footage: EASY TO LEARN CANTONESE CHAPTER ONE: I LOVE U

[AmyHung224999]

Sometimes, the love part sounded like Ole! xD

[orenjiorange1995]

hard

[parasitius]

Is 'oh' an alternate pronunciation for 我 or something??? The woman who makes Naked Cantonese (I guess fluent speaker) says 'oh' too, though... none of my beginner books seem to explain about it.

[kusanagi22]

ajajajajaa

[tjaracas123]

what was shown to the people?

[gdtle1]

my dad says 'ngo ngoi nei' but my mum says 'ngo ngoi lei'

i live in australia, so i have no idea.

[ScenerxSkellys]

it can go either way.

Nei and lei basically mean the same thing. Kind of different perspective though.

(Im a native speaker)

[fimfc]

I agree with your mum :-)

[loanshark51]

WTF? its not ou oi lei! its NGO NGOI LEI

[milkdacowma]

@loanshark51 In proper Cantonese it is "ngo oi nei". Trust me it is correct. However people started to randomly add "ng" to characters that never needed it because they wanted to speak proper Cantonese again, like love "oi", people made it "ngoi" but its actually incorrect.

[kwongmurphy]

Some people sound like they are saying "I love tongue!"

[Vojak3]

That's shit! You have to learn from a native cantonese speaker.

[o1xbabiee]

2:20 - 2:23 got it :)

lmfaoooo .

those ppl have some funny accents,

but they're are good considering it's one of there first times.

[Emely248]

1.49 is the best my gawd, watch mine if you wanna learn^^y

[pfftyouwhore]

lol this vid is coolio 8D

I think it's an interesting experience having all of these people say 'i love you' to you

[Dagaflo]

actually the last one made me laugh, o oi le LOL!!!

[a2ni2iceboi]

all of you guys know the proper way to pronounce it is nei but can't pronounce "ngoi". it's "ngo ngoi nei" :P

[NeyHoMah]

the last one was really bad. LOL.

[bravoalphahk]

1:44 has got to be the most sincere...

[loveCantonese]

Note that the man at 2:20 to 2:22 is pretty good in the tone.

Using "lei" instead of "nei" is considered "懶音 lazy sound". Check out CantonesePod.

Nice job Chingchinwai!

[CtlBrandon]

ohh I was wondering why it was lei, instead of nei.

[crazyhanyu]

Linguistic sound change where Cantonese "n" is becoming "l". Nothing "lazy" here - human language changes over time. The initial velar nasal "ng" is also disappearing. Some ppl insert initial "ng" where historically there never was one. You can hear the 安 in 安全 as ngon and the 澳 in 澳洲 as "ngau". Initial "ng" here is due to hypercorrection. Being told that it's wrong to say "oh" instead of "ngoh", speakers add an "ng" to other words pronounced with an initial vowel.

[etcrisis]

"Ou Oi Lei" is just plain wrong... this is for lazy people. The standard one has the N sound in front. Should be "Ngo Ngoi Nei." I know a lot of Cantonese people say it the lazy way, but it just gets on my nerves. If people wanna learn, they should go learn the correct version. You saying the "Ng" sound is disappearing. Where did you get that? So the last name "Ngan" now becomes "An?" The last name "Ng" becomes nothing? The way to pronounce Cantonese words has never changed.

[crazyhanyu]

"just plain wrong"? Sez who? and based on what criteria? The sound changes sweeping through Cantonese these days may "get on your nerves" (LOL) - BUT this has nothing to do with right or wrong. Sorry, stating that sth is right or wrong does not make it true. Yes, "ng" as an initial is disappearing. Check the sociolinguistic research on this - S. Bauer and also Dana Bourgerie's PhD dissertation completed around 1990 at OSU. The syllabic ng becomes bilabial m as in the Cantonese word for "five".

[etcrisis]

I don't really believe in non-Cantonese Ph.D studying Cantonese. If those studies cannot fit into real life or daily life spoken Cantonese, we call it impractical. Me being a native Cantonese speaker, being taught at school since the age of 3, and being raised in a Cantonese spoken environment, I have never heard of such trend (the "Ng" sound disappearing). At school, we learn it the correct way.

Just like in English, people keep saying "I don't have no problem." It's a trend. But it's wrong.

[crazyhanyu]

We always find variation in a language. Some ppl pronounce a word this way, some that way. There are no criteria for saying one is right and the other is wrong. It boils down to "I am richer/more powerful/ etc etc than you and I tell you my way is right". All languages change with time. Cantonese is no exception. This is a universal truth regardless of the skin colour of the person making the statement. Some ppl can't deal with change. One reaction is to label the change as "wrong", "deviant" ..

[etcrisis]

You are correct about changes. I see changes in my language. But there are basics in every language that one should stick with. Just like in English, you wouldn't read "sh" as "s" because they are just different. "ng" sound is one of the biggest characteristics in Cantonese that you cannot find in Mandarin or any other language.

Maybe you are right about me kind of people. I am a die hard fan of traditions. I don't even like Simplified Chinese. I think they ruin the beauty of written Chinese.

[crazyhanyu]

By "basics" I think you mean phonemic distinctions. The number of phonemes in a language tends to be relatively stable, but can, and does, change over time. "l" and "n" are losing their phonemic status. Some HKers just have /l/ where others have/l/ and /n/. In Standard Mandarin, /s/ and /sh/ are distinct, but not in southern varieties. English acquired a new phoneme through contact with French - /ʒ/ as in "pleasure" - (a hard sound for you HKers^^)

[etcrisis]

I am just curious, are you Chinese by any chance?

BTW, there is a term in Chinese for these kind of lazy pronunciations. It's called 懶音. People speaking with 懶音 suffer a lot, in events as small as speech exam, to as big as job interview. I seriously don't see 懶音 as a trend in my language. Cantonese is not as flexible as other languages, esp in terms of pronunciation.

Well, I see no way to change the way you think. So feel free to speak like a foreigner. We can understand. :)

[crazyhanyu]

No, I'm a 死鬼佬 - thanks for the compliment :-)

Good point - social consequences of 懶音 and potential for discrimination. There are no objective criteria for saying that 懶音 are intrinsically inferior. It's a social attitude and nothing more - but a class-based one. In the end, the anti-懶音 rhetoric becomes a mechanism for social control - for keeping the 打工仔 in their place - assuming that 懶音 are more likely used by 打工仔.

[crazyhanyu]

Your comment in the last line is an interesting one. So, are you saying that 懶音 are a feature of Cantonese spoken by foreigners?

[Xc00kii3]

i wish somone would say that to me *its just another dream*

[tantalize92]

Lei is how they speak in Hong Kong

But the proper way to say you in cantonese is nei

[armyboy24]

wrong teaching from the teacher...lol....it is not "OH" oi nei...it is "Gnoh" Oi nei =)

[TotallyRandom101]

Lei is correct. Everybody in the video is saying it wrong.

[Wutevaperson]

Some of these people did do a pretty good job though. :)

Though the way they were taught sounds very Hong Kong-ish. :P

[ngan87]

"i luv u" sound this "Ngo Oi Nei"

[Zaphenath4]

Yeahhh ngo oi nei... ~alright~

[MyOwnLittleNightmare]

lol they sounds so funny

[mogumching]

ngaw oy lei is so much easier to pronounce when i ish lazy

[fugazipythons]

There are some UGLY people in this VIDEO!

Holy Moly! But I Ngo oi nei u anyway! I think! LOL

[chingchinwai]

NO, all of them is handsome and pretty when they under the content of learning "Love"

[gariadara]

Technically it is ngo-oi-nei. but this is fine, even I get lazy and say o-oi-lei. ps, it's easier for foreigners.

[jonniemango]

yea

o oi lei

[catherinebaker2007]

its just au oi lei - not nei - lei is you in chinese

[angel8367]

I beleive nei is the proper word for you in cantonese. at least in the form I have learned. I know there are different forms of cantonese, so maybe lei is correct as well.

[siubakkoi]

Hahahahaha, love to hear Ngo oi nei.

I agree, 1:50 was the perfect one. Thanks for sharing.

[PinkuHoshi]

1:50 was almost perfect XD

[kenarisquad]

everybody are saying oh oi lei.. haha

[zwecklosigkeit]

我屙奶!

[lilaznhermkid]

101 is hecka funny ... no offence

[Tempari]

It's more like Ngggoawwh ngoi nay. xD

[Aznremix69]

how do u say love and you in cantonese some ppl say nei and some ppl say lei love some ppl say ngaw some ppl say ai?

[ummacles]

Ugh.  Refer to this video:

youtube: watch?v=5gpU9xOVxic&NR=1

[xindy1988]

yeah,some is juz like 'o oily' lol.

[stanleykho2]

Ngaw Oi Nei, too much lazy and incorrect pronunciation; people confuse N and L.

[RainxSiN]

yea what chungchile said :D i grew up talked to 40% chinese 60% english. -.- now i can only understand cantonese but not speak it. i wish to speak it :D

[fagman1010]

Language should be universal and everyone has a right to learn whatever "tongue" they wish. Why must you people be so critical.

[Chungchile]

get it right, it's actually "Ngaw Oi Nei"

[FunniSophiXD]

one said " o hai lei " which means i m u and another said " o ai lei " which is a mix of cantonese n mandarin lol

[kibbleh]

lol one of the guys said i am you