Just personal observation, maybe it feels different for a professional English song lyric composer.
I don’t have a spreadsheet, but so many characters have the same ending sounds in Mandarin that I could easily find a rhyming word when writing song lyrics.
English is a struggle to find a rhyming word that fits into the context of the contents, and it feels kinda like a forced rhyme.
I haven’t really spoken Mandarin for over 15 years, somehow it’s still easier to do rhyming.
P.S. Cantonese has more variety of sounds and less characters have the same ending sounds, so its harder to rhyme in Cantonese.
Native Mandarin speaker here. On one hand it’s true that basic rhyming is easier due to the regularity of the unit of sound and the number of characters sharing the same “final vowel” 韵母.
However, there’s also the tone system. Pronouncing the tone as it’s normally pronounced may interfere with the melody. So it’s actually very hard to write good lyrics that works with both.
In modern Mandarin music, this problem is usually bypassed by relaxing the tone a bit when singing (the phenomenon is called 倒字). However, serious lyric writers do strive to achieve both goals at the same time. (Cantonese songs are especially good in this regard.)
Compare to the classical Chinese. According to tones, all characters are divided into two classes 平仄, which follows a specific pattern in a poem 格律. The poem is also the lyrics of a melody 律诗. So this system helps you to do both.
Ok, it’s a bit off topic, but can I ask a naive question?
What the reasoning behind the different terminologies for the Chinese languages? Usually I see them then referred to as Mandarin and Cantonese, but sometimes I see the terms “simplified Chinese” and “traditional Chinese”. Or have I totally misunderstood what those terms mean? (Entirely possible)
Please forgive my ignorance.
“Chinese” can refer to a variety of languges in China.
It could refer to 中文 --> Chinese Language
It could refer to 汉字 --> “Han Characters” (aka: Chinese Characters)
It could refer to 国语/普通话 --> National Language / Mandarin
If its overseas, the English term “Chinese” could also refers to the overseas lingua franca, which historically had been Taishanese, but now is Cantonese, and slowly being replaced by Mandarin as more non-Cantonese Chinese people emigrate.
Cantonese-Chinese people usually just ask “識唔識白話” (“Do you speak Cantonese?” in Cantonese), then if no response, immediately switch to Mandarin “普通话？” (“[Do you speak] Mandarin?”)Cantonese, [could be refered to as any of the following: 廣東話/廣州話/廣府話/粵語/白話], is the “prestige dialect” of a variety of Chinese known as Yue-Chinese. In China, it’s referred to as a “dialect”. It’s only used in Hong Kong and Guangdong, but overseas it was, and still kinda is, the lingua franca due to most of the diaspora being from there.
Traditional 繁體 is the older set of characters that has been in use for… idk how long but a very long time.
Simplified 简体 is the newer set of characters, standarized by the PRC Government after they won the KMT-CCP Civil War. It’s to make writing easier and faster. ROC (aka: Taiwan) didn’t adopt these simplifications. Hong Kong also didn’t adopt the simplifications afaik.
-Am a Native Speaker of both Cantonese and Mandarin, currently residing overseas
I see, so the simplified/traditional specifically refers to the written characters. I appreciate all the extra context as well!
Other replies answered what’s what. I think the reasoning for this many names is just there are many variants. After all, the current “nation” is several ethnic groups (many with their own languages) merged together for over thousands of years, spanning a large area.
- (Standard) Mandarin: the Chinese “dialect” that most westerner learns.
- Chinese: languages such as mandarin, min, yue, which are not necessary mutually comprehensible. For example, there are eight tones in zh-min-nan, compared to four in standard mandarin. The grammar, common words and idioms are also somewhat different, although sloppy translations are unifying the grammar of zh-min-nan and mandarin in Taiwan.
- SC, TC: They both refer to Standard Mandarin in most contexts, but different script and words are used. Mostly mutually comprehensible disregarding political issues. However, these two terms can also refer to the script (simplified vs. traditional) themselves. Note that TC shouldn’t be mapped to zh-tw, since zh-tw and zh-hk are no less different that en-us and en-gb.
I feel like it’s generally easier to rhyme in most other languages when compared to English since English is such a bastard language. In French and Spanish a lot of nouns and verbs share the same endings
Dutch has a very rigid word order and when I do exercises on Duolingo I often create rhymes by accident.
My favorite Dutch rhyme is Nieuwe wegdek, langere remweg. It’s very popular too, there are many signs with it. It means New road surface, longer breaking distance.
That doesn’t really rhyme though? The words sound kinda similar, but it’s not the same ending
In a language where the inflection changes the word, how does something like sarcasm work? Is it conveyed in a totally different manner? Is there more reliance on other nonverbal cues?
Examples from my mother:
When I refuse to eat because I’m mad:
哇，練神仙啊！亦好啊，慳返啲食嘅。(Omg, are you trying to become an immortal being? Great, we can save a lot of money!)
When I told my mom I wanna to 睇橋 (to view a bridge; euphemism for me wanting to jump off a bridge):
使唔使開車載你去啊？(Do you want me to drive you there?)
Always said with a positive happy voice… like when you grow up with someone you understand when it’s sarcasm, the creepy happy voice as if she’s thinking: omg this annoying child, finally I’ll get some sweet relief
Also she jokes about:
謂，你咁唔識珍惜生命，不如帶你返中國換個個細路出來啦。🤗 (Hey, since you don’t really wanna live, why dont I take you back to home to China and find someone else to take your place?) (She means find a lookalike and let them steal my identity, and she’ll pretend to have them as their child)
(Edit: for context, I’m the actual biological child of my parents, so… yea… even blood relationships doesn’t matter anymore for a culture so obsessed with blood relations.)
So yea, just normal family. Totally normal.
Sarcasm is easily detectible. It’s hard to explain, but if you spend enough time around people, you’ll hear it.
Canto?
Yea
I’m from Guangzhou, currently residing in the US and naturalized
Oh lol it’s just you said mandarin but your example seemed more canto so I had some momentary confusion
I speak both Cantonese and Mandarin xD
The comment I replied to said
In a language where the inflection changes the word, how does something like sarcasm work?
I don’t have a lot of interactions with Mandarin speakers outside of having been through 2nd grade in China
So Cantonese is all I know regarding to irl use of sarcasm in a tonal language.
It’s just a more difficult game/puzzle in English
How about Japanese? I like the hip hop duo Creepy Nuts, and their songs Yofukashino Uta (Call of the Night) and To Us Former Prodigies are so fun to listen to. I don’t know Japanese. Well, a few dozen words, but not enough to understand a song. Both videos on YouTube have subtitles in English though.
Japanese, not restricted in the same way as Chinese tonally, and having a long tradition of both song and poetic lyrics, lends itself extremely well to hip hop/rap. This is not to say it’s better than Chinese for this - only different. There are so many excellent Japanese hip hop artists.
Verbs are certainly easier.
Idk, I put the Kanjis in my name cuz it looks cool (I mean Kanji is just Chinese really), I don’t speak Japanese, sadly :(
It’s not “just Chinese really.” It derived from Chinese and there are many overlaps, but in modern Japanese, Kanji very often represent different words than their Chinese counterparts. Your take is… uninformed.
seems alot harder, english is probably the easiest to rhyme things.
