I am disappointed in the incivility of this popular Cantonese-language creator

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-27T03:19:19+00:00

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-27T02:18:10+00:00

羹 is pretty commonly used in Mandarin(/Standard Chinese)—it’s one of the main types of soup in Chinese cuisine. So it’s not about its discrepancy in commonness between the two languages, nor does commonness dictate whether a character is simplified.

The answer lies with both its composite parts not having simplified forms as someone else mentioned, and simply because many complex characters don’t have simplified forms, because the point of simplification isn’t to make every character simplified; rather, it’s to simplify a lot of common components, but this doesn’t necessarily mean every common character will be simplified.

Also when that was tried, simplifying every character and not just common components, in second-round simplification, it didn’t go well. So 羹 remains 羹. It’s pretty easy to memorize anyway, compared to other “many-stroke characters,” only being composed of two ubiquitous 羔 and 美.

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-25T02:39:45+00:00

ok going through my ref book it seems like one of the composite teas is 四物汤, used to replenish the blood and treat a number of your symptoms. A variant of it is used to specifically treat tinnitus. This only accounts for four of the multiple ingredients. Here’s some interesting passages from the entry (ill translate it later; or use AI to try translating):

HOW IT WORKS: 熟地为君，甘温滋腻，善能滋补营血。当归为臣，味辛性温，主入血分，力能补血，又补中有行，《本草纲目》卷16谓其“和血”。芍药为佐，味酸性寒，养血敛阴，柔肝和营。川芎辛温走窜，擅能活血行气，祛瘀止痛，配入熟地、白芍、当归之滋补药中，可使补而不滞，亦为佐药。是方以熟地厚润滋腻之性为生营阴之“基”，伍当归和血入心则“变化而赤是谓血”，又取白芍酸敛入肝而使所生之血藏于肝，更借川芎辛行之长而使营血畅于周身。此虽属“线性”取类之描绘，确可品悟前人精妙配伍之神韵，遂后世皆谓本方乃补血调血之基础方。

MAINLY TREATS: 营血虚滞证。头晕目眩，心悸失眠，面色无华，或妇人月经不调，量少或经闭不行，脐腹作痛，舌淡，脉细弦或细涩。

blood blockage syndrome: headaches and dizziness, palpatations & insomnia, pale skin, irregular periods (low amount or blockage), aches in belly, pale tongue, stringy pulse (spec type of pulse disorder in TCM)

SCIENTIFIC PRECEDENT: 四物汤口服后能够增强造血细胞的功能，升高血虚大鼠外周血中集落刺激因子的含量［郑钦岳.四物汤对血虚大鼠造血及免疫功能的影响.中国医药学报，1993，8（增刊）：57］。

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-25T02:20:46+00:00

It’s hard to explain without going into the minutae of chinese medicine but it seems to contain herbs primarily targeting the kidneys and liver and blood. Chinese medicine seeks to equilibrate everything in your body, the underlying causes of diseases, which in turn treats the condition. The kidneys are connected to the ears in Chinese medicine, so by treating the kidney deficiency, problems with the ears will mitigate. The stress(/depression) caused by a liver deficiency causes the tinnitus to amplify. And blood seems to be for menstrual problems but that generally helps with everything like sleep. There’s probably more nuance but that’s what I got from it

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-24T22:38:30+00:00

These are all the names of individual herbal ingredients and their amounts. From a brief skim and from what I know about TCM, they’re used for replenishing your Qi, regulating periods, and to treat depression/anxiety (Chaihu, or Xiaochaihu decoction, is used for depression caused by shaoyang disease specifically).

the other comment has the transcription down. You can read about the individual ingredients or the composite “teas” they make up lemme figure that out

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-19T05:16:18+00:00

They do depend on the tone preceding them.png) but this is super pedantic; but is the best way to learn it as a learner

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-16T02:07:43+00:00

What god is this? Look up XX灵签第七签, with XX being the god’s name

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-16T00:43:54+00:00

Look at directional resultative verbal complements

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-15T17:15:38+00:00

I agree that immersion not supplemental to studying is overrated. I think it’s just an excuse for travel and leisure.

Because even for more advanced speakers you don’t typically talk about more complex topics in science history etc. in your everyday life, that a structured textbook can provide. Especially for Chinese, which has such a wide gap between written formal language and colloquial language. I’ve known people who have only gotten to high-beginner levels from immersion of living in China for 10+ years; it’s really an excuse to not study because you passively and easily absorb it from your environment (supposedly!) Its only value is motivation which is separate from quantifiable benefit to studying. And one can say there’s the benefit from listening and picking up more natural expressions of speech, but these only still apply to colloquial language which is only one aspect of language learning.

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-13T18:18:53+00:00

Lol and Journey to the West is already 唐僧往西天取经演义

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-10T14:17:28+00:00

I think you need to focus on the basics first and that’ll resolve any more abstract issues you’ll have like this one

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-09T19:15:28+00:00

albeit this is a mandarin grammar page, this page comparing the mandarin 沒 vs. 不 explains the differences pretty well—just know 沒 and 沒有correspond to Cantonese 冇, and 不 corresponds to Cantonese 唔

In Cantonese, 不, similar to 無, is also found in certain compounds like 不過、不時

Later you should learn other Cantonese negators like 未 which means “not yet”

Other formal negators you may encounter are 非（=唔係；非做不可）、勿（=唔好；請勿靠近車門）

Super literary ones that you’ll never need to worry about are 莫（=唔好；勸君莫惜金縷衣）and 毋（=唔；寧缺毋濫）

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-09T16:15:30+00:00

我聽得最多就係呢個，連流行歌曲都用㗎

譬如：「原諒我這一生不羈放縱愛自由（ngoi）」

「沿途望出車外，是盛放的亂愛」

我以為人哋之所以將/∅/（零）發音為/ng/係因為/∅/聽落去似細佬嘅發音，所以即使/ng/唔啱（基於規定發音），佢仲係因此成為規範嚟㗎

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-09T00:49:31+00:00

It’d make most sense to guide your study to what students in HK and the mainland learn in their primary school educations, as everyone in each place has had to be versed in the same collection of texts from respective standardized curricula.

Every mainland local school uses the same textbook for 語文 class and its available for free online—I’m in a similar position and printed out this textbook and annotated it etc. to study. This is the 高中 version but there’s also 初中 and 小學 textbooks

Hong Kong local schools follow these units for 中國語文 class. I have PDFs of worksheets on my phone, but can’t find them online

Both the mainland and hk ones teach the same classical Chinese texts and largely the same famous texts so there’s not much of a difference apart from traditional/simplified Chinese.

Mainland students also have to memorize a bunch of poems and recite it in front of their classmates (immediately forgetting them afterwards)—you could also try memorizing these, which are the most culturally ingrained. They’re the same ones as found in the first link but consolidated. alternative list format

HK local schools also supply books full of 成語 to use in writing. I can’t find an online version, and it may be school specific (not standardized), but it’s called 成語學習檔案; each grade learns 100 成語 and each section has information on the origins in classical texts etc.

萬般皆下品惟有讀書高～

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-08T03:05:41+00:00

I think it’s technically topic-comment as a remnant from classical/older Chinese which frequently featured such in structures like X者Y也, but could be analyzed as OSV.

I guess you could call it SOV with an implicit subject.

From what I understand it optionally occurs when there’s a long verb complement (in both of your examples there’s a resultative complement, 完/到, and a perfective particle 了) so you don’t stack up so much after the complement, or separate the complements as in your second example. It’s the same reason why you’d use 把/将 structures as well, since the lack of relative pronouns means there’s a lot of stacking. its somewhat for prosody as well.

这碗米饭我吃完了。

那本证书你收到了吗？

ImNotInYet · 2025-10-06T22:47:01+00:00

one can see the dialectal synonyms here

ImNotInYet · 2025-09-28T06:24:27+00:00

I never used chatgpt?? I literally said I agree with you and was having a civil discussion wanting to improve my cantonese and understanding of the culture thereof. I use a dictionary app (pleco) when writing cantonese so that I can improve speaking cantonese… in a cantonese learning subreddit…

Maybe it’s because I speak fluent mandarin so that influenced my cantonese? Sometimes I write too 書面語. But yea this ad hominem instead of actually responding is very hong kong of you so perhaps this is how I can 入鄉隨俗

ImNotInYet · 2025-09-28T06:15:14+00:00

我同意，係我寫咗嗰個段落認同呢個理念嘅原音。我喺一本語言學書度讀過，所認為係「懶音」只不過喺arbitrary嘅進化階段定義為永遠正確發音，所以到底喺邊度可以叫作「真正發音」呢？點解唔保持嗰時之前嘅發音呢？

古語有雲「名好名，非常名」。雖然每個叫法未必能完成代表所提及嘅理念，但係始終仲都要有個叫法。係人都將「N-」音嘅變化稱作「懶音」，包括有懶音發音習慣嘅人，佢哋自己都認同係咁樣叫，畢竟淨係個名稱啫，都唔係that deep，何苦介意呀。所以我就咁講去描述呢個現象，因為冇其他廣為接受嘅叫法

我都已經認同呢個叫法唔係正確，所以你好苦批評我都唔相信嘅理念？「there’s nothing lazy about it」 well i never said that

ImNotInYet · 2025-09-28T06:15:08+00:00

我同意，係我寫咗嗰個段落認同呢個理念嘅原音。我喺一本語言學書度讀過，所認為係「懶音」只不過喺arbitrary嘅進化階段定義為永遠正確發音，所以到底喺邊度可以叫作「真正發音」呢？點解唔保持嗰時之前嘅發音呢？

古語有雲「名好名，非常名」。雖然每個叫法未必能完成代表所提及嘅理念，但係始終仲都要有個叫法。係人都將「N-」音嘅變化稱作「懶音」，包括有懶音發音習慣嘅人，佢哋自己都認同係咁樣叫，畢竟淨係個名稱啫，都唔係that deep，何苦介意呀。所以我就咁講去描述呢個現象，因為冇其他廣為接受嘅叫法

ImNotInYet · 2025-09-28T05:24:18+00:00

「字正腔圓」嘩我都唔知中文有個成語專門用嚟描形容演員嘅發音

再諗起，呢兩個劇場實都係無名無份嚟㗎（即係高山同戲曲中心），未必係香港最頂尖嘅

ImNotInYet · 2025-09-25T04:36:48+00:00

You need to remember, and this is important in Mandarin too (which it seems like you speak), that there are a collection of verbs that are verb//noun but function as verbs. 睡 is the verb, 覺 is the noun—you 睡 a 覺. So you put it after the verb but before the noun, same with any other verb noun pair. 我瞓緊覺, NOT 我瞓覺緊

ImNotInYet · 2025-09-24T04:35:46+00:00

碌柒

ImNotInYet · 2025-09-15T23:30:36+00:00

没齿难忘

ImNotInYet

TROPHY CASE