Chinese languages

I recognise that speaking Mandarin gives Chinese Singaporeans access to a wider world, and gives the Mandarin speaking world access to Singaporeans, which is a good thing, but I still lament the loss of Hokkien in Singapore.

I had to think a while about what some of these words could mean. Before I had a Cantonese dictionary I used to make my own version of Cantonese romanization. Check out some Chinese bookstores in Chinatown and Metrotown. They sell pretty well all the books on Cantonese you can find in HK bookstores.

Dylan Sung's sent me a pattern chart for Hakka tone sandhi. Unfortunately for Mandarin sandhi people who are learning the language see things like Tone so-and-so with tone so-and-so changes to tone so-and-so however often the tone is not the same as one of the original tones, or at least not exactly...