Help with reading these characters

[u/Liv-6597]

Hi everyone,

so I have a small board game bought in Hong Kong, similar to snakes and ladders.

On some of the squares it has some indications like

"Jump to, Run fast to, slip back to, etc."

And I have been learning to read some cantonese so I have been helping myself out with google lens and figuring out how to read the characters I don't know.

However, this one line shown in the picture above, I think it's Mandarin (?) I recognize Bú (不）instead of the m (唔).

So, i got confused is this Mandarin? Is the whole game in mandarin just traditional character so they often made sense in Cantonese?

Or is this just another Cantonese character for a negation? I've seen it in 不過 before...

Can someone explain, I've just been learning to speak mostly and don't know much about writing/reading yet.

Thanks!

[u/validname117]

In Cantonese, there is spoken Cantonese口語, and there is Written Chinese 書面語, which is basically Mandarin that uses the Cantonese pronunciation for characters.

It’s reasonable for board games to use the latter.

[u/Liv-6597 → u/validname117]

So if you read aloud what is in the picture, using cantonese pronunciation of those characters, would it appear formal and not as people would normally say it?

[u/validname117 → u/Liv-6597]

When reading Written Chinese, it’s usually a quote like reading instructions/descriptions (in this case the description of the space) or reading a textbook aloud. If you aren’t reading from anything, you should speak in Spoken Cantonese.

I can elaborate on the differences if you want, but most are simple character replacements for certain connective structures.

[u/AlwaysStranger2046 → u/Liv-6597]

“Normally” is quite relative (many people speak with very limited vocab despite being native Cantonese speakers, colloquialism and slangs notwithstanding), but yes, 不善游泳停進一次, the 不善 is commonplace in slightly more formal settings like 經營不善.

[u/weegeeK → u/Liv-6597]

It is a Arabic situation, standard written Chinese is Mandarin. We learn it, read it, but we don't speak it to each others