- Official language in
- Hong Kong SAR China, Macao SAR China
- Also spoken in
- China, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Canada, United States
- Script
- Han
Where it's spoken
In Hong Kong SAR China, Chinese and English are the official languages. Hong Kong's census office reports that Cantonese was still the most commonly used language by the Hong Kong population. English is widely used in the Government and by the legal, professional and business sectors.
In Macao SAR China, Chinese and Portuguese are the official languages, while Cantonese is the most widely spoken. According to the Macao Government Tourism Office, English is generally used in trade, tourism and commerce.
A study of Cantonese language technology lists Guangdong and Guangxi among Cantonese-speaking regions, and notes that countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Canada and the United States have a large Cantonese-speaking population.
Sources
- Civil Service Bureau, Government of the Hong Kong SAR — "Official Languages Division" — Chinese and English are the official languages of Hong Kong
- Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong SAR — "2021 Population Census: Use of Language by Hong Kong Population" — §1.2
- Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, Singapore — "Hong Kong At A Glance" — English widely used in Government, legal, professional and business sectors
- Macao Government Tourism Office — "Language" — Official languages; English usage in trade, tourism and commerce
- Jiang, Jiyue; Chen, Pengan; Chen, Liheng; Wang, Sheng; Bao, Qinghang; Kong, Lingpeng; Li, Yu; Wu, Chuan (2025). "How Well Do LLMs Handle Cantonese? Benchmarking Cantonese Capabilities of Large Language Models." arXiv:2408.16756v3 — Appendix A.1 Table 7; §1 Introduction
Script & pronunciation
This app's cards write Cantonese in Chinese characters. The Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, developed from a Government character set that supplemented the Big-5 character set, includes characters used in the Cantonese dialect.
The romanization on this app's cards uses Jyutping, the Cantonese romanization scheme designed and proposed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong. In Jyutping, a tone number from 1 to 6 appears at the end of each syllable, as in 你好 (nei5 hou2, "Hello").
Sources
- Digital Policy Office, Government of the Hong Kong SAR (Common Chinese Language Interface) — "What is Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS)" — HKSCS developed from GCCS to supplement Big-5; includes Cantonese-dialect characters
- The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong — "Jyutping Cantonese Romanization Scheme" — Scheme designed and proposed by LSHK; tone numbers 1–6
Grammar essentials
A yes/no question can be formed by adding a question particle such as maa3 to the end of a statement, as in 你好嗎？ (nei5 hou2 maa3?, "How are you?"). A yes/no question can also be formed by repeating the verb (or adjective) with the negation marker m4 in between, a so-called A-not-A question, as in 你識唔識講英文？ (nei5 sik1 m4 sik1 gong2 jing1 man2?, "Do you speak English?"). The particle maa3 is not used in A-not-A questions.
In spoken Cantonese, the negation markers m4 ("not") and mou5 ("have not") come before the verb, as in 我唔明 (ngo5 m4 ming4, "I don't understand") and 我冇訂位 (ngo5 mou5 deng6 wai2, "I don't have a reservation").
Sources
- Kuong, Io-Kei Joaquim (2008). "Yes/no Question Particles Revisited: The Grammatical Functions of mo4, me1, and maa3." Proceedings of the 20th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics (NACCL-20), Vol. 2, pp. 715–733, The Ohio State University — pp.716–717 (question particles; A-not-A questions); p.721 §4.1 (preverbal negation)
Politeness & etiquette
Hong Kong Cantonese has two phrases, 唔該 (m4 goi1) and 多謝 (do1 ze6), that can both be translated as "thank you"; in some situations it is clear which of the two to use, while in others both can be used. This app's cards use 唔該 (m4 goi1) to thank someone for a service and 多謝 (do1 ze6) for a gift or favour. This app's cards also use 唔該 (m4 goi1) for "Please" and for "Excuse me" when getting someone's attention.