Intermediate Cantonese

A Grammar and Workbook

Virginia Yip, Stephen Matthews

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351966528
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Intermediate Cantonese is designed for learners who have achieved basic proficiency and wish to progress to more complex language.

Each of the 25 units combines clear, concise grammar explanations with communicatively oriented exercises to help build confidence and fluency.

Features include:

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• Many authentic examples from contemporary media, including films, advertising, songs and soap operas

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• Clear differentiation between colloquial and more formal speech registers

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• Up-to-date analysis of contemporary Cantonese as spoken in Hong Kong.

Suitable for independent learners and students on taught courses, Intermediate Cantonese, together with its sister volume, Basic Cantonese, forms a structured course of the essentials of Cantonese grammar.

Unit 1
Consonants and vowels

In this unit, we assume familiarity with the basic sounds of consonants and vowels as described in Basic Cantonese. Building on this base, we review some of the main difficulties and delve further into variation among these sounds. To represent sounds accurately, symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are given in square brackets: [∫], for example, represents the consonant in ‘shoe’.

Difficulties for English speakers

Certain Cantonese sounds pose particular difficulties for native speakers of English and, in some cases, other European languages. These include:

• Front rounded vowels:	yu [y] as in syū 書 ‘book’
	eu [œ:] as in séung 想 ‘want’
	[e] as in geuk 腳 ‘foot’
• Affricates:	j [ts] as in jā 揸 ‘drive’
	ch [ts^h] as in chóh 坐 ‘sit’

Rounded vowels

Rounded vowels are produced with the lips ‘rounded’ or pursed. In English, only the back vowels о (as in ‘hope’) and u (as in ‘who’) are rounded. In Cantonese, the front vowels yu and eu are also rounded: yu is produced like i, and eu like e, with the addition of lip rounding. These vowels do not have precise equivalents in English, yú 魚 (fish) should not sound like English you nor should jeuk 著 (wear) sound like jerk: in each case, the lips must be rounded outwards to produce the right vowel sound (pouting may help here).

eu is especially difficult since its quality varies according to the following consonant sound:

Longer, lower [œ:]	Shorter, higher [ɵ]
chéung 搶 rob	chéun 蠢 stupid
chēung 窗 window	chēut 出 go out
leuhng 量 capacity	leuht 率 r...