Cantonese Initials 广州话声母

Mapping of Cantonese and Taishanese Initials 广府粤语与台山话声母对照表

The following is a table showing the mapping between the Cantonese and Taishanese intitials. The first column is just the count. The next two columns are Cantonese initials in Jyutping and IPA symbols. The Chinese characters are examples. The corresponding Taishanese initials are represented in my simplified IPA and standard IPA symbols respectively. In both cases, standard IPA symbols are in brackets.

	Cantonese Initials 广州话声母			Taishanese Initials 台山话声母
1	b	[p]	巴	b	[p]
2	p	[p^h]	怕	p	[p^h]
3	m	[m]	媽	m	[m]
4	f	[f]	花	f	[f]
5	d	[t]	打	null	[?]
6	t	[t^h]	他	h	[h]
7	n	[n]	那	n	[n]
8	l	[l]	啦	l	[l]
9	g	[k]	家	g	[k]
10	k	[k^h]	卡	k	[k^h]
11	ng	[ŋ]	牙	ng	[ŋ]
12	h	[h]	蝦	h	[h]
13	gw	[k^w]	瓜	g	[k]
14	kw	[k^wh]	誇	k	[k^h]
15	w	[w]	蛙	v	[v]
16	z	[ts]	制, 祭	dz, d	[ts], [t]
17	c	[ts^h]	產, 餐	ts, t	[ts^h], [t^h]
18	s	[s]	勢, 細	s, ɬ	[s], [ɬ]
19	j	[j]	鹽, 嚴	y, ŋ	[j], [ŋ]

The correlation between the consonant initials of the two dialects is strong. The mapping is straightforward with only a few exceptions. Some Cantonese initials map to more than one Taishanese ones and vice versa. For example, in Cantonese, 制 and 祭 have the same pronunciation zai, but in Taishanese, they are dzai and dai respectively. I'll explore the exceptions in future blogs.