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Cantonese Tones | ||
Tags: Cantonese | Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| fstop Newbie Canada Joined 5041 days ago 17 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 9 of 11 15 July 2012 at 12:38am | IP Logged | ||
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There are many popular romanization standard in Cantonese and each defines the Cantonese tones differently. Most of the books for English speakers uses the Yale Romanization system including the Teach Yourself Cantonese that you have. So, it is best to learn the Yale Romanization system. Once you know the Yale system good enough, you can try to learn the Jyutping system. Edited by fstop on 15 July 2012 at 12:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4521 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes  Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin | Message 10 of 11 15 July 2012 at 10:17am | IP Logged | ||
I actually find the Jyutping easier to use than the Yale system, I guess partly due to using pinyin which is similar and also the fact that I find the tones easier to figure out from looking at a single number than having to deal with accents and the letter h. My goal is to use characters and so I want to learn the smallest amount of romanization systems possible 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 11 of 11 09 August 2012 at 9:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey, so I wasn't around when this was first posted. Maybe I can offer some help. Jeff is correct in his analysis. The "stop" tones used to be numbered separately and are still considered separate in some cases. This is for reasons of historical linguistics, where these tones have a different origin in Middle Chinese.
Regarding the high falling tone, it's included in some textbooks, especially older ones, because it used to be very common. It has since merged with the high flat tone in Hong Kong usage, which is the new prestige dialect. Thus many books nowadays don't talk about it, and it's not marked in the Jyutping romanization system. There are only two morphemes pronounced with a high falling tone in modern HK Cantonese: sentence-final 先 (sin1) and sentence-final 添 (tim1). However, the distinction between high-falling and high-level tones is still made in many mainland dialects of Cantonese. Another thing you might encounter is the classification of the 4th tone as "low falling" and "super-low level". This is a matter of dialect and opinion. It has traditionally been considered "low falling", but some claim it has become a "very low level" tone in Hong Kong, especially when several 4th tones are in a row. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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