Chinese

Chinese (This is an essay about my opinion and what Cantonese is.)

Mandarin is the language of Taiwan, and the second language to me. The first language to me was Cantonese, which came from Guang Zhou. Guang Zhou is the capital of Guang dong province. Cantonese is my daily life language and writing. This means I write and speak Cantonese every day.

“Mandarin and Cantonese are not hard at all, the point that is hard is understanding the idioms,” I think.

Idioms are hard because there are many deep explanations inside the idiom. One idiom has a small meaning to it. For example, in the chest there is a bamboo. The idiom is a figure of speech. In In Chinese it means that you have a lot of self-­‐confidence. It doesn’t mean in the chest there is literally bamboo. Speaking Mandarin and Cantonese to me is the easy part, because you just need to talk and you don’t need to worry about anything. But that is after you know how to pronounce the words. Mandarin’s pronunciation has five sounds and Cantonese has seven pronunciation sounds.

Speaking Mandarin has pin-­‐yin on top of each word. But Cantonese doesn’t.

Mandarin is written as simplify and Cantonese written as traditional. The difference between simplify and traditional are traditional was more difficult, harder, and complicated than simplify. But I write the harder one, because traditional writing is the traditional culture. Simplify writing is actually for farming people, or people who are less educated to know these words. Also, traditional writing has according to it, but simplify has no according. Even though I write mainly traditional, I still know some simplify writing because now-­‐ a-­‐ days many people write simplify, so I just recognize them.

Writing Cantonese has two ways. One is using a pencil and one is “paint brush.” A paintbrush in our country is a type of calligraphy and is our culture. We write calligraphy during the Chinese Happy New Year. Writing in paintbrushes is the hardest writing because your elbows need to lift up straightly and the paintbrush also has to be straight. While you use paintbrushes to write, your efforts can’t be very strong at one particular point because the ink spreads all over the place very quickly. Different words in Cantonese have different styles and form of writing it. So, you need to learn how to write all the word before you write in paintbrushes. Also, if you think you did not do a great job on that word, you can’t go over it and write it back again. Paintbrushes are actually similar to pencils but just use different materials to write. Plus paintbrushes are just thicker than pencils. Learning paintbrushes actually is another type of knowledge and is a very differences thing than pencil.

I like Cantonese so much because it can express more my feeling and understand me more.

Also Cantonese is my first language, and I did not develop an English base that deep. Even though I like English, I will still choose Cantonese as my favorite, because I know more Cantonese word than English. So speaking Cantonese is much easier to me. Not that I don’t speak Mandarin, is just speak less and not often time use. But my Mandarin is good too! So, Cantonese is my daily language that why I choose Cantonese as my favorite language.