The sounds of Cantonese
Reading Cantonese, one tone per syllable.
Six tones shown by accents and a silent h, three endings cut short (-p, -t, -k), long and short vowels that change the meaning, and a few characters of spoken Cantonese. Yale romanisation, a long-established system used in many textbooks, spells each syllable in Latin letters; you will also come across Jyutping, the other common system, which marks the tone with a number (ngo5 for ngóh). Hong Kong pronunciation.
詩
sī詩人
Tones and sounds
The sounds to know
Choose a group, then a sound. Listen to it in common words, at normal speed or slowly.
Sound
Reading rules
One character, one syllable, one tone.
詩 · 時
The mark makes the word
In Yale, the accent on the vowel and the h right after it show the tone: 詩 sī (poem), 時 sìh (time), 食 sihk (eat). None of this is pronounced, but leave out the mark and you have a different word.
一 · 八 · 六
Cut-off syllables
A syllable ending in -p, -t or -k stops dead, with no release of air, and only takes tones 1, 3 or 6: 一 yāt, 八 baat, 六 luhk.
唔 · 五
Syllables without a vowel
唔 (m̀h) is said with closed lips, 五 (ńgh) with the “ng” sound alone, as at the end of “sing”. They are full syllables, with their own tone.
電話
The changed tone
In some common words, the last syllable switches to the rising tone: 話 alone is wah, but 電話 (phone) is dihn wá. Yale romanisation writes the tone you hear.
佢喺度
Two ways of writing
Spoken Cantonese is written with characters of its own: 佢喺度 (he’s here). Newspapers and official documents use Standard Chinese, read aloud in Cantonese; messages, adverts and subtitles use written Cantonese.
Reading