Pronounciations for a character in Cantonese

[wilsonsamm]

In Mandarin, each character has one reading (plus variations sometimes, as with 不 or 一, but these can always be put down to tone sandhi).

In Japanese, a character may have many readings but a particular word will always be read in a particular way (except that かざぐるま and フーシャ are both written as 風車.)

And if you look up a chinese character in Unihan, for Cantonese you might get more than one reading. See this example

http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUniha ... eutf8=true

The readings for 聿 are jyut6, leot6 and wat6. Why is this?

Is this situation more like the Mandarin or more like the Japanese?

[Pangu]

Some characters have multiple pronunciations but they are the exceptions rather than the rule. Each pronunciation is associated with a different meaning.

Sometimes it can be similar

方便 - fāngbiàn - convenient
便宜 - piányí - inexpensive, cheap

Sometimes it can be completely different

音樂- yīnyuè - music
快樂 - kuàilè - happy

[OldBoring]

As Pangu said, Mandarin has multiple readings for the same character too, the so-called "多音字".
I have the impression that Cantonese has slightly more 多音字 than Mandarin, and some characters have tone changes according to the usage and context.
So the situation of Cantonese is comparable to that of Mandarin.

According Wikipedia, modern Chinese languages also have 训读 (kunyomi) but they are extremely rare, and are more the exception than the rule.

[linguoboy]

I have the impression that Cantonese has slightly more 多音字 than Mandarin

I have this impression, too. It may be related to the fact that written Cantonese isn't standardised in the same way as (Mandarin-based) Standard Chinese and isn't regulated in the same way.