Cantonese may have originated in Canton, China, but to find its earliest form, you have to go to Vietnam—here’s why.
In southeast Asia, migration across countries has given rise to many different languages and dialects. As a linguist who specializes in Chinese, Professor Dana Bourgerie (Chinese Dialectology, Sociolinguistics) finds this language diaspora—or the spread of language from its place of origin—interesting and has spent years studying language development in a variety of Asian languages. In doing so, he found evidence to support the age-old claim that some dialects preserve pronunciations, words, and attitudes found in the language’s earlier form. To contribute to linguistic research on language diaspora in Asia, Bourgerie has been studying Vietnamese Cantonese, a variety that diverges from Cantonese spoken in mainland China.
Cantonese Beyond Canton
Varieties of Cantonese can be found in places such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and even Thailand, though it originated in China. Bourgerie explains that though the Cantonese spoken in China and in Vietnam have many differences, they haven’t diverged into separate languages. He says, “Vietnamese Cantonese [speakers] could go to mainland China and speak perfectly fine, but they would be noticed as somebody not from around there. So, the question is, what has changed [between the dialects] because it’s still essentially the same language.”
Cultural contact is the nature of the world. It [helps you] understand [that] there’s a lot of vitality in a language; it’s not just static.
To properly examine Vietnamese Cantonese, Bourgerie and his research assistants created and distributed surveys to Vietnamese Cantonese speakers living in both the US and Vietnam. These surveys collected data on each participants’ sociolinguistic background via audio recording, and each completed survey gave researchers information about the participant’s background as well as their speech. From this point, the researchers were able to note patterns and differences between Cantonese speakers from different parts of Vietnam to make conclusions about what makes Vietnamese Cantonese distinct.
From Modern to Archaic Cantonese
While analyzing the language samples, Bourgerie noted that many pronunciation and vocabulary distinctions between Cantonese dialects can only be found in specific regions. For example, he explains that in Vietnam, “they have certain forms and words that are hardly spoken in Hong Kong and Guangdong anymore. For a lot of speakers in Hong Kong, they merge the pronunciation of ‘n’ into ‘l.’” This means that words that start with an “n” sound in Vietnamese Cantonese—such as woman (女)—would instead start with an “l” sound in Canton, China.
Bourgerie says that studying different countries’ dialects of Cantonese “helps us understand how the language used to be. In many cases, the Cantonese and Chinese spoken in places like Vietnam [is] more conservative. It’s been preserved better.” Bourgerie believes that studying this more traditional form of Cantonese “gives you an artifact of [Chinese] culture. It gives you a little bit of insight into how language does change and why.”
Though Vietnamese Cantonese has stayed true to Cantonese’s earlier form in many ways, Bourgerie notes that many speakers in Vietnam “will borrow a Vietnamese word, and it’ll get into Cantonese, and it will be seen as a normal word, but it’s actually from Vietnam.” This proves to be another distinction between the dialects spoken in Vietnam and in China and, more importantly, shows how cultures collide to influence language. Bourgerie says, “Cultural contact is the nature of the world. It [helps you] understand [that] there’s a lot of vitality in a language; it’s not just static.”
Learn about Dana Bourgerie’s other research projects here.