Written Cantonese

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Written Cantonese is a written form of Cantonese that represents colloquial Cantonese vocabulary and grammar using Chinese characters. It shares many characters with standard written Chinese, but also uses characters for Cantonese-specific words and grammatical particles. Some of these represent older forms that have fallen out of common use, while others are borrowed or newly created characters used when an established form is unknown or unavailable. Usage is not fully standardized, and there remains disagreement over which characters are correct for some Cantonese words. Written Cantonese has a literary history predating the modern period. Early examples occur in Cantonese mukjyusyu ("wooden fish books"); the earliest known such work containing elements of written Cantonese, Faazin Gei, was composed during the late Ming dynasty, with its oldest extant edition dating to 1713. By the 1920s, a well-recognised system of written Cantonese had developed in Cantonese opera libretti, and its...

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