How do you find out the Cantonese readings for Classical Chinese?

[Takeshi]

Ok so, since I'm learning Cantonese now, I thought it would be cool if I knew how to read Classical Texts in Cantonese. You know there's more rhymes or something they say.

So I decided to go to and look up the Cantonese pronunciation of all the vocab in Fuller's book and then make notes in the book of it, but after only barely starting I'm finding myself in quite of a big problem: I don't know which reading is right. (I know what the readings of a lot of characters are in spoken Cantonese, but I worry that in Classical they use different literary readings or something like that.)

On lesson one the first three characters that are giving me problems for example are:

子 zi2 zai2

生 saang1 sang1

知 zi1 zi3

These are only some simple examples of how dictionaries in general have more readings for Cantonese Characters and I have no clue which reading is supposed to be used in which context, or if both readings are interchangeable at all. For these three readings my intuition tells me that the first reading is right (生 context is: 孔子曰生而知之者上也), but I don't really trust my intuitions and I don't want to trust my intuitions.

I have a feeling that if I were to Canto-ize the whole vocab it would be a long road ahead of much more guesswork, and guesswork that I won't be right at.

What kind of dictionary should I use and how should I use it to look up these readings? Thanks.

Also in general what tips or notes would one give to someone taking such an endeavour?

[Hofmann]

With 子 and 生, it's a matter of literary and colloquial pronunciations. Colloquial readings in Cantonese usually have a narrower definition than literary readings, so I would use literary readings everywhere. Furthermore, poetry rhymes more when using literary readings.

In the case of 知, zi1 is usually a verb. zi3 is a noun meaning "knowledge". At some point it was written 智. A good Cantonese dictionary should have these definitions.