Notes on Jyutping, pronunciation practice, and Cantonese.
Scenes, basics, and culture can be read apart. Use them to shadow the audio. Jyutping comes from the same CanCLID to-jyutping data as the converter on this site.
If a reading is wrong, email the characters, the word, and the Jyutping you expected. No account.
Jyutping uses the same CanCLID to-jyutping data as the converter. Audio is one mp3 per syllable. Where Words.hk and the clip differ, the post writes both readings.
Dim sum, cha chaan teng, wet markets, transit, clinics, and pharmacies: things said when you are out.
The Transport Department sets out where urban, New Territories and Lantau taxis may run, and calls the taximeter 咪錶 in parentheses. The return toll is waived at a cross-harbour taxi stand. words.hk also lists 中隧 and 舊隧 for 紅隧.
The Observatory’s database says that from 1931 to 1972 signals 5, 6, 7 and 8 marked direction, and that on 1 January 1973 they became No. 8 Northwest, Southwest, Northeast and Southeast. The rainstorm warnings are a separate system, and the 30, 50 and 70 millimetre lines are guidance only.
The Transport Department separates red minibuses from green public light buses. words.hk enters 有落 and 嘟八達通; 拍卡 appears in the 入閘 example. Octopus writes 增值, and words.hk has no such entry.
Mid-Autumn, street nicknames, English loanwords, sweet soups.
The Jyutping scheme is LSHK’s. Dish names, nicknames, and loanwords follow the converter. Where a Mandarin menu name differs, the post says so, and the sources are at the end of that post. The clinic and pharmacy posts are how the counter says it. Tongue twisters are practice lines; a school may swap a word.
Playback works like the tool pages: the player fetches a syllable mp3. Opening an article does not upload the body to a conversion API. A line in a post is still isolated syllables. Connected speech in a noisy cha chaan teng will not match the clip exactly. Use play to lock the tones, then go listen to people.
When a post contrasts a Mandarin menu name with a Cantonese one, that labels the difference. It is not a claim that one language is more authentic. English loanwords keep the converter’s Jyutping. Do not rewrite them to match English spelling.
Open one scene post, not five. Play each example once without looking at the Jyutping, then once with it. Copy a short line into the converter if you want the highlight to follow along. When a character is polyphonic in real life (行, 好, 正), jump to the dictionary before you memorise the first tag. If you are going to a clinic tomorrow, read that post on the train and say the lines under your breath. If you are sitting at home, a tongue-twister or time-word post is a better twenty minutes than skimming every food list.
Do not treat street nicknames or tea-restaurant codes as exam answers unless your teacher set them. Do not recite a dim-sum slip as if every kitchen uses the same paper. The value is the syllable: 蝦餃 haa1 gaau2 should stay rising on gaau2 even if the shop writes something else in English. After a post, pick three words you will actually say this week and look them up again in the dictionary so the ranking matches the sense you need.
The notes do not grade your accent and do not stand for a school syllabus. If you follow the Education Bureau word list or a broadcast standard, check that document. A post will not tell you whether n/l merger is “allowed”. It will tell you what the line is for, and how this site spells it in Jyutping.
There is no journalist on staff and no restaurant paying for placement. Names can go stale when a stall closes. Email a correction with the characters and the Jyutping you expected. Feature ideas are welcome; there is no promise they will be written. A Mid-Autumn post is not a calendar of every district fair. A loanword post is not an English course.
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