Talk:Weitou dialect

Untitled
A few problems:


 * 1) 吃：hek7 or hek8? In standard Cantonese, it is hek8. I'm not sure if there's a variation in Waitau. De ryc  k C.  10:17, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) gwa or gwaa? (there's no vowel "a" in std. canton, just "aa" and "a-sth") De ryc  k C.  10:19, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Except Cantonese don't use hek to mean to eat dinner (the northern Chinese do, pronounced chi), but the word sig is used. 2A00:23C5:C10B:A300:1176:4EC1:D032:10E7 (talk) 18:41, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Cantonese "Wai Tau" = Hakka "Vui Teu"
The article so far suggests that WaiTau dialects are all Cantonese, this is plainly incorrect, since Hakka people sometimes refer to the language they speak in their Hakka Villages as [vui11 theu11 va53]. The translation of the term as "walled city" dialects is literal, however, the majority of villages in Hong Kong are not walled. In the Hakka sense of the term 圍頭/围头 is generally of 'the village'. Thus VuiTeu dialects should be termed more appropriately as "village dialects".

Most of the walled villages in Hong Kong are found in the New Territories, and some are Cantonese, others are Hakka. See Walled villages of Hong Kong that suggest Waitauwah cannot be equated solely with Cantonese.

Dylanwhs 20:13, 2 September 2005 (UTC)


 * But by any means it should carry the meaning of "walled". Deryck C. 04:58:34, 2005-09-03 (UTC)

"Snake Language"
"It is also known as Se Wah (Traditional Chinese: 蛇話 lit. snake language)... "

The character for 'snake' is actually a incorrect character for the language. The She people or Se-Ch'uk in Cantonese is more properly rendered as 畲族 and their language is 畲話. Traditionally, Chinese linguists have associated the She peoples and language with Hakka - not Cantonese. Dylanwhs 20:30, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Hakka Expressions listed under WaiTau Words
From my own language/speech of Shataukok, the following Hakka vocabulary are cognates with those listed under WaiTau words in the article. I've provided the characters that I think best fits the pronunciations with its meanings.

This is table also appears in my talk page Dylanwhs 23:37, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Brilliant to see "能太" here. As a kid I could never "translate" it to Cantonese. To me it just meant "great", "super", "cool", "awesome", etc. I suppose in slang Cantonese it could be "sai'ng-lay" or PTH "li hai", which is "Lay Hoy" in Cantonese. 2A00:23C5:C101:5800:9DE2:10D5:3E2C:D8F (talk) 23:35, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Section
In my opinion, the main paragraphs of this article should be split into 2 or 3 sections. D e  ryc  k C.  09:22:46, 2005-09-04 (UTC)
 * u can do that, of course. ^_^ --K.C. Tang 13:08, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Later, I'm now facing something hard. D  e  ryc  k C.  14:44:54, 2005-09-04 (UTC)

Done. D e  ryc  k C.  11:20:20, 2005-09-07 (UTC)

Section cleanup
I suggest the table to be disassociated into a list like this:


 * Cantonese
 * Waitau: sth
 * Hakka: sth
 * meaning: sth

D e  ryc  k C.  11:20:20, 2005-09-07 (UTC)


 * Have revised. :P --K.C. Tang 16:53, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Hakka section
As the Cantonese has equvialents of the Waitau words together with characters, the Hakka section too requires the characters with it's corresponding pronunciations, and equivalent words. For example, huk (to cry) is not used much in everyday Hakka, since kiau53 is used, so I've put in 叫 kiau53 and so forth. Dylanwhs 08:20, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

With regard to the removal of the phonemic transcription in Hakka, that's ok. Perhaps Cantonese really ought to be transcribed phonetically in IPA too. This will make the article less subject to change, that is, certain romanisations tend to be fashionable for a while, then something else replaces them. Unicode moved from Yale to Jyutping lately for its listings of Cantonese readings, for instance. IPA should be used in a linguistic related article such as this. It will be able to tie in with other articles such as the descriptions of Cantonese, Hakka and other Chinese dialects nicely. Dylanwhs 08:36, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
 * No objections for IPA. By the way, the table format has been revised a bit, and a rather (for me) interesting term has been added. --K.C. Tang 17:10, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
 * IPA or Jyutping, as you people will like. D  e  ryc  k C.  07:11:05, 2005-09-12 (UTC)

Clarification
Just wondering if the lead section could be worded a little more clearly: is Waitau all three: a (a) Cantonese variant (b) synonym for Hakka, and (c) term for any non-Standard Cantonese (Guangfu) dialect...or is it only "truly" (a)? It seems that most of the page is dedicated to (a). Perhaps this could be a little clearer. Thanks --Dpr 18:22, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
 * yeah, i know it sounds a bit confusing, but the fact seems to be that the term is used both in a general and in a specific sense. u can try to clarify it, of course. :P --K.C. Tang 14:34, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I can only clarify if I know what it means. So am I correct, does it mean all three things, (a), (b), and (c)? If the terms has many meanings, it should (can) be stately cleary that this is the case. Thanks --Dpr 01:56, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * as the article states, the genereal meaning is any spoken variant, other than Guangfu, used in the villages of Hong Kong, sometimes even including Hakka (as the She Wah case suggests). we can say it is the "folk" use of the term. The specific meaning is a dialect of Cantonese, which has its distinct phonology, according to some linguists. we can say it is the "linguistic" use of the term. Hope it is clear. :P --K.C. Tang 04:16, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

vocabulary
The following section was originally in the article. However, in retrospect, it looks like original research. It has been moved here for those who may be interested.--K.C. Tang 14:50, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Waitau vocabulary
The following table contains some Waitau words and phrases, along with its Standard Cantonese and Hong Kong Hakka equivalents. It can be seen that Waitau, not surprisingly, shares many cognates with Hong Kong Hakka.

Is Waitau dialect mutually intelligible to Cantonese?
Is Waitau dialect mutually intelligible to Standard Cantonese? If the dialects were spoken slowly, can two speakers of the two dialects, understand each other? Homer33 03:15, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * um... I guess so.--K.C. Tang 09:00, 18 May 2007 (UTC)


 * K.C. Tang, are you a Hakka? Homer33 01:40, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * why, the Hakka speaks Hakka, not Waitau. I can only understand some Waitau, not Hakka. Cheers.--K.C. Tang 01:58, 19 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Waitau is listed as one of the Hakka dialects in the list of chinese dialects. If Waitau is not a Hakka language, then the Hakka lists of dialects should be changed. Homer33 04:59, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I see, will change that. Cheers.--K.C. Tang 09:21, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

K.C. Tang, Waitau dialect may be a Hakka dialect that is similar to Cantonese, Are you 100% sure that Waitau is not a Hakka dialect? Otherwise a Hakka editor should make the change. Chow Yun-Fat is a Hakka and spoke Waitau. Homer33 15:50, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Why, you can take a look at the references listed in the article. There are two links and one book, the book (a tome indeed) is not easily available, though. Cheers.--K.C. Tang 03:40, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Shenzhen residents
Actually the majority of the original Shenzhen residents ("Shenzhen Natives") spoke Hakka and not "Cantonese". 2A00:23C5:C101:5800:9DE2:10D5:3E2C:D8F (talk) 23:29, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Chow Yun-fat
I can't be sure if Chow used any Weitou language in films, but he is supposed to be a Hakka person, and he has spoken Hakka in films, as well as Chiuchew speech. 2A00:23C5:C10B:A300:1176:4EC1:D032:10E7 (talk) 18:47, 18 February 2018 (UTC)