translate equivalent canto to mandarin "wui-will" etc. help

[Rose]

please i know cantonese, but want to know the equivalents canto-mandarin,,sorry i dont know pinyin or writeing characters so,,,

i was wondering why wui (will in canto) is hui (will in mandarin), when hui means 'can' and wui means 'would/will', because they share the same character, or am i wrong? please tell me if i am. and what is the equivalent if you know?

sik (know in canto)-dong (understand in mandarin, but is this right?? tell me the real equivalent if you know)

ting bu dong- what does this mean, and how do i say it in cantonese?

jou hai (only/just in canto)- what is this in mandarin?

hou zor (went in canto)-how would u phrase this in mandarin? chu zor?? idk


that is all for now, i will be back for more asking, thank you for reading.

[Dylan Sung]

Cantonese wui and Mandarin hui are the same characters AFAIK.

C. Sik is M. shi, but M. dong is C. t'ung,

the is a nuance difference between sik and t'ung. sik means to know, t'ung means to understand.

M. ting bu dong, means I can't undersand what I'm hearing you are speaking of.

In Cantonese, I would say t'eng m ming.

C. jou hai I think would translate to ji shi in Mandarin. (Not sure, as M. isn't a language I speak very often, I learnt it to read books.)

C. hui zor (went) , the particle zor signifying an action is complete corresponds some of the time with le in Mandarin (sometimes pronounced liao).

I leave the above for correction...

Cheers,
Dy.

[Dylan Sung]

Sorry, ji shi should be zhi shi 只是

Dyl.

[Rose]

thanks.
but still, i am confused

cantonese: wui = will/would
mandarin: hui = can/able to

or am i wrong? and these use the exact same characters

wo hui shuo putonghua = i can speak mandarin

but if u use wui for cantonese:

ngor wui gong guangdongwa = i will speak cantonese

(this is very strange to me; does this mean in mandarin, the will/would meaning is lost, and now it means can/able to??)

[Dylan Sung]

In Mandarin, you could also use "能夠" nenggou to mean "can/able".

My Chinese is self taught, more to read than to speak, so I can only advise you to look into a grammar book on Chinese...

Dyl.

[Jenny Tang]

isnt ZHI SHI sound too much like ZHE SHI?
ZHI SHI= ONLY/JUST ZHE SHI= THIS IS???

they sound too similar i get confused

[Guest]

"ngor wui gong guangdongwa = i will speak cantonese"

Depending on context, it can also mean "I know how to speak Cantonese". The wui in Cantonese and hui in Mandarin are one and the same character.

[Aurelio]

Hi!

Hui4 can mean "will" in Mandarin, too, as in "hui4 xia4 yu3" : "it will rain", or "ta1 hui4 lai2 de" : "he will come".

In all languages I know, the future is always expressed by using some existing verb and employing it in this special, temporal sense. And two closely related languages might make very different choices here. Take "will" or "shall" in English, which mean originally "to want" (as in willpower) and "ought". In German, you can't use the word "will" for the future tense, it only means "to want something". It's still etymologically the same word, though.

Regards,
Aurelio

[%sig%]

[Niuc]

I have been thinking of Indonesian/Malay as a relatively "poor" language, yet it has a specific word to indicate "will/shall", i.e. [akan]. It seems to have no other meanings beside to indicate future.

Sorry if this is out of topic.

[%sig%]

[Aurelio]

Hi, Niuc!

that's a very interesting observation. Now, since words don't "fall from the sky", so to speak, it would be interesting to find out what the original meaning of 'akan' was ... the Romance languages, for example, even have separate verb forms for the future tense, like: me llamara' ('he will call') from llamar ('to call'). But if you go back a few centuries in time (Cervantes), you find the origin of this form in phrases like "llamarme ha" ('he (still) has to call me'). There must be a story like this for 'akan', too ...

Regards,
Aurelio

[%sig%]