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Learn about tone changes
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Hi everyone. |
Welcome to The Ultimate Cantonese Pronunciation Guide. |
In this lesson, you'll learn about tone changes in Cantonese. |
You'll need to be familiar with Cantonese tones before starting this lesson. If you haven't mastered them yet, go back to our previous lesson to learn about the tones in Cantonese. |
When two or more characters are next to each other, the original tonal pronunciation of some characters may change. |
Jyutping is quite useful for transcribing Cantonese, but it isn't a perfect system. Jyutping only reflects the original tone of a character, so it normally doesn't account for any tone changes. Keep in mind that we'll represent the tone change in Jyutping, but only for demonstration purposes. |
Are you ready? Then let's get started! |
UPLIFTING OF LOW TONES IN 2 SYLLABLE COMPOUND WORDS |
This rule applies to two-syllable compound words, and is by far the most common of all tone change rules. |
First, consider these two examples. |
角落 (gok3 lok6) |
The first character is pronounced with the third tone, a mid tone, |
角 (gok3) |
while the second is pronounced with the sixth tone, a low tone. |
落 (lok6) |
These two characters can form a two-syllable compound word, so let's put them together. |
角落 (pronounce incorrectly - gok3 lok6) |
Unfortunately, this pronunciation is incorrect. If the second character in a two-syllable compound word is a low tone, it will typically be uplifted to one of the higher tones, either tone 1 or 2. |
In this scenario, the correct pronunciation for this compound word requires us to change the tone of the second character, from a low tone, tone 6, to a higher tone, tone 1. |
角落 (pronounce correctly - gok3 lok1) |
What about these two characters? |
荷蘭 (ho4 laan1) |
Together, they form a compound word. |
荷蘭 (incorrectly - ho4 laan4) |
Factoring in the tone change rule will give us the correct pronunciation for the word "Holland" in Cantonese. |
荷蘭 (pronounce correctly - ho4 laan1) |
UPLIFTING OF LOW TONES TO MODIFY MEANING |
Tone changes are sometimes made to modify the meaning of concepts that are alike. |
咁大 (gam3 daai6) |
Changing a low tone to tone 1, can add an inferior quality to the original concept |
咁大 (gam3 daai1) |
Or sometimes a trivial quality... |
靚仔 (leng3 jai2) "handsome guy" |
靚仔 (leng1 jai2) "(naughty) teenage boy" |
Changing a low tone to a tone 2, will alter the meaning of the original concept slightly. |
糖 (tong4) "sugar" |
糖 (tong2) "candy" |
皮 (pei4) "skin" |
皮 (pei2) "leather" |
頭 (tau4) "head" |
頭 (tau2) "chief" |
Familial nouns |
Tone changes also occur to familial nouns. |
Familial nouns require you to change the tone of both characters. |
The first syllable dips to tone 4, while the second syllable is lifted to either tone 1 or 2. |
爸爸 (incorrectly - baa1 baa1) |
爸爸 (baa4 baa1) |
哥哥 (incorrectly - go1 go1) |
哥哥 (go4 go1) |
弟弟 (incorrectly - dai6 dai6) |
弟弟 (dai4 dai2) |
妹妹 (incorrectly - mui6 mui6) |
妹妹 (mui4 mui2) |
CHANGING WORDS INTO NOUNS |
And here's the final tone change you'll learn in this lesson. |
For many verbs and a few adjectives and classifiers, changing to tone 2 will change the word into a noun. |
話 (wa6) - to tell |
話 (wa2) - speech |
掃 (sou3) - to sweep |
掃 (sou2) - broom |
犯 (faan6) - to commit a crime |
犯 (faan2) - criminal |
In this lesson, you learned about tone changes in Cantonese. |
In the next lesson, we'll review by testing you on the material that we covered in this series. |
Which tone change is the most difficult for you? Please comment and share your thoughts! |
See you in the next Ultimate Cantonese Pronunciation Guide lesson! |
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