How do you write 少林寺 in Cantonese (Chinese)?
Even though Cantonese and Mandarin are pronounced very differently, you transcribe them the same way, because Chinese characters are symbols that indicate *meaning*, not *pronounciation*. A Mandarin speaker, looking at these characters, would pronounce them “Shaolin Sz”. A Cantonese speaker would pronounce them “Siu lim jee”. But they are both trying to say the same words. It’s kind of like “to-may-to to-mah-to”, only imagine if these two pronounciations had been growing farther apart for a thousand years, because there was nothing in how they were written that suggested how they *should* be pronounced. There are two styles of Chinese characters, but they are both pronounced the same. Just like you pronounce an English word the same whether it’s written in block letters or cursive script. So whether the characters are Traditional or Simplified does not play a role in their pronouciation.
