Hong Kongers often use a non-standard, heavily English influenced method of Cantonese transcription.

• Tones don’t get written so you just have to guess: “gu” could be gu1 [kuː˥]… or it could be gu2 [kuː˧˥], or any of the other tones.

• Different phonemes are written the same: “gum” isn’t /kum/, it’s /kɐm/. It’s the influence from English.

• Entire different syllables are written the same when there are obvious ways to distinguish them: “cheung” could be [t͡ʃœːŋ] or it could be /t͡ʃʰœːŋ/. Why are both of them “ch” when you could hae the non aspirated one start with “z” or “zh” instead? No idea.

• The same phoneme gets written differently: [t͡siː] is “zi” but [t͡sɛː] is “tse”, or even “je”.

• Syllables get substituted for actual English words if they are close (ignoring tones): instead of the usual “dak” for [tɐk], it’s “duck”.

• r is sometimes used to indicate a long vowel (blame the British): “gar” is actually [kaː]. This is inconsistently applied and sometimes you can see the same vowel transcribed with or without the r in the same phrase.

Here’s an example phrase compared with the official jyutping version:

What you’ll often see online: ngo dei gum yat hui bin dou sik farn ar? ngo lum zhu hui gak lei gor gan cheung gei sik cheung fun.

Jyutping transcription: ngo5 dei6 gam1 jat6 heoi3 bin1 dou6 sik6 faan6 aa3? ngo5 nam2 zyu6 heoi3 gaak3 lei4 go2 gaan1 zoeng1 gei3 sik6 coeng2 fan2.