Hi everyone! I'm a non-chinese learner of Cantonese, and, to my great surprise, I've found that one of my best tools for practicing Cantonese is my little sister, who I've basically forced to learn basic Cantonese along with me😅. We have basically no understanding of how Cantonese grammar really works but we can communicate basic sentences and information in Cantonese which is really hilarious because the rest of our family has no idea what we're talking about when we do it.😋

To give more background briefly, our main modes of engagement with Cantonese are:

1. Watching Cantonese TV Dramas (rn watching The Hippocratic Crush on Tubi)

2. Outcasts from the 853's "Cantonese by Outcasts"

3. Targeted writing practice of high-frequency characters

4. Just the general fact that I studied Mandarin for a good while before i started studying Cantonese which is pretty much the only reason I'm able to do this at all lol

5. other stuff too man I just forget tbh I'm not very organized

That's really all background information however, the point of this post is that nowadays my sister and I often communicate over text, and when we do we find it amusing to do so using a very sort of informal, home-brew style Jyutping. I want to phase in the use of actual chinese characters over text with my sister, but currently I cannot find a way to use actual Jyutping to get my keyboard to output Chinese characters. This isn't technically a complete roadblock, as I was saying I can read and write a deal of characters in Mandarin using the Pinyin input method. Figuring out which Pinyin sounds represent which characters in Cantonese wasn't too bad and was made even more of a breeze by the Cantonese extension on Pleco. However, my sister is not familiar with any Chinese characters outside of the ones I show her how to write, and those I teach her with the Cantonese reading. So using texting would be a good way to get her used to using and reading the characters, but not if she has to learn pinyin, and then the Mandarin pronunciations of the characters she wants to say in Cantonese, and then how to write those pronunciations in pinyin, to use them to make sentences in Cantonese.

I was super excited when I saw Cantonese options on the list of input methods for the keyboard on my mac (MacBook Pro 2017, running Catalina), but found that a Jyutping input method was not among them. Does anyone know if there's some kind of extension I can download to get a Jyutping input method? Also I guess I would need one for an iPad too, since that's what my sister uses to text. Also I recognize that the operating system my machine is on is somewhat dated, I've been having storage issues that keep me from updating my machine, does anyone know if later MacOS's have Jyutping support for Cantonese?

Feel free to respond with general Canto learning tips too! Thanks for any help!

Does anyone know of any in person classes? I live near Milton Keynes, although work in London so that will probably be the most likely place to find one

https://youtu.be/N0ob9hB2eEQ?si=a8T0eIuz0qOdcx4q

Have u guys seen this？

Seems like a guy just went on his own to create this... Well done! I usually let my kids watch only canto media, but I make an exception for holiday stuff... But this is so well done!

My husband and I are both Cantonese learners. He insists gum is 口膠，but I say it is 香口膠. The dictionary says i am right, but is 口膠another way of saying it?? (We live in taiwan, and the word kou jiao means something else naughty in mandarin, so I really doubt my husband is correct !)

I know for bo3, some uses for it where it's contradicting the listener or giving contrary statement, but for other uses/functions I don't really get it.

like 嚟喇噃 vs 嚟喇喎

https://youtu.be/eyS06HSd_SQ?list=PLI-XaJOyyTLRBLGp1Kc4R-ESRdDcSebQu&t=154

like he uses bo3 here at u/2:34, but in other videos he might use wo3 instead

Hi, I am learning Cantonese & one thing I am struggling with is that the Jyutping tone one some words doesn't seem correct. Take for example the sentence: 100 dollars should be enough. 一百蚊應該夠 jat1baak3 man1 jing1goi1 gau3 If I paste the Chinese characters into Google Translate, the vocalisation comes back with a much lower tone for gau3 than for baak3. The same if I ask my HK wife to speak the words, she uses a much lower tone for gau3. Another example is You should eat more vegetables. 應該食多啲菜 nei5 jing1goi1 sik6 do1di1 coi3 Google Translate vocalises the sik6 with a higher tone than the coi3. Is it perhaps the last word of a sentence is spoken with a lower tone than normal - maybe like English where we raise the pitch at the end of a sentence for a question and fall for a statement?

i can speak mandarin (speak is an overstatement, i know the tones and stuff i guess but my vocabulary is rather poor), typical singaporean stuff i guess. but right now i am struggling with the tones in cantonese and especially the -oe- sound in words like 想 and 上. any advice for both? any insight to the pronunciation of these words in singapore and malaysian cantonese, maybe what the accents here tend to be like? cheers

Hi. Is anyone in this sub from South Africa (specifically Johannesburg)? If so, please could you recommend a school in the city to learn Cantonese at?

Cantonese has a tonne of English loan words, specifically ones that are only written in English, but some learners might not know how to pronounce them without seeing the jyutping for them first.

Here's what I can think of off the top of my head.

Disclaimer: The jyutping for some words are slightly modified (i.e. don't follow standard conventions) because of the current incompleteness of jyutping.

Feel free to leave your comments below.

AI - ei1 aai1

app - ep1

apartment - paak1 man4*2

bitcoin - bit1 kon1

boot(s) - but1

channel - che1 nou4

cute - kiu1

email - i1 me1 ou4 / i1 meu1

facial - fei1 sho4

friend(s) - fren1

gas - ge1 si2

IG (Instagram) - aai1 G1 (G is pronounced like in English)

iPhone - aai1 fung1

lunch - lan1 cyu4

okay - ou1 kei1

outlet - au1 let6

party - paa1 ti4

podcast - pot1 kes1

point - pon1

post, to post - pou1

SIM card - sim1 kaat1

thank you - feng1 kiu4

to book - buk1

to check - chek1

to mark (as in to mark down info)- maak1 (dai1)

to miss (as in to let something slip by) - mis1

to PM (private message) - pi1 em1

to work (as in to function) - woek1

update - ap1 dei1

Wi-Fi - waai1 faai1

YouTube - ju1 tup1

YouTuber - ju1 tu1 baa4

Hello! I will be going on an exchange semester to Hong Kong this January and I had some questions! I am Canadian, but my parents are from Guangzhou China, so I speak some Cantonese. I'm definitely not super fluent, but I speak enough to have conversations with my parents on daily life things (how's school, can you buy this, etc)

My main concern in Hong Kong is that I don't know any common phrases or the social norms! I basically only know a version of Guangzhou Cantonese that was time capsuled from the 90s when my parents left. My accent is pretty much the HK accent but I don't have a big vocabulary.

If I'm at the gym for example, how do I ask how many sets someone has left? Or if I'm playing volleyball, how do I say, can I join you guys?

Or if I get off a bus, should I say thank you to the driver? And would it be do je or mm goi? Or would it be weird to say it?

These are pretty specific, but there are probably like dozens of other scenarios where I won't know how to act or communicate in Cantonese.

Am I overthinking it? Or would people just understand me regardless if I just used English? And if they do understand, should I use Cantonese or English? Especially in a university setting. Can I just use English at restaurants, stores, etc?

And overall, do you guys have any essential Cantonese phrases and social cues I should know before I head to HK?

Thanks a lot!

I’ve come to a realization that I don’t know how to speak Cantonese as well as I thought. I’ve heard that watching more dramas/movies and listening to canto being spoken helps a lot so do you guys have any music artists that you guys would recommend? I’d honestly listen to anything.

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I was asked this. I thought 唔 was but they reproduced it without problems. I didn't know the difference between lip touching 唔 and no-touching 五 then.

In Mandarin the answer must be zh,ch,sh,z,c,s,r. r surprised me but that's another topic.

I noticed that most Japanese can't pronounce oeng,ong: 香張薑，康莊幫

So what do you think?

[Edit] specifically I was asked by Spain Spanish.

Does anyone know where I can watch 破•地獄 Online?

Saw the other post about batteries, thought I'd ask this one to see what the Reddit consensus is. Heritage speaker here that grew up with 叉電 caa1 din6, but I hear both when I'm back in HK, seemingly leaning more towards 充電 cung1 din6.

View Poll

That's what my mom likes to watch, it's the only thing that keeps her awake. I'm looking to download a series and burn discs or buy the DVDs. I've tried streaming, but it requires someone to navigate the controls for her. Any recommendations?

My husband and I both speak canto as a 2nd language. I told him I need to change my watch battery. 我要還電池。 he says it is a 電芯.Google says both are right... but what is more correct ?

Any help much appreciated thanks

Mandarin: 點菜

Hi im from hong kong since when i was a kid i struggle to learn Chinese i keep falling in every writing and reading exams. I can speak Cantonese fluently but i seem to cant read it or write it . Are there any people who have the same experience as me im just curious