Correct way to say "money" in Cantonese?

[Dracil]

I've been looking at www.mycantonese.com's lessons. I cross-referenced their spelling with http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Canton2/ and I found something peculiar. The way they're pronouncing "money" seems to be "cin2" at http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Canton2/, but that site says money should be pronounced either "cin4" or "zin2"... So which one should I be using? The phrase in the lesson was "ngo5 mou5 chin2" (I don't have money) if context matters. Thanks.

[money lover]

chin

[Dracil]

Chin2 or Chin4? That classroom said it was Chin2, but this other site says it's Chin4 or Zin2

[cin or zin?]

dont know what the pronunciation system mycantonese.com was using, so cant comment on that. cuhk's is jyutping system.
for "i dont have money" in jyutping system,
formal - "ngo5 mou4 cin4"
informal - "ngo5 mou5 cin2"
dont even knwo the existence of zin2, sorry:(

[Dracil]

Ah, I see. So the difference here was formal vs. informal. Thanks!
Does cuhk contain the colloquial Cantonese characters? For example "mou", or "kui" as opposed to "ta" (for him/her)
I tried doing a search before, but don't think I found the characters... is there a site with a list of these special characters?

[mou5 keoi5]

dont know if cuhk contain all colloquial cantonese characters, sorry. But... were u looking for the following characters?
mou5 @ http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/cgi-bin ... ery=%c9%4e
keoi5 @ http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/cgi-bin ... ery=%ca%5c

[Dracil]

I thought these characters weren't part of the standard Chinese character set, yet.... they're viewable. Thanks for the links though! Had trouble finding the words, especial Keoi5, which I'd been spelling kui.

[Eugene Morrow]

Dracil,
I'm totally confused about the other answers to your question.
A Cantonese course I am learning from (FSI - see my notes on Tape courses answering a question from Arnistkokid on this forum). FSI says that chin (money) is pronounced with a mid rising tone (like the number 9: gau). The FSI course is from 1970, so pronunciation may have changed.
So in theory I would write it as chin9.
I can't understand cin4 and cin2. Does anyone know why FSI seems to say something so different?
Eugene Morrow

[Dracil]

Well, here's what I know. A lot of the online resources you find use the 6 tone system, which I think is simplified from the 9 tone system. However, asking some of my Cantonese friends, they say they they speak with 9 tones (both have been living in HK until last year, when they moved to college here in the US), which is what you're familiar with. Personally, I'd prefer learning words through 9 tones too, but when all you got is 6 tones.... what I do now is double-check the words I learn with them.

[Helmut]

Hi Eugene,
the confusion seems to be caused mainly by different ways, how to identify tones.
The spoken ("informal") Cantonese word for money (Yale: chin, Jyutping: cin) has the same tone as the word for the number nine. No change since the 1970s.
Modern books refer to that tone usually as tone number 2. Some call it "high rising tone". FSI may have its own numbering convention. What is meant is the tone that rises to the highest level.
Someone wrote, that the formal word is spoken with tone number 4. Also in spoken Cantonese, this word is switching to tone number 4 in certain combinations. I guess that is because of the tone switch phenomenon.
Tone number 4 means the one departing at the low level and going even further down.
Hope that helps
Helmut