First a little background, I'm British born Chinese, but have been brought up speaking English. My parents would speak to me in Chinese and I'd reply in English. As a result I can understand Cantonese (well enough to follow the soap operas on Hong Kong tv), but I can only speak a little. My problem comes from not being able to recognise the defined tones. If you say the word in Cantonese, I could tell you the meaning, however I would not be able to tell you what tone it was, i.e. if it was high or mid level etc.
Anyone have any ideas of how to tackle this problem?
Tones
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Terence Law
Re: Tones
Being able to reconize the correct tone is one of the hardest thing in Contonese (because it has 9 tones). One way to tackle this problem is to look up words from a dictonary. Don't worry about the written form of chinese, just play attention to the PingYam, especially the tone numbers. To get start, try these two words:
1.foo
2.si
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Canton/
This is a link to an online cantonese dictionary.
Practice makes prefect, keep playing the tones and compare them to increase your understanding of the Cantonese tonal system.
1.foo
2.si
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Canton/
This is a link to an online cantonese dictionary.
Practice makes prefect, keep playing the tones and compare them to increase your understanding of the Cantonese tonal system.
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Terence Lee
Re: Tones
Hi, Gerald, I understand your problem about the tones of Cantonese, I try to post the followings and would like to see if they could be of some help to you.
Literally, the Cantonese has 9 tones but sometimes 10 in colloquial. Now, forget about the 10th and those explanation about ‘glottal, flat or entering tones etc’, Just keep practicing the following several times, you will find the tone differences and the Jyutpin symbols pertaining to them.
Ask your parents to cite the following for you and then you repeat to cite them out again and again until you can apply the changes to other symbols.
Si1 Si2 Si3 Si4 Si5 Si6 Sik7 Sik8 Sik9
詩 史 試 時 市 事 昔 錫 食
The tones 7, 8 and 9 are the same as 1, 3 and 6. They marked as 7-9 because they apply to those sounds ending with k, p and t (known as the group of entering tones) only. Forget about the group's name and see the examples here
迫*baak7 = baak1, 百baak8 = baak3 and 白 baak9 = baak6
*has another sound as bik1/7, not to be discussed here.
So when you see tones symbols marked with 1, 3 and 6 but ending with k, p and t , you know that they are 7, 8 and 9 correspondingly.
Please be noted that there are different types of phonetic symbol using to mark the sounds, I suggest you to use that defined by Mr. Wong Sik Ling of which is the one I use and considered to be the most popular. When you get familiar with the table you can distinguish in the table that ‘aa’ = ‘a’, ‘a’ = e. ‘j’ = ‘y’, ‘z’ = ‘dz’ or ‘j’ and ‘c’ = ‘ch’ or ‘ts’ in other types of phonetic tables.
If you parents have a dialectal accent and cannot cite the characters for you, try to get the citing sound and symbol table from http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Canton/
Literally, the Cantonese has 9 tones but sometimes 10 in colloquial. Now, forget about the 10th and those explanation about ‘glottal, flat or entering tones etc’, Just keep practicing the following several times, you will find the tone differences and the Jyutpin symbols pertaining to them.
Ask your parents to cite the following for you and then you repeat to cite them out again and again until you can apply the changes to other symbols.
Si1 Si2 Si3 Si4 Si5 Si6 Sik7 Sik8 Sik9
詩 史 試 時 市 事 昔 錫 食
The tones 7, 8 and 9 are the same as 1, 3 and 6. They marked as 7-9 because they apply to those sounds ending with k, p and t (known as the group of entering tones) only. Forget about the group's name and see the examples here
迫*baak7 = baak1, 百baak8 = baak3 and 白 baak9 = baak6
*has another sound as bik1/7, not to be discussed here.
So when you see tones symbols marked with 1, 3 and 6 but ending with k, p and t , you know that they are 7, 8 and 9 correspondingly.
Please be noted that there are different types of phonetic symbol using to mark the sounds, I suggest you to use that defined by Mr. Wong Sik Ling of which is the one I use and considered to be the most popular. When you get familiar with the table you can distinguish in the table that ‘aa’ = ‘a’, ‘a’ = e. ‘j’ = ‘y’, ‘z’ = ‘dz’ or ‘j’ and ‘c’ = ‘ch’ or ‘ts’ in other types of phonetic tables.
If you parents have a dialectal accent and cannot cite the characters for you, try to get the citing sound and symbol table from http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Canton/