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Comment by gfaure | Hacker News Reader

> - Characters starting with the vowel i sound more an e. Therefore, "to invite", 請 (cing2), sounds more like ceng2, and "to hear/listen", 聽 (ting1), sounds more like teng1.

As a Cantonese speaker, I love the effort here! However, the above isn't correct. This is an example of vernacular vs. literary pronunciation, and 請 has both pronunciations, depending on context. For instance, 請 is ceng2 when used as the verb "to invite", but cing2 in compounds like jiu1 cing2 邀請.

It shouldn't be conflated with the phenomenon later in that same paragraph about 懶音 "lazy pronunciation".

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Thanks for that! Yup I'm well aware of the differences between literary and casual (and of course the differences between Standard Chinese and Written Cantonese). My goal for this project is to help preserve and teach the Cantonese language based on my understanding (which is still improving), but more importantly teaching it as a completely independent language because that's what it is. In this instance Standard Chinese or any sort of literary pronunciation is essentially useless to me since people aren't speaking that way, and I also am a strong believer of writing the way you speak. Mandarin speakers also used to have this problem until the mid 1800s when the transition from 古文 to 白話 took place, and standardized on Beijing dialect.

And you are definitely right about 懶音. They are both explained in the same section not because they are the same thing but because they are both modifications occuring for the sound pronunciations.

> In this instance Standard Chinese or any sort of literary pronunciation is essentially useless to me since people aren't speaking that way

Thank you for creating this! But I'm afraid this is the misunderstanding -- words like san1 cing2 申請 are very much everyday words, even though the reading of the character is deemed literary. You should think of characters like 請 and 聽 as just having multiple in-context pronunciations, some of which you should learn, some of which you probably don't need to.

Definitely. I'm not saying the word 申請 itself isn't used in normal speech, but more that the pronunciation of 請 in normal speech would sound more like an e. So I would rather teach people the normal way people would pronounce words and not the literary form, since as I said before, I also do want to stay away from Standard Chinese as much as possible and teach Written Cantonese. It will take me some time to continue to extract the essence of the language and document it at the core level. Once I've extracted the language it could (and should) be used to create full literary writings in Written Cantonese, and not need to use nor ever learn Standard Chinese. If my target audience is to speak to Cantonese people specifically and not every single person of any Chinese language in existence, then writing in Written Cantonese is enough for my purposes and goals.

I definitely appreciate the feedback :). Thank you!

As a native speaker I assure you that 請 is pronounced differently in context, and that both readings are perfectly Cantonese.

For a more clear example, see 平: 大平賣 ("vernacular" reading; peng4) (lit. big cheap sale; i.e. sale) vs 平面 ("literary" reading; ping4) (lit. flat surface; i.e. surface). peng4 is the "vernacular" reading but used exclusively for meaning cheap. ping4 is "literary" but used everywhere else. "vernacular" versus "literary" is a linguistic classification, but do not necessarily represent either being more common than the other reading. Both readings exist.

I'm happy to hear that both can be used, normally I always have heard more of the "e" shift in a relatively consistent way. I normally say "大減價" for a big sale, but I understand your point was more about showing a demonstration where the "i" may be used. Although I would say that it really depends on the speaker and how they feel. I would most likely use the "e" shift consistently and be perfectly understood.

The example is meant to demonstrate that whether I say 平 as ping or peng changes the meaning of the sentence. It does not depend on how I feel like it.

Another example: I buy some raisins, and the lady gives me some. I say: 咁多！ If I pronounce "gam3do1", I say "That's so much!". If I pronounce "gam3doe1", I say "That's so little!".

(Yes, contrived. Almost always the former is used. But both can be.)

I definitely read that as "gam3 do1". I never heard "doe1" for this character, there is always something more to learn ;).

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