The Roman Alphabet in Cantonese
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If you stay in Hong Kong for a few days, you're bound to notice the frequent use of Roman letters mixed in with Chinese characters. Of course, one often encounters whole English words or phrases as well. In this post, however, I will concentrate on the use of individual letters, usually standing in for Cantonese morphemes, but occasionally also for English words. Here are a few examples:
BB ("baby", "like a small baby"), the Cantonese pronunciation of which would be romanized as bi4 bi1; also often written as BB 仔, which would be pronounced bi4 bi1 zai2 (仔 signifies "young animal, small child, whelp")
e d (for 呢啲, "these"), pronounced i1 di1 (from ni1 di1 — people often truncate the ni1 to i1); this is also sometimes written as 呢d, probably because the writer wants to project the impression that he / she can write Cantonese at least partially in characters and 呢 is easier to write than 啲; of course, both 呢and 啲 are nonce characters used to represent Cantonese morphemes (the little mouth radicals on the left side indicate that they are being employed for their sounds only, not for any semantic qualities). More on this "d" below.
ng or m for 唔 (negation): ng4/m4
Then we get monstrosities like "HKSA Big 2 (鋤大D) Tournament" (the part in parentheses would be pronounced co4 daai6 di2): 鋤大D is a card game called Big 2/Deuces. Note that the tone is different for this "d" than for the one discussed above and below.
A particularly intriguing case is the culinary term for "chicken shreds" (Modern Standard Mandarin [MSM] jīsī 鷄絲). In Cantonese this is pronounced gai1 si1 (the si1 being pronounced much like English "see"). The interesting thing is that when waiters take orders or when cash registers print out the order, most everything is in characters and Arabic numerals, except the si1 part; instead of the character for "silk thread" (12 strokes in traditional form 絲; 6 strokes in simplified form 丝), they write the Roman letter "C" (1 stroke!).
The most stable and common usage of a Roman letter for a Cantonese morpheme is "D" for marking plural nouns (as in ni1 di1 syu1 呢D書 ["these books"]) and the comparative degree (as in hou2 di1 好D ["better"); it is pronounced di1 (IPA = [ti: with High Level tone contour 55]). This plural-marking "D" / di1 is often thought of as semantically equivalent to MSM xiē 些 ("some, few, several"), but it has absolutely no etymological / historical connection to the latter (they must have completely different etyma). Robert S. Bauer, the doyen of linguists who do research on Cantonese, has written an entertaining and informative article called "D for Two in Cantonese" (as an aficionado of tea, I just love that title!) in which he provides illuminating examples and explanations of the Cantonese "D" / di1 discussed in this paragraph. See Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 10 (1982), 276-279.
Perhaps one day I'll write another post entitled "Cantonese in the Roman Alphabet," which is also often seen.
[Many thanks to Bob Bauer, Cornelius Kubler, Genevieve Leung, and Don Snow.]
John Cowan said,
March 23, 2011 @ 11:36 am
"Perhaps one day" — may it come soon!
J. W. Brewer said,
March 23, 2011 @ 4:16 pm
Any parallel between the sort of morphemes where a Latin character is used and the sort where written Japanese would standardly use kana rather than kanji? Or is it just chance similarities of sound having nothing to do with the function of the word in Cantonese?
TS said,
March 23, 2011 @ 4:38 pm
"Perhaps one day I'll write another post entitled "Cantonese in the Roman Alphabet," which is also often seen."
Yes, please do. Looking forward. Actually, I can see 3 interesting posts to be written about that:
– Cantonese place names: it has always been a mystery to me how the British managed to mangle every daaih into tai and jeui into tsui (e.g., Tai Kok Tsui). Is there a system behind it?
– official Canto romanizations (Yale, Yuhtpihng, etc) and their use.
and maybe most interestingly:
– informal romanizations as used by Canto speakers (mostly in the US) who don't know Chinese characters. I was surprised to see how many blogs are out there written this way, and even more surprised realizing that I can actually read most of that with my limited knowledge. But it seems no native speaker in HK or China can actually read any romanized Cantonese.
Matt Anderson said,
March 23, 2011 @ 5:41 pm
This example is in Mandarin, not Cantonese, but I've seen a brand of vegetarian chicken nuggets (sù jī kuài 素雞塊) from Taiwan called 素G塊, for no apparent reason (unlike some Cantonese or Taiwanese morphemes, the Mandarin word for chicken, pronounced essentially the same as the English name of the letter G, is easy to type, but it is true that the traditional character is made up of 18 strokes).
Bob Violence said,
March 23, 2011 @ 5:52 pm
Cantonese place names: it has always been a mystery to me how the British managed to mangle every daaih into tai and jeui into tsui (e.g., Tai Kok Tsui). Is there a system behind it?
There's a certain consistency to it but it's not really a full-fledged system. The use of "t" for both /t/ and /tʰ/ (and "p" for /p/ and /pʰ/, "k" for /k/ and /kʰ/, etc.) are probably because there were originally apostrophes to mark aspirated initials that have since been dropped — similar to the problem that has long afflicted Wade-Giles for Mandarin. Other oddities are down to the use of historical rather than modern pronunciations (hence all the "sh-" initials).
passerby said,
March 23, 2011 @ 7:07 pm
Matt: It may possibly be because they want to make the link to animal products less obvious – the idea being that if you eat vegetarian you shouldn't expect your food to explicitly remind you of the non-veg equivalent. Of course, in that case perhaps they just should've developed something that didn't visually look like actual chicken nuggets, but I suppose it's some sort of a compromise.
To me it's always been chuckle-worthy because "G" is a common slang term in Japanese for… cockroach (Gokiburi) Not interested, even if they were vegetarian versions ;)
Ben said,
March 23, 2011 @ 8:22 pm
There is also the store named G.O.D. since it sounds like 住好啲
Also, we find A菜 on menus, and I've never been totally sure what that is. According to http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/A%E8%8F%9C it is not just a Cantonese word though.
Jerome Chiu said,
March 24, 2011 @ 6:31 am
A particularly intriguing case is the culinary term for "chicken shreds" (Modern Standard Mandarin [MSM] jīsī 鷄絲). In Cantonese this is pronounced gai1 si1 (the si1 being pronounced much like English "see"). The interesting thing is that when waiters take orders or when cash registers print out the order, most everything is in characters and Arabic numerals, except the si1 part; instead of the character for "silk thread" (12 strokes in traditional form 絲; 6 strokes in simplified form 丝), they write the Roman letter "C" (1 stroke!).
Absolutely! The most intriguing case is the use of "6" to stand for Coke (可樂 ho2 lok9 >> 樂 lok9 >> 6 [i.e. 六 luk9]), and of "206" for "hot coke with lemon": 熱檸樂 yit9 ning2 lok9 (also note 檸 is pronounced ning2 instead of ning4) becomes 206 (i.e. 二零六 yi6 ling4 luk9).
And there's more. "306" stands for "hot coke with lemon and ginger", "306" being "206 plus something". This is how the waiters explain "306" is derived, and it is now commonly used in Hong Kong.
Alex said,
March 24, 2011 @ 8:55 am
Some Hong Kongese friends type "55" in place of "m-hm" because the number five in Cantonese is pronounced "ńgh" (Yale romanization). Also, when saying goodbye, some will write "88," because the number eight in Cantonese is pronounced "baat3," and "baat3 baat3" sounds like "bye bye" (actually, the characters for "bye bye" are 拜拜, which is pronounced "bāai baai").
informal romanizations as used by Canto speakers (mostly in the US) who don't know Chinese characters. I was surprised to see how many blogs are out there written this way, and even more surprised realizing that I can actually read most of that with my limited knowledge. But it seems no native speaker in HK or China can actually read any romanized Cantonese. (by TS).
TS, I wouldn't say that no native speaker in HK can read romanized Chinese. All of my HKese friends often write to each other purely in an informal romanization. There's no real system to it; they just write whatever they think fits best. For example, if one were writing:
你好，你而家做緊乜嘢呀? 我同家人食晚飯呀。
(hey, what are you doing right now? I'm eating dinner with my family.)
he or she might write:
nei ho, nei yee gar jo gun mut yea ar? ngo tung gar yun sik man fan ar.
(notice the "r"s on words ending with open vowels. When I first started speaking to HK Cantonese speakers, I couldn't figure this out. Then I realized that it's from the British influence in Hong Kong. Canto speakers imagine that there's a silent "r" at the end of some of those words).
In Yale romanization, it would be:
néih hóu, néih yìh gā jouh māt yéh a? ngóh tùhng gā yàhn sihk máahn faahn a.
TS said,
March 24, 2011 @ 11:32 am
Alex: "TS, I wouldn't say that no native speaker in HK can read romanized Chinese. All of my HKese friends often write to each other purely in an informal romanization."
Oh, I stand corrected then. My experience has been that Canto-speaking mainlanders are often dumbfounded when I try this with them. Maybe in HK people use it quite often and I did not notice. I was somehow associating this with ABC Canto speakers.
Wish anyone would just write that way, or use Yale instead of characters. Life would be so much easier.
Victor Mair said,
March 24, 2011 @ 9:13 pm
From Mandy Chan:
I've always known the card game Big 2 as (鋤大弟or 鋤弟) — 弟
could also mean the number 2 in Cantonese (very colloquial). When
used in this context, this 弟 should not be pronounced as "dai," which
is the standard Cantonese pronunciation, but as "di" (just like the
Mandarin pronunciation). It's the first time I have seen the card game
being written as 鋤大D. I googled it and indeed 鋤大D is used more
frequently — I'm not sure when this shift occurred but wouldn't the
semantics between 鋤大弟 and 鋤大D no longer be the same?
bryan said,
May 8, 2011 @ 1:23 pm
I've always known the card game Big 2 as (鋤大弟or 鋤弟) — 弟
could also mean the number 2 in Cantonese (very colloquial).
No, it's NOT!
In the card game, 弟 is from the English word "Deuce", taking the approximate pronunciation of the first syllable, which from Poker is the card with the number 2 on it.
bryan said,
May 8, 2011 @ 1:26 pm
or it could be they're just taking the first letter of the word Deuce and using the English pronunciation of D. 鋤大D is how it's said in Hong Kong. 弟 / D is NEVER used in Cantonese for the number 2, aside from the word Deuce from Poker.