I went and did some digging, and apparently comics will tend to use spoken Cantonese (not standard Mandarin, per more literary works). And... then discovered that the biggest difference (or the one that gets the most attention/commentary?) is the conjugation of verbs. It seems that where in Mandarin you kind of have to guess from context whether it's "I was going" or "I had gone" or "I am going" or whatever, that (spoken) Cantonese adds extra verbs to make the verb-tense much clearer. Which is fine and all, except that it's characters I've never seen before. On top of that, apparently Cantonese also has additional characters not used in Mandarin -- on top of the standard Mandarin set -- which is probably why a major chunk of the manga, I just can't read.
This does not make me feel any less stupid, however.
Of course, the problem is that a lot of the online explanations I've found are clearly written for someone who's trying to decide whether to learn Mandarin or Cantonese, so the various pages don't use specific terminology. Like calling them "words" instead of "characters" or even "hanzi", so I'm not sure if it's a matter of Cantonese using the same characters, just in different ways, or if it's really a matter of a completely different, additional set of hanzi that you'd never see in Mandarin.
I did finally find a bookstore in Taiwan that carries the Taiwanese published version, but I haven't yet figured out if they'll ship to the US. For that matter, I don't know what I'd do, then, with four volumes in (Cantonese)-chinese. It's not like this is a massively popular series to make it worth selling on ebay. Sheesh. I just wish someone had a clear and simple conveyance, or whatever they call it, when it's two languages together, to show you how they differ. Or something.
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Date: 31 Jan 2012 01:26 am (UTC)This does not make me feel any less stupid, however.
Of course, the problem is that a lot of the online explanations I've found are clearly written for someone who's trying to decide whether to learn Mandarin or Cantonese, so the various pages don't use specific terminology. Like calling them "words" instead of "characters" or even "hanzi", so I'm not sure if it's a matter of Cantonese using the same characters, just in different ways, or if it's really a matter of a completely different, additional set of hanzi that you'd never see in Mandarin.
I did finally find a bookstore in Taiwan that carries the Taiwanese published version, but I haven't yet figured out if they'll ship to the US. For that matter, I don't know what I'd do, then, with four volumes in (Cantonese)-chinese. It's not like this is a massively popular series to make it worth selling on ebay. Sheesh. I just wish someone had a clear and simple conveyance, or whatever they call it, when it's two languages together, to show you how they differ. Or something.
*ded*