Jyutping - a simple and professional Cantonese Romanization

What is Jyutping?

The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme, or known as Jyutping, was designed and proposed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong in 1993. Jyutping is a new Cantonese romanization system which has many advantages. It is multifunctional, systematic, user-friendly, compatible with all possible modern Cantonese sounds, and solely based on alphanumeric characters without any diacritics and strange symbols. Jyutping can also be used as a Chinese computer input method. Its basic principles are simple, easy to learn, and professional.

Guide to Jyutping

1. Introduction

Jyutping reflects features of the following schemes: Yale Romanization, International Phonetic Alphabet, and Hanyu Pinyin. Below is a full explanation of all the letters used in Jyutping. It is recommended that you use this guide as a reference whenever transliterating Cantonese pronunciation.

2. The Jyutping Alphabet

The key to understanding Jyutping is that each letter or each group of letters represents only one particular sound. In English, a letter can represent many different sounds, for example: The vowel sounds in "bear", "lair", "care" are all the same, despite the fact that they are all spelt with different vowel letters. Also, the "a" in "cat", is definitely not the same sound as the "a" in "far", or "share". In Jyutping, each letter or each group of letters stands for one sound only. Just remember this: If it rhymes, then it should be spelt similarly. For example: sau (hand), hau (mouth), gau (nine), zau (to go), all rhyme with each other, so therefore they all use the "au" ending.

2.1 The Initial Sounds

b, c, d, f, g, gw, h, j, k, kw, l, m, n, ng, p, s, t, w, z

As for the consonants, most of the consonants should be fairly easy for an English speaker to pronounce, except for c, j and z. Examples of all sounds will be provided. In total there are 19 consonant sounds. Similar consonant sounds have been grouped together.

2.2 The Final Sounds

In all, Cantonese has 56 distinct final sounds that are composed of 54 compound finals and 2 syllabic nasals (m, ng). The compound finals are formed by combining 9 nuclei (aa, a, e, eo, oe, i, o, u, yu) with 8 endings (i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k).

The p, t, and k endings end in a clipped sound. This means that these endings are never actually aspirated (air is not released from your mouth at the end of the word). Note that this is very different from English, where the p, t, and k endings are usually aspirated.

Below are examples of all the final sounds.

2.2.1 Nucleus aa - aa, aai, aau; aam, aan, aang; aap, aat, aak

2.2.2 Nucleus a - ai, au; am, an, ang; ap, at, ak

2.2.3 Nucleus e - e, ei, eu; em, eng; ep, ek

2.2.4 Nucleus eo - eoi; eon; eot

2.2.5 Nucleus oe - oe; oeng; oek

2.2.5 Nucleus i - i, iu; im, in, ing; ip, it, ik

2.2.6 Nucleus o - o, oi, ou; on, ong; ot, ok

2.2.7 Nucleus u - u, ui; un, ung; ut, uk

2.2.8 Nucleus yu - yu; yun; yut

2.2.9 Syllabic Nasals - m, ng

3. Cantonese Tones

Tones are related to music. When you say "do re mi fa so la ti do" the tone rises each word up. In Chinese languages like Cantonese, tones are important in conveying meaning. Mandarin has 4 tones, Shanghainese has 5 and Teochew 6. Cantonese has 6 tones. If you think that is a lot, it is really not. It is actually easy for intuitive Cantonese speakers.

It many help to envision these tones drawn out in a diagram. The white horizontal lines show pitch levels, while the blue lines show tones.

In representing the tones, the corresponding tone number can be written after each syllable as a superscript, e.g. seoi² 水 (water), haang⁴ 行 (to walk), gwai³ 貴 (expensive), and goek³ 腳 (foot). Pronounce a word listed next to each tone and then look at the corresponding tone diagram.

Here are two examples to give you a clear idea of the differences between the 6 tones:

fu¹ fu², fu³, fu⁴, fu⁵, fu⁶
夫 (husband), 苦 (bitter), 富 (rich), 扶 (to lean), 婦 (woman), 父 (father)
si¹ si², si³, si⁴, si⁵, si⁶
詩 (poem), 史 (history), 試 (to try), 時 (time), 市 (city), 事 (event)

4. References

• GagiNang.org by the Teochiu Organization
• A Chinese-Cantonese Syllabary
• Cantonese in Singapore by Eugene Chua, Eugene Koh, Esther Leng and Audrey Tan