cantonese tuesdays

Cantonese has a few loanwords borrowed from English that have slipped into everyday usage. The best example is probably 的士 (dik si) for “taxi”, hence people saying 打的 (da di) for “hail a cab” as far north as Beijing. Chinglish is also pretty standard, especially among trendy teenagers and work colleagues, who might say “Send个email卑我啦” (send go email bei ngo laa) for “send me an email”.

But the biggest number of loanwords has to be for imported foods. The south of China is stereotyped for its fondness of eating everything from snake to civet cat, but we’ve embraced imported food too.

Ed: Our August season of Cantonese posts, from the lovely Rosalyn S, will be your open sesame to that mysterious and impregnable “other Chinese” (the “funnier sounding” one, according to Russell Peters). We begin with the tricky question of just how many tones it has anyway …

There’s a running joke among Cantonese speakers. If we can’t decide how many tones we use, what hope is there for outsiders?

There are six main tones, from high to low to those that wiggle in between.