Talk:Proper Cantonese pronunciation

Hypercorrection

Quote Many TV and radio programs, including many game shows, have been made to promote the proper pronunciation. The campaign has influenced the local media greatly. For instance, today most news reporters and MCs in Hong Kong read the term 時間 (meaning time) zi4gaan1, instead of the vulgar zi4gaan3. Not surprisingly, many people regard such a pronunciation affectation or hypercorrection.

This doesn't really make sense, is "zi4gaan1" a hypercorrection? Should it be "vernacular" rather than "vulgar" in "vulgar zi4gaan3"? LDHan 23:09, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

In general, I think this article should also include something about hypercorrection, since that's a much bigger source of errors. I don't often hear 'lazy pronunciation' in formal announcements (or maybe I'm numbed to it), but hypercorrections are rampant, as in the MTR announcement which millions of people hear every day, '為o左乘客o既"ngon1"(安)全...'. Also if that's Jyutping, then it should be si4 gaan3. cab 06:10, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the rule of thumb is that, when the word is written as y___ or w____ in Chinese pinyin, it should be pronounced as ng- in Cantonese; otherwise it should have no consonants. So I think that 安 and 愛 should have no ng- sound, but 鴉, 鴨 should have. But in Modern Cantonese the two differences seem merged and become optional ng- in both cases. Just correct me about this if I was wrong. --✉ Hello World! 16:38, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

No, that's not how it works. The sound shift wasn't as simple as that. You basically have to look them up in order to get it right. For example the Mandarin wŭ 武 is mou in Cantonese.  White Whirlwind  咨  23:05, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

The so-called lazy sound is common in many languages of the world. The mixes of -k and -t entering tones in Cantonese is partly due to the adaption of Cantonese for people who were using other Chinese dialects. Confusing the final consonants -n and -ng is occurring in some other Chinese dialects (as well as in English lyrics too!) There is a trend for languages of Chinese to drop these finals. For example Mandarin Chinese has already dropped four of them (-p, -t, -k and -m). Shanghaiese entering tones have become glottal stop and -n has become nasal vowel. The statement of confusing the vowelized consonants mˌ and ŋˌ is also doubted by me, since there was only ŋˌ in Cantonese. The pronunciation of 唔 as mˌ is due to sound change. The sounds of most languages are changing continually, so maybe in some days all words previously pronounces as ŋˌ will ultimately changed to mˌ. -✉ Hello World! 16:31, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Contribution pitch

Hi, editors and moderators of the 'Proper Cantonese pronunciation' page!

My name is Priscilla, and I am a third year undergraduate international student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. I grew up in Hong Kong and speak Cantonese at a native level. I am currently studying Linguistics, and working on a Wikipedia project for a course on "lazy" sounds, or "lazy" pronunciation (懶音) in Hong Kong Cantonese.

The contributions that I would like to make towards this page include a table illustrating all attested consonantal phonetic changes of some concrete examples in Hong Kong Cantonese, and these include word-initial consonants, word-final consonants, as well as syllable consonants, such as [ŋ̩] > [m̩], and this will be in the 'Origins and Influences' section. This was also addressed in the comment above! The sources that I will be using is by Carol K. S. To, Sharynne Mcleod & Pamela S. P. Cheung, and is an article looking at Cantonese phonemic changes since the 1960s-70s (what people now call "lazy" sounds) published in the 'Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics' journal by Taylor & Francis Journals. Also, I would like to include some historical background on these sound changes, and highlight some of the effects that were discussed in this particular paper.

For the 'Arguments' section, I am proposing to add a blurb discussing the consonantal changes as part of a process called 'coarticulation' that has been researched and attested for by many scholars and writers in the Linguistics and Speech Sciences field who have studied phonetic change in contemporary Hong Kong Cantonese. I believe that this can be an alternate view and argument contrasting with Richard Ho's under the 'Arguments' section of the page.

The above are the major contributions that I would like to present to the page. If I do not get a response from a moderator regarding this, then I will be publishing in small increments every day for a week.

Thank you! Best, Priscilla — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pngsh525 (talk • contribs) 17:53, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Proper Cantonese pronunciation. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110721090226/http://arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Canton/ to http://arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Canton/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 01:47, 6 January 2018 (UTC)