yue tribe that look all alike. It's more like a continuum of ethnic from north to south. And southern China orginally are inhabited by Autro-Asiatic or Mon-Kmer tribes too

Doesn't Hok kien(閩南) = Fu jian(國語) = Fuk Kien(粵) ? or unless the term only refers to Southern Fujianese and Taiwanese people who speak minnan.

Yes they are all the same: Hokkien is in the Minnan romanized pinyin, Fujian in Mandarin pinyin, and Fukkien in Cantonese pinyin. The term refers to the province Fujian. However, in English usage, Hokkien refer to Minnan which is only a region in southern Fujian. So a Singaporean, Taiwansese Hokkien probably coming from Minnan. Of course north of Minnan, you got Minbei, Mindong, Minzhong, which are all smilar languages groups (and people) related to Min.

Just to add something - being off topic >.< - i read from an article that Cantonese linguistically does not share much with Zhuang language (which was suspected by some linguistics to be the language that shaped cantonese - but later proven to be false), can someone confirm this. NB: Zhuang is China's largest ethnic minority that mostly live in the province of Guangxi and speaks the language of Zhuang which belongs to the language family of Tai.

Cantones is not Zhuang. Cantonese is a Han language which received some influenced from Zhuang language (Gu Yue = Old Yue words) due to its geography. Like American English has some Ame-Indian derived words (bow-wow).

Umm like many refer Mandarin to the Beijing Variant, because it is the cultural and linguistic (standard) center, others do the same:

Hunan Hua to the Changsha
Guangdong Hua to the Guangzhou
Jiangxi Hua to the Nanchang

so.. for Hokkien (Fujian Hua) is it represented by the Minnan variant of Min? if so, is it because Minnan is spoken by more people in Fujian and also is it because the economic strength is located in the minnan speaking areas - including Taiwan ?

This is a response to Dearcoolz - even though the topic is suppose to be about Hokkien people not cantonese people. Watch this video =) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w1Lo7IOmjg This is what most Taishanese (Cantonese) would look like. The Northern Chinese around the Yellow river don't look like the rest of China, because of inter-mixing with the northern so called "barbarians".

Interesting, my wife she is of Taishan lienage and she does not look like typical Chinese in fact she is always mistaken to be of mestiza type aka mix Pilipino-Spanish-Chinese blood.

Are you the baby?

Is your name really Andy Lau like the singer/actor?

"Cantones is not Zhuang. Cantonese is a Han language which received some influenced from Zhuang language (Gu Yue = Old Yue words) due to its geography. Like American English has some Ame-Indian derived words (bow-wow)."

I heard it was the cantonese who influenced the neighbouring Zhuang minorities in Guangxi Autonomous Region, not the other way around.. because when huge waves of Han migrated to Guangdong during the Tang dynasty era, they were the majority and the majority in general never gets influenced, usually it's the minority. Same went with Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese - who were influenced by Middle Chinese (which is present day Cantonese, Gan, Hakka and to a lesser extent Mandarin). Isn't Zhuang a Tai language not Yue?

Best example would be Canada, where the minority are the French Quebecors who are a minority in the rest of Canada. Quebec obtains alot of influences from the surrounding English provinces and country(USA), which is why French Canadians use alot of terms derived from English like the word "break" ie: Je vais prend mon break translation: I will take my break. Where as in neighbouring Ontario where the majority of people there are english speakers have no influence from French, even though there are small communities of french people in that province.

Example of influences - meaning words borrowed from Middle Chinese - are the word "Nam"(used in korean and vietnamese) = south, "Ngin" or "Nyin"(used in japanese and korean) = Person, "Sam"(used in korean) = 3, "Gai"(used in japanese) = street.

Depend on which angle one sees, influence can work in both direction in languages. There is no majority or minority here. One tends to pick up words from one's neighbors to use due to intermixing. There are Old Yue words hidden in the substrata fo Cantonese or Hokkien dialect of Han Chinese.

By the way, the Ango-French in the questioned is frowned upon by the proper l'Academie Francaise :-)

Fuzhou is the largest city in Fujian and is the provincial capital, so I suppose it is more developed. At the same time Xiamen was one of the earliest Special Economic Zones in China, making the city fairly wealthy.

There is extensive inter-mixing between the french and Irish in particular in Quebec and outside of Quebec, but english still has no influence from the minority. Acadians is just another term to call francophones who have origins from the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick area. There is difference between the Quebecois accent and Acadian, but these two do not influence the neighbouring english communities who form the majority. But maybe you could be right, who knows lol but i doubt there was much influence from the Zhuang or any Yue.

Some example of Yue words in Cantonese:
1) This one (Engl) = Gai Nay (Vietnamese ) = Nee Go (Cant., but in reverse order) = no equivalent in Mandarin
The Mandarin form for "this one" is Zhe ge, which in literary Cantonese is "Chie Go"

2) That one (E) = Gai Gier (VN) = Go3 Go (Cant)
while in Mandarin = Na Ge which in literary Cant. is "Na Go" (not to be confused with the vulgar Cant form Nee go which is "this one")

Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just guessing here :-), but that what I observe.

Andy, can you give me the toisanese translation of the Hokkien phrases I posted earlier in the topic? Although the spelling I have is nowhere near official (I just thought of it phonetically), it would be cool to compare.

Do you know of any radio or tv stations in mainland China that broadcast in dialects other than standard Mandarin (putonghua)?

There are Old Yue words hidden in the substrata fo Cantonese or Hokkien dialect of Han Chinese.

Northern China is an exception, where the majority obtained many influence from the "northern barbarians" due to foreign rule of the area and also the intermixing of foreigners with the local population. The major influences were probably from the Manchu (Qing Dynasty) and Mongols (Yuan Dynasty). Mandarin is a result of this influence, where all the initial constants Ng- and final constats like -t and -m were lost ie Ngin -> Ren (Person), Ngout -> Yut -> Yu (Month or Moon), Ngit -> Ri (Day or Sun), Sam -> San (3).

I am beginning to agree with what most Hakkas say that they preserve much of their culture and dialect from the Tang dynasty rule (Middle Chinese), as they preserve much vocabulary that is also found in other sino-influence languages like korean, vietnamese and japanese. Taishanese and hakka vocabulary are very similar(like the words listed above), but the Taishanese grammar seems to be more similar to Standard Cantonese, which is why it is classified with Cantonese dialects. Both Hakka and Taishanese (and possibly some other cantonese dialects) preserve much of the initial constants ng- and final constants -m, -t, -k and -p.

I also heard that "hai" (like in all cantonese and hakka dialects) is pronounce in southwestern mandarin dialects like Sichuanese and Jin spoken in Shaanxi, rather than Xie (Beijing Mandarin) for the word Shoes. Is it possible that h- was the original pronounciation rather than x-?