Regional varieties of Cantonese

We have regional varieties of English:  Australian, American (with many subvarieties), Indian (South Asian), and so forth.  Cantonese is spread all around the world, especially in Southeast Asia, so it is not surprising that it has also developed its own regional variants.  In this post, we will concentrate on a comparison of Hong Kong and Malaysian Cantonese.

"Lost in communication:  Just because we speak Cantonese doesn’t mean we can understand each other", by Mandy Li, The Hong Konger (16 October 2024)

Mandy Li remembers the first time she worked with a Malaysian colleague:

In Malaysia, a sizeable portion of the population have Cantonese heritage so can speak the language. They also enjoy watching Cantonese dramas. So, when my colleague learned I was from Hong Kong, she naturally switched to Cantonese when speaking to me. I was astonished to find that I could not understand everything she said.

Some terms, such as “做工” (zou6 gung1), which translates to “do work”, I was unsure about, but could guess from the context. Other words completely baffled me.

After we finished lunch one day she asked me, “幾多溝” (gei2 do1 kau1), meaning “how much” in Malaysian Cantonese. In response to my puzzled look, she rephrased it as “幾多囡” (gei2 do1 naam4, with the last word commonly pronounced as leoi3), another common way to ask about the cost of something in Malaysian Cantonese.

This only confused me more. It was only when we clarified in English that she realised that in Hong Kong Cantonese, we say, “幾多錢” (gei2 do1 cin4) [VHM:  this is the only one of the three versions mentioned here that I would understand] when asking “how much”. After a few years – and much shared amusement at our mutual incomprehension – we could finally chat extensively without having to repeatedly ask, “咩話” (what?).

——

me1 waa6-2

1. 1. (Cantonese) pardon; sorry (used to ask someone to repeat something not heard or understood clearly)

      你講咩話？／你讲咩话？ [Guangzhou Cantonese]  ―  nei⁵ gong² me¹ waa^6-2? [Jyutping]  ―  What did you say?

(Wiktionary)

—–

Realizing the significant differences that exist between other varieties of Cantonese and her own Hong Kong Cantonese, the author preemptively tones down the more patently Hong Kong aspect of her own speech:

While I sometimes struggle to understand other people’s Cantonese, I also try to avoid certain things when speaking to Cantonese speakers without a Hong Kong background. Firstly, I try not to mix English and Cantonese, despite it being so ingrained in the Hong Kong way of speaking that many of us no longer notice when we do it. Some argue that it is a bad habit, but I actively avoid it as I worry it might confuse other Cantonese speakers.

Secondly, I refrain from using Hong Kong slang, such as “麥記” (mak6 gei3), which refers to McDonald’s, where “mak6” sounds like “Mc” and “gei3” is an affectionate term for shops in Cantonese.

Now, if we throw Taishanese / Toishanese / Toisanese / Hoisanese / Hoisan-wa (the dominant variety of Cantonese, hence Sinitic, spoken in North American Chinatowns), the level of mutual intelligibility goes down to next to nil.

 

Selected readings

• "Mutual Intelligibility of Sinitic Languages" (3/6/09)
• "Taishan and Chinatown" (2/5/22) — has a nice photograph of New York's Chinatown in 1899

[Thanks to Don Keyser]