A curious reader asks: “Mr. Derbyshire—Is it just that people in
different parts of China pronounce words differently? Or are there
differences of grammar too?”
Yes, there are differences of grammar. Stepping aside to let someone
precede him through a door, for instance, a Beijinger would say: “Ni xian
qu” — literally: “You first go.” A Cantonese person, however, would say:
“Lei heui sin” — literally: “You go first.” Same words, different order
(and of course different pronunciation).
Actual words are often different, too. Cantonese has words that just don’t
exist in Mandarin, even if you “map” the pronunciation. (In these cases,
when writing, a Cantonese person will generally use some Mandarin synonym,
though there are a few written characters peculiar to Cantonese that you see
in newspaper cartoons and so on.) In other cases, a dialect will use a word
that fell out of favor in Mandarin 1,000 years or more ago. The common
Cantonese verb for “to like,” for example, is “jung-yi.” Nobody says this
in Mandarin, not even in a Mandarin pronunciation, though it shows up in the
Confucian classics. The Mandarin verb is “xi-huan.” You can say that with
a Cantonese pronunciation (“hei-fun”) and will be understood… but the
Cantonese prefer “jung-yi.” Generally speaking, the southern dialects are
more conservative than the northern ones. North China suffered much more
historical “churning” –barbarian invasions and so on — so the language
changed more up there. Ancient poems still rhyme in Cantonese, but much
less often in Mandarin.
One of the best general-interest books on the Chinese language is SOUND AND
SYMBOL IN CHINESE by the great Swedish Sinologist Bernhard Karlgren. Now
deeply out of print, unfortunately.