About Cantonese
1. What is the hardest part in Cantonese?
Just like what we shared in the video, most of the answers were PRONUNCIATION. Despite suffering from the nine tones, most of the responders also think the lazy tone is the hardest part. While American English will combine words together as slangs because of lazy tones (eg. imma=I am going to, ain't=are not), Cantonese also have a similar situation but the thing make it even worse is that the lazy tone could pronounce as the same as another word that has different meaning. For example, the word "boy" is pronounced as "naam4" but a lot of people pronounce it as "laam4" which means "blue". Therefore, it could be hard for people to learn and listen to the spoken Cantonese.
2. Any Cantonese slangs you would like to share?
Mentioning Cantonese slangs, I received quite an amount of swear words in the responses haha! It is true that Cantonese swear words are commonly added in slangs and we have many swear words that you can't even count by fingers. However, I am not going to share today whoops xd! As this blog is mostly for English speakers, I am going to share some Konglish (Hong Kong English) slangs to you. 1: [add oil = you can do it] It is a phase where people show their support to others, just like adding gasoline to a car(the person you are supporting) to make it drives. 2: [hand letter = souvenirs] As the Chinese of "souvenirs" is a combination of "hand(手)" and "letter(信)" if you directly translate it word by word.
3. Do you want to learn Cantonese and why?
I am really glad that a lot of people say yes to this question as I am promoting Cantonese to make it last. Due to the popularisation of Mandarin, there are less and less people speaking or learning in Cantonese. Yet, here is a reason why most of the responders still think Cantonese is vulnerable and worth to learn. As we mentioned in the video, Cantonese is a long lasting language, our language culture were shaped since ancient times. If you are interested in Chinese history culture, Cantonese is the best language to understand the poetries and articles.
4. Words for people who want to learn Cantonese
We, Cantonese speakers are really grateful if you are planning to learn or just know more about Cantonese. We know that Cantonese might be really challenging to learn, but if you discover more, you would love how the play on words are unlimited and how funny it is when the whole meaning changes. I agree and love one of the respond, "we would treat you as our family if you try to use or learn our language". Again, the numbers of Cantonese speaker is decreasing, we would like to protect and save this language. Anyone who understand Cantonese is like our only family member and we are very welcome to the people who want to join this family. Lastly, we would like to say "gayau!" to you. This is the Cantonese pronunciation of "add oil" or in English, YOU CAN DO IT!! <3
