Best Cantonese pronunciation system

[Quest]

And the second time, I actually guessed correctly what you were trying to say: "Are you saying that native speakers pronounce these words with an English j?"

I still don't see how you had to guess what I said...

[Claw]

but if it conflicts with people's "learned intuition", then it might not be a good system afterall.

But wouldn't you say that this applies to Mandarin pinyin too? The q, x, zh, ch, sh, etc. sounds certainly conflict with most people's "learned intution" since they don't match the q, x, zh, ch, sh, etc. sounds of any other alphabetic written language out there. The only reason why it works really well is because it has been drilled into people's heads. If a standard Cantonese romanization (it doesn't matter what system, as long as it's consistent) were drilled into people's heads, then it too would work just as well. The only reason why there's inconsistent usage everywhere is because native speakers are not taught one.

[Claw]

Ah... I went back to read some of my older posts and now I see where you got hung up on. I had written before:

However, I personally like the Yale system because the sound transcription is the closest to the English pronounciations out of all the different systems that I've seen (i.e. the j is pronounced like the English j rather than a y).

...whereas I should have written, "the j is pronounced closer to the English j rather than a y." My mistake, and I'm sorry if I caused you any confusion.

However, I still stand by my remark that I view it as more intuitive since using a z for the j, as in LSHK, would be against a native-English speaker's "learned intuition." Sure, the z is somewhat like the Mandarin pinyin z, and the c is somewhat like the pinyin c, but a foreign learner probably wouldn't know that (neither would a native Cantonese speaker for that matter), since the z and c are pronounced completely differently from the English z and c (and probably other European languages using the same alphabet). Your learned intuition may make this seem just fine since you know pinyin, but not for others that never learned it. What is intuitive to one person may not be intuitive to another.

For 弟 and 大 ->> maybe Duy and Dai

As far as a vs. aa is concerned, I'm not sure how your suggestion of changing daai to dai and dai to duy helps anything. How would you change other words that use the short a sound, like dang? Would that be changed to dung? But then what about the already existing -ung romanization? That would have to be changed to something else now (maybe -ong? but there's already an -ong).

My point is basically that there's only 5 written vowels (6 if you count y) to represent the 15+ vowels in Cantonese, and if you adjust one of them, you set a chain reaction and end up having to adjust the rest. Making one area more intuitive may make other areas worse. That being said, no system is perfect... they each have their pros and cons. Again I reiterate: What is intuitive to one person may not be intuitive to another.

[ala]

At least Cantonese romanizations on the whole don't have to deal with voiced/voiceless issues. They can just use pinyin rules there.

If you want unintuitive, that is spelling what is in pinyin a g sound as a k; what is in pinyin a d sound as a t; and what is in pinyin a b sound as a p. But I think with a little practice, the "intuition" falls to the side. It's similar to driving on the left side after years on the right.

[Altair]

Not really sure about that, but it seems no any problem for native speaker to distinguish all 9 tones ( if Ru sounds count). In fact, an inaccruate tone would probably drive petty big communication distortion in cantonese than mandarin, and making a guess is highly difficult for me. There's just no good incentive to reduce the tones of this language.

I thought that Hongkongers are losing the distinction between the high rising and low rising tones, so that "history" and "market" (史 and 市)sound alike. Is that not correct?

[ala]

I thought that Hongkongers are losing the distinction between the high rising and low rising tones, so that "history" and "market" (史 and 市)sound alike. Is that not correct?

Perhaps they have confused the term "contour" (like in Mandarin) with the term "tone"?

[Guest Yau]

I thought that Hongkongers are losing the distinction between the high rising and low rising tones, so that "history" and "market" (史 and 市)sound alike. Is that not correct?

This observation makes sense. I'm not sure if the difference between both sounds, high rising (陰上) and low rising (陽上), are fading, but in fact, both tones seldom co-exist together for a single cantonese sound.

市 - 史 and 坐- 楚 may be one of a few examples that both tones co-exist for the sound. And you should notice that different tones in 市, 史 (also 屎) are still important to avoid misunderstanding.

[Quest]

I thought that Hongkongers are losing the distinction between the high rising and low rising tones, so that "history" and "market" (史 and 市)sound alike. Is that not correct?

not aware of it.

[skylee]

Nor I.

[Altair]

I got my information from some online introduction to Cantonese sounds. Unfortunately, I can no longer find it. I recall that the author said that he no longer made the distinction between these two tones.

After a brief search, I found the following information describing the contents of a book (Modern Cantonese Phonology by Robert S. Bauer and Paul K. Benedict), which seems to attribute the phenomenon to other dialects of Cantonese, namely Macao and Zhongshan Cantonese:

"Differences between Hong Kong and Guangzhou tones are noted, such as the observation that most Hong Kong speakers appear to have lost the High Falling tone contour on Pingsheng syllables, pronouncing them as simply High Level and not making a distinction between the two, as Guangzhou speakers do. Macao speakers (Zhan and Cheung 1987:10) are similar to Hong Kong speakers in having only the High Level form of Pingsheng. In addition, they do not have a distinction between Low Rising /13/ and High Rising /35/. This is identical to Zhongshan Cantonese (Chan 1980). However, similar to standard Cantonese and in contradistinction to Zhongshan, Macao Cantonese retains a distinction between Yinqu and Yangqu (/33/ versus /22/), whereas Zhongshan has merged the two.

More information is available at:

http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/chan9/pubn/bauer-rev.htm

[skylee]

Alas, Hong Kong people are just very lazy and careless in speaking Cantonese ... It is interesting to note that people write thesis about it ...

[Quest]

Several native Cantonese speakers were recorded using WinCECIL as they read a series of declarative sentences with neutral expression. The results were digitized and the displays of fundamental frequency on the computer monitor were measured.

that's funny

Altair, it's hard to keep up with this high falling, low rising explanation. Did they or can you give specific examples?

Usually we just say Hongkong'ers got lazy on the "ng" sound, but the tones should be the same, or maybe I was just not aware of it, you should give examples. As to the rounding sound "w", I think people are losing that "w" sound in both gz and hk. I say Gong 广, and Gok 国 myself, unless I consciously add in the "w", usually to make myself sound like my elders.

There's also a new trend of 周星驰 speech in which 劲 becomes 近。

[Guest Yau]

I doubt if it's a problem of laziness. In hongkong, cantonese is dominantly spoken by all people from different china regions, and there may be a compromise on a few sounds. It's also a "cultural fashion" that if you have to omit "ng" vs. "n" sounds in order to be trendy.

Quest is true that "ng" sounds sometimes plays less role in hongkongais cantonese. The words like 民, 盟, 生, 爭, 間, 關, 灘, 灣, 坑, can you find out which one is ended with "ang" and "an"?

Interestingly, some of my friends who immigrated to hongkong when they are young, pronounce all these sounds extremely well, but the instant response is that "it's bumpkin!"

[sheik]

I run a Cantonese learning website and for the first few months I tried to invent my own romanisation system (hey, a lot of text books do that, so why not me?! ;) ). I quickly ran into problems and after advice from learners more experience with me, converted the whole site to jyutping.

Using a standardised system such as Yale or Jyutping gives a whole host of advantages when talking about Cantonese.

For example, questions can be asked and understood far more easily if the person uses a known romanisation scheme. On our forums, we get some very strange romanisation posted and it can be impossible to understand how the words they write are supposed to sound. People who post in jyutping are far more likely to get help.

My experience with jyutping is that it is easier for a European (non English) person to learn than Yale, whereas Yale is easier for English and Americans. The main confusion comes from the letter "j" being used to sound like an English "y". ie: jyutping is actually pronounced "yoot ping".

"j" as "y" is not unusual in other European languages though.

Jyutping is also easy to write on the web, as it uses tone numbering (only six tones by the way), eg: 火山 - fo2 saan1.

Jyutping generally only takes about 10-30 minutes for an English speaker to get the hang of, which is time well spent in my opinion.

/dam

[Altair]

Altair, it's hard to keep up with this high falling, low rising explanation. Did they or can you give specific examples?

Usually we just say Hongkong'ers got lazy on the "ng" sound, but the tones should be the same, or maybe I was just not aware of it, you should give examples.

I think I am really out of my depth here, but let me try to accomodate.

According to my materials, Hongkongers generally pronounce the 陽平聲 as a high level tone, but people from Guangzhou pronounce it as a high falling tone. Other materials I have indicate that some speakers differentiate between the two in some phonetic environments or that people randomly use one or the other. I think all my materials say that Cantonese speakers use the high falling tone for the word 添 tim1 at the end of a sentence, such as in 呢個星期六重會落雪添 ni1 go3 sing1 kei4 luk6 zong6 wui5 lok6 syut6 tim1 (It's going to snow this Saturday too).

Here are some pairs where one of my books indicates the first should be in the high level tone and the second in the high falling tone:

思 sì think 詩 sī poetry

施 sì carry out 絲 sī silk

婚 fàn marriage 分 fān divide

三 sāam three 衫 sàam clothing

何生 ho4 sàang Mr. Ho 學生 hok6 sāang student

Here are some pairs where one of my books indicates the first should be in the low rising tone (陰聲) and the second in the high/mid rising tone (陽聲):

市 si5 market 史 si2 history

憤 fan5 angry 粉 fan2 powder

有 yau5 have 柚 yau2 pomelo (a fruit?)

乳 yu5 milk 魚 yu2/4 fish

上 soeng5/6 go up 想 soeng2 want

The words like 民, 盟, 生, 爭, 間, 關, 灘, 灣, 坑, can you find out which one is ended with "ang" and "an"?

Wow! Is this really a common problem for Hongkongers? I would think that most Hongkongers make this distinction when they learn Mandarin. If pressed to make this distinction in Cantonese, I would have thought they could use Mandarin to tell which was which.

Interestingly, some of my friends who immigrated to hongkong when they are young, pronounce all these sounds extremely well, but the instant response is that "it's bumpkin!"

I was afraid of something like this. When I started experimenting with learning Cantonese, I could not decide whether to do such things as distinguish between "l" and "n" and whether to pronounce initial "ng." I opted for a conservative pronunciation, but I now wonder whether I would sound like some sort of a fossil out of an old movie.

[Quest]

The words like 民, 盟, 生, 爭, 間, 關, 灘, 灣, 坑, can you find out which one is ended with "ang" and "an"?

mun mung sung zung gan gwan tan wan hang.

So did any Hongkong'er find it hard?

[Quest]

思 sì think 詩 sī poetry

施 sì carry out 絲 sī silk

婚 fàn marriage 分 fān divide

三 sāam three 衫 sàam clothing

何生 ho4 sàang Mr. Ho 學生 hok6 sāang student

If you did not mention the difference, I would have told you words in each pair should be the same, but to think more carefully, the the left word in each pair can be pronounced using the mandarin 4th tone, or close to it. Somewhat like a 唱腔 thing in 粵劇。

施主，小生三生有幸，经几翻思量，决定还族从婚。 dook chaangg!

4______44____________4____________4 (mandarin 4th tone, or close)

these tones are sometimes used in story telling too. I have a tape recorded me telling a story when I was young. I thought I sounded weird, and it could be I used a similar 腔调 to tell the story.

市 si5 market 史 si2 history

憤 fan5 angry 粉 fan2 powder

有 yau5 have 柚 yau2 pomelo (a fruit?)

乳 yu5 milk 魚 yu2/4 fish

上 soeng5/6 go up 想 soeng2 want

no confusion here, the two words in each pair are different.

[Altair]

If you did not mention the difference, I would have told you words in each pair should be the same, but to think more carefully, the the left word in each pair can be pronounced using the mandarin 4th tone, or close to it. Somewhat like a 唱腔 thing in 粵劇。

I recall reading once that Cantonese speakers sometimes have difficulty distinguishing between the Mandarin first and fourth tones because of this issue in Cantonese. Does this sound plausible?

these tones are sometimes used in story telling too. I have a tape recorded me telling a story when I was young. I thought I sounded weird, and it could be I used a similar 腔调 to tell the story.

One of the main tapes I used to experiment with Cantonese had some examples of people who frequently used this high falling variant. It sounded very, very strange to me, almost as if the speaker was mimicking an elderly man speaking in falsetto. It took me a while to realize that this was simply a different "accent" with a different system of realizing the tones.

As I look at some of the websites describing this type of phenomenon, I think I have found the solution to one of the learning problems I had. Even after I thought I had learned the basics of the tones, I would encounter examples that just did not match up to my expectations. One of the charts showed that the Guangzhou system had small but definite differences from the Hong Kong system. I was not prepared for this as a language learner and could not understand what my trouble was, especially since I did not seem to be having big problems in figuring out connected speech.

Here is a link to the site:

http://www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk/sapienti/anctones.htm

The site is also interesting because it provides a nice introduction to the basics of tones in Chinese dialects, as well as some information on historical Chinese.

[Guest Yau]

民, 盟, 生, 爭, 間, 關, 灘, 灣, 坑

mun mung sung zung gan gwan tan wan hang.

So did any Hongkong'er find it hard?

Quest, I think so, as two vowels "n" and "ng" are already faded into "n" in most characters.

Altair, I think most hongkong people won't distinguish these sounds by learning mandarin, as most difference practically disappeared already.

For 民 and 盟, the difference between "n" and "ng" still exists,

but for 羹 and 根, no difference to most people.

思 sì think 詩 sī poetry

施 sì carry out 絲 sī silk

婚 fàn marriage 分 fān divide

三 sāam three 衫 sàam clothing

何生 ho4 sàang Mr. Ho 學生 hok6 sāang student

This cantonese book writer just invented the evidence to support his argument for high rising or low rising tones.

Take an example,

三 can be pronounced as "saam1" or "saam3" depending on the meaning and the difference still exists in hongkong.

If 三 means three, we say "saam1" as 衫. e.g 三十 (Thirty).

If we say 三思 (literally, multiple thoughts; second thought) , 三 is pronounced as "saam3".

In another example, 分 can be pronounced as "fan1" or "fan6".

If it refers to diversify, we say "fan1". e.g. 分心 (to diversify hearts; loss concentration)

If it refers to a proportion, 分 is prononced as "fan6". (like 成分, an ingredient ; also a variantly write in 成份)

Again, the difference still exists in hongkong.

Also , 施 is actually a homophony with 絲, so the writer quote a wrong example again.

乳 yu5 milk 魚 yu2/4 fish

上 soeng5/6 go up 想 soeng2 want

no confusion here, the two words in each pair are different

Yes. No confusion at all, otherwise there can be a big trouble.

乳頭(nipple) vs. 魚頭(fish head, common cuisine) ,

上你 (slang: up yours) vs 想你 (miss you)

[geek_frappa]

Quest, I think so, as two vowels "n" and "ng" are already faded into "n" in most characters.

my ng's are m's ....

i don't use ng's before vowels anymore ... i am maybe the laziest cantonese speaker in the world....

i love you ... o oi lei ... (am i wierd?)