Cantonese - 粵講粵啱 - PART 1

[Owlity]

黃念欣教授呀!! >,< 超想入中大....

[futuroid]

haahahaha this is so funny

[hokaching]

Cantonese is a language which is totally different from Mandarin. Hong Kong people speak Cantonese, but Chinese mainlanders speak Mandarin.

The pronunciation, culture, tones, style is very different,e.g. Cantonese has 9 tones and Mandarin has only 4 tones. Also, Cantonese is more variable.^^

[JetimeChine]

@hokaching Not all of the Mainland Chinese speak Mandarin.你地香港人咪當粵語系香港發源啦，粵語系廣州­嘎！ 珠三角都係講粵語啦～～ 話名系Cantonese，而且Canton系mainland­既一部分，應該系“hk macau and some area in guangdong province speaks Cantonese。

[xenialvirtuoso]

The [n] and [L] sounds i, too, have problems with.... 0.o

[xiaolintraditional90]

I think most native speakers of any language do this. It's natural to slur some sounds and to not enunciate each and every word. In the case of cantonese, it just sounds better sometimes, easier to say, and less painful for the ears. For example, nei is very annoying to me when I hear it, lei sounds a lot better. I notice native mando speakers do this all the time also. All that matters is that we can understand each other.

[KassyGO]

I see them speak, I do... But all I hear is sound. :( This is gonna be hard to learn.

[monkeyface927]

lol i do say lan zen instead of nan-zen

[howardleung]

the girls whos correcting the guy is such an asshole

[De4sher]

if i didn't know that cantonese uses tones, i'd think that's simply their intonation of the words.

we european originating people use "tones" to express subtleties in sentences, something that you don't learn in schools. our dialects have differences in tones too, but we don't even notice. with these guys, say "ma" the wrong way, and instead of saying "mother", you're saying "horse", or you're swearing, or talking about marijuana :D

fascinating.

[gariadara]

@De4sher Well, we also don't learn tones in schools, and in fact it is also something we do not notice. I never realized Chinese had tones until I tried to learn Mandarin, which is a language with a different set of tones. We also use tones to express subtleties and emotion in sentences in addition to definition. Chinese is in fact somewhat inflected, and has somewhat of a stress system and is actually not monosyllabic but polysyllabic, so we'd never say ma the wrong way .

[De4sher]

@gariadara i've never gotten feedback from a native speaker. quite fascinating that you have 6 tones but you don't actually notice them.

how do you feel about english then? how do you feel somewhat of a difference as far as tones go?

[gariadara]

@De4sher When I first learned English, I unconsciously transferred the Cantonese tones to English words. But really only 2 tones are used, stressed syllables would be said with Tone1 as they are the same pitch in both languages, and unstressed syllables are said with one of the lower tones. It really wasn't all that different. For example, the word "different" would have tones 1 and 4, and it would sound exactly the same as in English.

[De4sher]

@gariadara cool to hear this from you. we european natives always did have this thing called "accent", where one vowel is stressed while the others are not. this is of course actually 2 simple tones, used in a very simple way. you chinese peoples made use of the pitch of a sillable in more complicated ways, but lost a whole lot of consonants in the process. for ex the word "strand" could never exist in chinese lamguages, but you make up for that by having those tones. pretty cool.

[gariadara]

@De4sher Yes, Old Chinese (Chinese before 100 BC) used to have consonant clusters like bl, pl, cl, sl, sn, tr, etc. and more word final consonants like s and z. Old Chinese also probably did not have tones. Cantonese preserves more consonants. For example the word for "history" is "lishi" in Mandarin but is "liksi" in Cantonese, which had kept the word final k.

[De4sher]

@gariadara yeah, i noticed the "k" endings too, from old karate movies, which i knew were all made in hong kong. I started studying mandarin a while back, and for a while, that "k" final was the only way i managed to distinguish between mandarin and cantonese.

also, as far as i know, vietnamese (genetically non-tonal) developed tones because of you guys :) there's also some indonesian language there "tsat" that became fully monosyllabic and also developed tones :) cuz of you guys. gratz!

[gariadara]

@De4sher haha. we did get around a bit. Cantonese also has m, p, and t finals. It's all kind of subtle though.

[De4sher]

@gariadara i don't count the "m", "n" and "ng" finals... you can't lose those... they're too...dunno, too unloosable!

it's easyyer to have the syllable end in those rather than in a pure vowel.

[gariadara]

In short, similar pitches exist in both languages, but Cantonese has a slightly different rhythm and more rigidness. And English is completely free with pitches and can spontaneously generate any new pitch at any time, one can use them anywhere and in anyway they want. Cantonese, again, is less free but we do use intonation to convey emotion/question. Anyway, I've been speaking English since Kindergarten, and if you hear me speak without having seen me you'd think I'm someone from Wisconsin.

[DeutscherFussball11]

Are they trying to be funny?

[Evilenlil]

Some people have an inability to grasp the fact that languages change.

[darkestdragon]

the first fat guy with the glasses ran into the wrong bunch of geeks. lol

[donjorge22]

maa faan but kind of interesting at the same time.

We were told not to say words in certain ways at school (in the UK). "Things", not "fings" and so on. It'd be weird to have ads like this here!

[chiewly]

香港和廣州話有些少的分別很正常,中國的語言從來都是一直變,因­為政治原因,人們不把他叫"香港話"罷了,否則, 根據傳統,應該是叫香港話的,就好像東莞話等,當然,原本的香港­話是疍家話客家話,但,香港粵語早就成了龍頭老大好久,香港都回­歸了那麼久,應該開始用"香港話"這個名稱了.而且要強調和廣州­話有些少不同,不用香港話這個名稱,反而是切斷中國傳統,證明文­化自信還不夠,些少政治原因就可以切斷這種傳統嗎?

[tempotempo1231]

@chiewly

同意！

[mlsi]

i dont' think programs like this can help. if the gov't is so concerned with people mispronouncing the words, why don't they teach cantonese at school?

[alancwwong]

紅衫果個係咪唱粵曲? 講野好似唱粵曲

[MasterTonberryV1]

As well expected, as this and Vietnamese are the hardest languages to master.

[tmd93]

@MasterTonberryV1 I'm lucky then. I'm fluent in Viet

[danielairy]

正嘢！

[jackywong77777]

: D i need 2 watch this stuff damn lol my canto is bad lol

[Hanaquan]

I actually really appreciate these videos i'm a bbc(british born chinese) but i speak cantonese and this really helps with my learning...my cantonese speaking test for A-levels is in two days and i was really happy when i found this video. So thank you ^^

[tvbkid]

i really appreciate this video. hong kong is the only place that uses cantonese as it's official language and it's slowly disappearing due to mandarin/china so it's very important for those who are native cantonese speakers to speak their language correctly. these 'lazy' sounds are so common in hk now that most people don't notice it and will pass these incorrect pronunciations to it's future generations.

i can't stand another person pronouncing 我 as "aw" ...sigh.

[ayanuhito]

any ways, it is a beautiful and lively

language after all.

[darknessb930]

this is hard isn't it!!! See... english is no hard... Chinese is like hard hard!!!

[lezlie2k2]

@darknessb930 中文好容易! 英文很難.

[WiseAss9191]

cantonese sounds fun . I wanna learn it :D

[liangm]

!!~~~

[hileeluya]

你班講英文咖，係道講乜叉嘢啊！ 用噃你啲中文先來講乜正唔正確啦。 妖.........

[Esoparagon]

There is no such thing as correct. The correct way is simply what the establishment decides to be correct. That is usually the older form of the language at the time of recording it linguistically. Languages change and it's great.

[isthiscantonese]

0:21 陳敬創指「遏」字讀 [ngaat8]，其實正確應係[aat8]，點解咁都出得街？­事關何文匯特別恩准佢哋可以加個[ng-]聲母喺零聲母字前，其­實呢個字根本唔應該加。

[pannigirl]

I don't get the part where the person was saying

友誼

What's the error? When the lady corrected the person who said what sounded like 兒. Whatever correction she made sound identical to me :S

[isthiscantonese]

佢話「誼」不可讀「而」，必須讀「二」。

《常用字廣州話讀音表》（1993，14名香港大專院校組成讀音­委員會）建議以「而」為讀音。

《廣州話正音字典》(2001，二十多位粵港澳專家學者聯合審音­）只標音「而」。

香港電台當何文匯神咁拜，好似廣東話係屬於佢一個咁，何文匯話唔­畀讀，呢班人就當其他學者死晒，重想觀眾同佢哋呢班盲毛一樣當其­他學者死晒。

[TykkiMikk]

Don't Hong Kong people usually pronounce some Cantonese words "incorrectly" though? It's part of the regional accent, right?

[crazyhanyu]

It depends who gets to define "correctly".

[pandacomics]

it's not so much "regional accent" as it is saying words correctly and not enunciating as much.

an example in english would be "I wanna go to the store"

[cota2851]

what is yit yue? i thought cantonese is called guangdong wa

[leeyatwan]

another way of saying the same thing

[Jadytube]

i am a overseas cantonese, my cantonese is OK, but not absolutely fluent. some of these mistakes are indeed easy to make if not paid attention to it

[shuuushii]

im learning so much!!!

haha

[wiso825]

LOL

[Jackal21]

so Nui yan is the right translation and not lui yan?

[crazyhanyu]

Older folks pronounce it with initial "n", younger ppl with "l".

It's a matter of language change - not an "error"...

[mrtszhong]

I feel annoyed by those corrections.

[Raymasaki]

@mrtszhong

why isn't it correct?

its from HK TV so i feel as though it must be Right

[raigami]

is this the new hk education tv? we used to watch education tv in hk elementary. do they still do that nowadays?

[jasbhead]

lmao, those girls are ridiculous. feel sorry for the dude in glasses

[kidd32888]

they are freaking annoying!

[Cantocourse]

@kidd32888 Why can't they accept that it's no longer 1893?

[nudoruG23]

Gooosh!!

I wish i could speak this language.

I can't understand nothing!!! T^T

[WindCorsia]

Great show! Learned to be more aware of my own pronunciation. Sometimes, though, I wonder if paying too much attention to standards (even if they're instated for helpful reasons) can inhibit personal expressions. Language is always growing, changing, to fit with the times! You can't muffle change.

[crazyhanyu]

Right! And the almost total disappearance of initial "n" in favour of "l" in words like 女人 is an example of language change.

[pubbies]

what annoying girls they are, bet they don't talk like that in real life, it's stupid

[r215666f]

actually those three girls are from an english school and they won the Cantonese pronounciation competition (not sure the competition name)... i guess they were made to be dramatic, i mean, this is just an educational programme afterall

[Raymasaki]

1:28 - 3:20 i wish i could speak as good as the kid with glasses, i only know about 20 cantonese words, so it would be an

improvment

[zqpm123]

those girls are giving them such a hard time when he just wants to go somewhere. geezzz. haha. pretty funny though.

[nicyolo]

I speak Cantonese with Russian accent

so weird..

Ngo hai ming pa.

[001Asoer]

Those three girls criticize his pronunciation but then they say "o5地走先啦"

[roseeatsbabies]

lol when I speak fast, my Cantonese comes out all slurred...

XD

people say it's really slang-ish...

[AnimeMangaFan28]

ngo gog dac hoy dey gong jo how sew ^^"

[AnimeMangaFan28]

i understand cantonese and i speak cantonese!!!

[mrsdramaqueenn]

gno chong yee yum chan chup ahh!!

[miamorjj]

i like guangzhou and hk's cantonese cuz it sounds a bit more urbanized..that is..the hkers who can actually pronounce correctly..otherwise it's annoying as fuck.

there's a reason why hk news correspondents and anchors speak the way they do

[ih8mcfly]

I speak Canto with a korean accent which makes me sound really bent LOL

[fleetowhere]

hehe... what also sounds bent is Canto with a dutch accent ;) well i like those video's cantehk! i've to practice more ;)

[Raymasaki]

very interesting thats whats good about Languages, my Chinesae friends cant tell Differance between Americaqn English & Vritish.

in the movie N.korean navy, the south guy calls the north guy a Korean/chinese.

cause of the accent

[ih8mcfly]

yeah, most people from north east china are ethinically korean but have a chinese nationality.

[chongtak]

corrct but the part of China where they are aware about it is very small (compare to the size of China) but in fact in dong-bei (east north) many of them are korean without even knowing it.

[chongtak]

I speak cantonese with a hakka/vietnamese accent, it's weird ;)

[filicinophyte]

urm.. hmm.. educational. haha i learnt sth from this. =)

[Ghunt01]

:P .. Nice Video ~ x3

[fresbhoy]

Gosh...I know it is nice to pronouce correctly, but they should make this educational video more appealing and less annoying.

[zhongguohua88]

I think it's supposed to be funny lol.

[KilluaXZim]

those girls are nerdy

[electrosphere]

I'm a Cantonese speaker too, but I can't stand for those girls... the way they speak is just too "over"...

[KilluaXZim]

yup

[lobelia2]

hahaha pretty funny show

[sampuna]

in my humble opinion, there are many varieties of Cantonese,and it doesn't matter if you pronounce male as nam chai or lam chai.

[KilluaXZim]

yea.most people speaks it like that(i sumtimes do too)..

[chinkstah9683]

ok.there. this is abit retarted

[fresbhoy]

oh gosh...if HK people all speak like those 3 kids, that would be nightmare

[KilluaXZim]

the did it in perpose

[chinkstah9683]

it looks like guandong cantoense ppl in hk trying to speak proper cantonese and the hk ppl sya they say it wrong .lol .if it is such a shame to my pplz =_= just kiddin. this is cool and ye its not cham jup its tsang tzup

[Raymasaki]

i like the sound of Cantonese but Mandarin

is earsier for me & i know alot more Mandarin.

i study cantonese for fun, i dont think ill ever be fluent.

[born2ride989]

Same here. I love the sound of Cantonese, but find it hard to pronounce.

[PrepeiNaSasPw]

Also, those students are annoying! If I were asking where is the "apricot blossom garden", I would hope that people wouldn't act all crazy like that on me.

[qwertytrewqwer]

lol

[zqpm123]

hahaha. yeah i know. they are being such asses and not even knowing it. hahaha.

[kwl912]

LOL interesting XP i can pronounce words like this but i can't read for shit lol i never got past first grade in chinese school i dropped out in the middle of first grade so that my english wouldn't die XP so i have kinderaten level reading skills lol

[PrepeiNaSasPw]

Yeah, but even in chinese school, we were reading "le" and not "ne" sometimes for you...that prof guy would get mad.

[LaKhmerdu69]

damn you're lame, just because you're trying to learn a second language doesn't mean that you're going to lose your first language xP

[SinWingKi]

lol the woman presenting made a mistake. i always mispronounce, and My HK friends are like. NO NO NO that's wrong

[PrepeiNaSasPw]

Cantonese has variants just like any language. This is PURE crap. But entertaining....

[PrepeiNaSasPw]

I think this is propaganda. I don't see anything wrong with either pronunciations. "k" versus "t"...I think it's an accent difference...

[saskurauchiruno]

no...its not accent its called lazy accent its cuz when ur lazy u pronounce words different and now apparently too many people are doing it so the government is trying to fix it

[PrepeiNaSasPw]

yeah, but that's how langage evolve...it's natural...

[Statement45]

a lazy accent is comparable to "ain't" as "am not" in the american language, but we know that technically "aint" isn't a word. the hk government is just trying to perfect their language, because if not, soon enough everyone will read their words wrong/have problems trying to communicate

[PrepeiNaSasPw]

I understand what they are doing, and it is fine, but I don't think that it's that big of a deal. In Vietnamese, half of the country pronounces things "wrong" in the same way, "k" and "t", for instance. The word "book" is "sach" (ends in k sound), but people say "sat". Everyone knows what they are saying. Also, what about how HKers don't pronounce the "ng" in front of words, like "I" or "love"..that sounds worse to me and it's not in the video (or is it, it's been awhile).

[crazyhanyu]

The "American" language? lol! Mohawk?

But notice that without "ain't" as a contraction of "am not" that we end up with the following weird paradigm:

He's nice, isn't he?

They're nice, aren't they?

We're nice, aren't we?

You're nice, aren't you?

But, notice what happens with "I":

I'm nice, AREN'T I.

where AIN'T I would be more "correct" and follow the above pattern.

Try looking at who first decided "ain't" was wrong and why (and why we should believe him ^^)

[rachelmanman]

its useful :-)

[Raymasaki]

i really love cantonese but ive been studying Manadarin for several years, its good to learn Both but way to much. ive been watching HongKong movies in

Cantonese. then after in mandarin

[hardbastarde]

its pretty normal, its something called accent. like in english, some ppl mix up 'a' n 'e' so when they say 'bad' they say 'bed' lol. languages are changing along with cultures and enviorments. if theres enough ppl using it then it should become official.

[Food8888]

Nice video =)

[TittlePending]

man all my life i have always wonder why Hong people sound so funny when they speak cantonese. Now i know b/c they get lazy in pronoucing thier words.

[Raymasaki]

isn't the people who are mispronouncing the words

are Mandarin speakers speaking cantonese?

[bkcktcrisp]

very cool~ =D

[Tommy12435]

Is kinda funny, If I am asking for direction... peoples probally won't talk too much... But still good video

[slj06]

Haha.. me too..

nice video :)

[sophiasan]

AHAHAH i get my cantonese mix up so bad!

[Obbyto]

Nice video. And I always thought sounds in Cantonese doesn't really matter :D

[hshm4389]

you always have some great videos. please keep posting. :)

[Mango1314]

my sisters always get their pronucntiations wrong! lol

it reminds me of them! ^^

i have loadsa "lan" sounds, and i DO get "l" and "n" mixed up!

[tbmyan]

Thank you for sharing !!