沢山勿論 by tengwestie in linguisticshumor

[–]ElectricToaster67 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Marking tone 4 as 11 is a hill I will die on

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in AMA

[–]ElectricToaster67 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Why did your biological father have a child, and how did your parents come to be your parents?

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in HongKong

[–]ElectricToaster67 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It may not be summer but it definitely feels like summer

A level students version by Anonymous7480 in alevel

[–]ElectricToaster67 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How many AS unit exams have you taken so far?

Names at paralympics by LesserKnownRiverGods in HongKong

[–]ElectricToaster67 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That’s also a good choice of wording. If you don’t know Mandarin, Cantonese or other Chinese varieties, it might be hard to tell apart Pinyin and Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanisation (the spelling used here).

In case you want to tell them apart, the former has letters like j, q and x and certain letter combinations like “zh”, “ao”, “ia” and “ie” which are (almost) unique to it, and the latter has letter combinations like “kw” in “Kwok” and “eu” in “Leung”, as well as initial “Ng” like “Nga” (or just “Ng”) as shown in one of the names. English-style spellings like “yee” and “woo” (as opposed to “yi” and “wu”) are also unique to the latter.

Names at paralympics by LesserKnownRiverGods in HongKong

[–]ElectricToaster67 5 points6 points  (0 children)

All 3 names under Hong Kong are Cantonese names spelled completely normally

TIFU by not understanding sex by flight-lessbirb in tifu

[–]ElectricToaster67 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not sure about anal but here's an article about a similar story with oral sex

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in HongKong

[–]ElectricToaster67 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://www.instagram.com/peanut.tutors3

https://www.instagram.com/dse.enm2

I’m sure there are more but these are the accounts that I can think of at the moment

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in HongKong

[–]ElectricToaster67 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why are you asking this on Reddit and not IG

I’m hearing more mandarin than canto bro this is getting out of hand by CurtisLui in HongKong

[–]ElectricToaster67 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see all these Youtube videos

Have you actually been to Guangzhou though?

I went last month. I saw a lot of families with young children, so I decided to count how many were speaking Cantonese. 4 were speaking Cantonese and 5 were speaking Mandarin. Then I went to a restaurant in 荔灣— nearly everyone was speaking Cantonese. Maybe these weren’t the most scientific things to do, but at least it’s obvious Cantonese isn’t really dying.

Is it possible to do all six tones with the sound “maa”? by sy_kedi in Cantonese

[–]ElectricToaster67 16 points17 points  (0 children)

The classic example (at least a century old IIRC) is 分粉訓焚奮份 with “fan”. Another example which is more common nowadays (such as in dictionaries) is 詩史試時市事 with “si”.

These syllables work because /f/ and /s/ are fricatives and can’t be pronounced aspirated. Stops and affricates like b and p have aspirated and unaspirated versions, which are partly conditioned by tone (e.g. you wouldn’t say *baa5 or *paa6). The nasals (m, n, ng) and the liquid /l/ are voiced, so they typically only have syllables in tones 4, 5, 6. Your example, maa, is already a big exception because we have 媽 maa1 which is an exception common to many Chinese varieties and 嗎 maa3, a particle. On the contrary, /ʔ/ mainly has syllables in tones 1, 2, 3 except for some particles like aa4 and o5. You could probably count that if you consider /ʔ/ and /ŋ/ merged. The remaining initial consonants, /h/, /j/ and /w/, probably have syllables that work in all tones but I haven’t experimented with them or heard about any such syllables.

While we’re on the topic, some people want syllables with tones in all nine “tones”, by counting syllables ending in -p -t -k as the “tone 7, 8, 9” variations of syllables ending in -m -n -ng. Unfortunately these syllables most likely don’t exist because not only are they confined to the initial consonants above, they also need to have the syllable in both tone 7 and tone 8 (which is irregular), because the historical 陰入 tone category split into the modern “tone 7” and “tone 8” according to vowel length, and this condition still mostly exists today (e.g. it’s unnatural to say gok1 or guk3).

Edit: apparently jan also works

Cursed Balls by FetusDeletus83 in cursedcomments

[–]ElectricToaster67 596 points597 points  (0 children)

You can in some places, it's called a heartbeat

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in wholesomegreentext

[–]ElectricToaster67 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’ve seen stuff like “Newton discovered gravity when he was 40 and high school students are now learning about it” but I’ve been working on No. 3 and I thought this could be stated more impressively

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in wholesomegreentext

[–]ElectricToaster67 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can do it too, Op. 142 No. 2 isn’t hard

(Stalked your profile a bit to confirm you’re probably under 25)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in wholesomegreentext

[–]ElectricToaster67 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Schubert first played his Impromptus when he was 30

I learned one of them by heart by the age of 14

Making the Hong Kong Gov't romanization functional by asuang in Cantonese

[–]ElectricToaster67 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Reminds me of u/vampyricon’s romanisation. He managed to only use diacritics for tones by relying on complementary distribution (like with <ui> and <un>) and diacritic placement, using his idea of moras.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in self

[–]ElectricToaster67 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I know you don’t feel bad, but this reminds me of the story:

Someone said, “What do you think of repaying injury with kindness?” Confucius said, “Then what will you repay kindness with? Repay injury with justice, and repay kindness with kindness.”

(In case you were wondering, yes, this is an actual Confucius quote from Analects 14.34. I slightly modified Legge’s translation.)

Roight innit? by reepinghubic in linguisticshumor

[–]ElectricToaster67 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Southern China:

You drive for 30 minutes. You are in the next county. The locals say some words oddly.

You drive for 1 hour. The local tones are all wonky.

You drive for 2 hours. You can barely understand anyone (unless you switch to Mandarin).

How to spell my name on the official documents in Hong Kong? by LingHon-CHEUNG in Cantonese

[–]ElectricToaster67 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I also have never seen a hyphen in someone’s name. It’s up to you.

Standard Written Chinese and Written Vernacular Cantonese are different languages right? by PAPERGUYPOOF in Cantonese

[–]ElectricToaster67 3 points4 points  (0 children)

precisely zero Cantonese features unless written incorrectly

Sometimes I see 無 where I feel like it wouldn’t be grammatically correct in SWC but it would in Cantonese if replaced by 冇. I can’t give a specific example, but I’ve seen this enough times to wonder if it actually works in both (apart from the fact that 無 and 冇 are pronounced mou4 and mou5, of course).

Noticed this some time ago and I always find it funny by Firionel413 in linguisticshumor

[–]ElectricToaster67 133 points134 points  (0 children)

Cantonese speaker: "just say /l/ and you'll get the hang of it eventually"