Hello!

I am an ABC that grew up speaking cantonese but as I've gotten older (I'm 22 right now) my cantonese has gotten worse and worse. I am probably about as fluent as a 6 year old right now. So i was thinking about staying in HK for a 2 months as a form of language immersion.

Do you guys think this is an effective way to learn more cantonese? Is there anything I should know before staying in HK for 2 months?

Soon I will be out of internet for a while so my planning is downloading as much movies I can.

I know a lot of sources with Cantonese movies/shows but the real problem is WHY and almost NEVER Cantonese is a second subtitling option. I know for you guys living there came naturally going between Cantonese and Chinese standard writing but as an outsider this nature of things to be falls like a ton of bricks.

So once again and I hope not to bother with the same question as always but by any chance is there a trusty source with at least old Cantonese movies, dramas, novels, etc with authentic Cantonese subtitles? learning Standard Writing is inevitable but not something that comes handy right know.

Really appreciate any answer, thank you thank you thank you.

video @blackjoe_forfun

I guess this video is also for u/OneLastPoint ask, where are we indigenous to?

vocab

冚杯 ham bui1 "clink glasses" also 扻 ham2

How many people surrounding you know about the differences between them - Cantonese vs Mandarine / traditional Chinese vs simplified Chinese?

I looked it up in the Jyut Dictionary and it says "to start doing" which makes a bit of sense with the verb+object construction; using 起, meaning "up", "work up" or "start doing up" in a sense. But then the sample sentences provided don't really make sense of the 起 object. For example:

我做起份功課喇。
ngo5 zou6 hei3 fan6 gung1 fo3 laa3

I've completed the assignment

Shouldn't it be: I started doing the assignment 喇.

佢做起嘢 上嚟絕對唔會分心。
keoi5 zou6 hei2 je5 soeng5 lai4 zyut6 deoi3 m4 wui5 fan1 sam1.

He will never be distracted when he is working.

Shouldn't it be: [when] he starts doing things, [he] absolutely will not be distracted

Can someone explain this word please?

After doing a little asking around, I’ve discovered something I hadn’t even thought about: using the correct romanization. I have a character who was born in rural China in the early 1800s and later moved to America at which point he took an American name.

I have a scene where another character asks what his Chinese name was. I haven’t completely decided what to name him, but it seems like names of rural and likely uneducated people were simple and based on their lifestyle or their parents’ wishes for them.

Considering this, I’ve been thinking about a name like Shi Dali (big strength), which someone suggested. However, it’s been brought to my attention that this spelling is pinyin romanization, which was not introduced until much later, and some people said it was disconcerting. I don’t want to take readers out of the story, so I’m looking to figure out a more period-accurate romanization.

Would something like Shek Tai Lik work?

Hong Kong and Cantonese Speakers,

I was working on a character, and my Chinese friend (no longer in contact with him) who lived in Hong Kong, he told me the characters for my character were CHONG MIN / FOREVER SLEEP. Can you help me find Cantonese equivalent?

The character is a wizard who put people under a spell, they never wake...

UPDATE: Went to Perplexity AI, and this is what I got : 長眠 — Jyutping: coeng4 min4, meaning “eternal sleep,” “eternal slumber,” or “to rest eternally.”

Not meant to diss Mr 許, but is it just me finding his speech not the clearest in many TV series?

I paid $39 for Ancestrydna ancestry and health traits, a super good deal as regular price is $100+. They do routine update on ancestry and I think it is becoming more and more precise. All of my families are from Jiangmen (eastern part) and Hongkong and my parents have nearly identical ancestry results too. I brought an advanced DNA coordinate and computed what group of people am I closest with for ancient and modern times. There are also heat maps for Han Hongkong, Miao Guangxi Guilin Ziyuan, I didn’t bother to pay to make my own because according to the computation, my distance to other group is nearly identical to theirs, so the map is almost perfect for me.

I have the book The Right Word in Cantonese, could anyone please share the audio MP3 files with me through a shared drive or send them to me via DM here on Reddit, or by any other means? Thank you!

HK Canto vocabulary

Kai 仔 (he uses this word near at the end of the video).

L short for 撚 lan2 "dick/penis/fuck". 含撚 ham4 lan2 suck my dick/fuck off

HK sayings

好仔唔當差 hou2 zai2 m4 dong1 caai1 "good boys don't become cops".

when you are a young person, and/or look shabby, and/or dress in black, and/or racially targeted, you get picked out for a "random" an on-the-spot id check and possible bag/pocket search by police in HK.

種族歸納 zung2 zuk6 gwai1 naap6 is the main formal/academic chinese word used to describe "racial profiling". 歸納 "conclusion/induce from a set of facts"

It's Sunday, so: yum cha.

When someone pours your tea, tap two fingers on the table. It's 叩手禮 (kau3 sau2 lai5) — a silent thank you, so you don't have to interrupt the conversation. The story goes that it mimics a kneeling bow.

If you do say it out loud, it's 唔該 (m4 goi1), not 多謝 (do1 ze6). Pouring tea is a service, not a gift.

And when the pot runs dry, tilt the lid open and rest it on the side. Staff will refill it without you having to flag anyone down.

I post things like this because none of it was ever written down for me — it just happened at the table, and I half-absorbed it. A lot of us are one generation away from losing that. So I built a free app that gives you one Cantonese phrase a day: native Hong Kong pronunciation, Jyutping on everything, about two minutes. iOS and Android.

For anyone trying to find their roots.
For anyone who wants to answer their grandmother in her own language.

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eeffoc.coffee.speakcantonese&hl=en_SG

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/speak-cantonese/id1660807886

被人偷了 好幾個月甚至更早 警方調查三個月無果 我的天 還有這麼瘋狂的事 沒有勒索 自然不是為財 難道真的愛到癲狂變態⋯ 想起殺列儂的 為了朱迪槍殺里根的 but 這是骨灰啊 何況如愛到如此 早點為什麼不佔為己有呢 ⋯ 何必20多年後
還好 我覺得要麼人走燈滅 要麼靈魂飛升
心內寬慰
也不知道 是否 某人脖子上一根項鍊 吊著掛墜 而其中正是⋯
李碧華書中風格啊

Curious what the opinion may be on my Cantonese level, whether I sound fluent or if you detect an accent of any kind?

Cantonese doesn't appear in the drop-down menu when you add a spoken language to your LinkedIn profile. This wasn't an issue as you could still type in "Cantonese" manually.

Now, it seems you can only select languages from the drop-down list. "Chinese" is an option, but it doesn't reflect spoken proficiency in different Chinese varieties.

Does anyone know of a workaround, or have any ideas on how we could raise this issue with LinkedIn?

Hey all, there are some interesting Cantonese dubs of Western Shows on Internet Archive that might be more helpful for the beginner - intermediate ranges:
https://archive.org/search?query=Cantonese+Dub&tab=all
A lot of them are ripped from VCDs so they will have one sided audio so you would have to change that if it annoys you.

Some highlights:

Pocoyo - very very beginner

Mr. Men and Little Miss - the stuff we read in Kindergarten!

Postman Pat - slower paced show for kids

There's some science shows too for kids