Dialect Characters and Dialectal Use of Standard Characters

Some of the major dialects, such as Cantonese, Wu and Min, have created characters that are only comprehensible to speakers of those dialects. At the same time, these dialects also have liberally borrowed standard characters and put them to new uses unimaginable and incomprehensible to speakers of other dialects.

The need for dialectal characters and the dialectal use of standard characters is dictated by the existence of dialect specific vocabulary. In addition to a core vocabulary that is shared by all dialects, there are also words that are specific to dialects which the standard language does not have characters for.

Although dialectal characters and dialectal use of characters are never encouraged and do not enjoy high prestige, the principle behind their creation and use is entirely reasonable and consistent with the ways Chinese characters have evolved. We are in fact seeing in action the use of the Rebus principle and the formation of semantic-phonetic compounds.

The Rebus principle is in full swing in the following dialectal use of standard characters:

Cantonese:

Cantonese Words	Meaning In English	Meaning of characters	Mandarin Words
而家	Now	But-home	现在
同埋	And	Same-bury	和
边个	Who	Side-measure	哪位
边道	Where	Side-path	哪儿
听日	Tomorrow	Listen-day	明天
头先	just now	Head-first	刚才
呢的	These	Particle-particle	这些
古仔	Story	Ancient-son	故事
点解	Why	Point-resolve	为什么
俾	Give	slave	给
郁	Move	lush	动
企	Stand	enterprise	站
仲	Still	mid	还
紧	-ing	tight	着

Shanghai:

Shanghai Words	Mandarin and English
侬	你 you
伊	她/他 he/she
接棍	利害 tough
交归	非常 very
伐	不 not
白相	玩 play

Southern Min:

South.Min Words	Mandarin and English
阮	我(们) I/we
暗	晚 late
郎	人 person
呷	吃 eat
叨位	哪儿 where
的括	得意 complacent

The standard characters are only used for their sounds and their meanings are totally irrelevant.

In addition to these phonetic loans, these dialects have also created their own characters. While a few are based on meanings, most are phonetically-based.

One interesting character is the Cantonese creation for not have冇. It is the character for ‘have’ 有without the two horizontal strokes inside the月. It is very much an ideograph, an indicative character conveying the idea of not having in a most direct way.

Interesting as the character for ‘not have’ is, most created characters are quite utilitarian without much creativity involved. They are even less interesting than the standard semantic-phonetic characters, whose semantic radical is still culturally significant, if not all that significant linguistically. For example, in Cantonese, most created characters’ semantic component is just the mouth radical 口, used to explicitly tell us that the character is used for its sound alone and that the original meaning is irrelevant:

哋、嗰、喺、呷、啫、啲、咁、噉、嘢、

吓、唔、嘅、唨、咗、嚟、啱、喇、喐

For an in-depth discussion (in Chinese) of the use of dialectal characters in Taiwan Min, please see: http://plaza16.mbn.or.jp/~sunliong/lunwen15.htm

For samples of writings in Cantonese, Southern Min and Shanghai, please check out the following:

Cantonese：

唔准郁！打劫！全部举手！男既泊左边，女既泊右边，

变态既企中间，话紧你啊，仲诈呆睇手机！

Southern Min：

大加咯来法表在。卡没一噎表个空空。吼啷俅啷们 l k k 啦！

Shanghai：

1。曾经有一只闷子停勒我格膝馒头高头，我“啪”的一声挡的依佛会动，

但依趁我邦侬发消息格辰光拍拍翅膀逃特勒，如果再把我看到依，我一定

要那依挡煞特。

2。落雨咯，打烊咯，小八辣子开会咯，大头娃娃跳舞咯。

3。侬实在老接棍各，吾交归陪服侬！

4。侬只老句三！屈死！！

5。两个矮男人互相嘲讽，甲说：“侬算高煞了，一伐当心就走到床底下去了。”

乙不甘示弱：“哦哟，算侬高，侬坐了上街沿高头两只脚还好荡法荡法。”