Learn to read Cantonese
A short, active path into reading Cantonese: see how a character is built out of a meaning half and a sound half, learn the sixty characters a fable runs on, meet the grammar words 係 唔 嘅 咗 that mark written Cantonese out from Mandarin, and read a short story before opening your first book.
Script reference: strokes, marks and the simplified question
- Open this when a stroke count, a punctuation mark or a strange-looking character stops you.
- Strokes go top to bottom and left to right, and that order is what a dictionary counts.
- Cantonese books use Traditional characters; mainland Mandarin books use Simplified, and some characters differ a lot.
- Cantonese has characters no Mandarin text uses at all, and most of them carry a 口 on the left.
- A Cantonese page uses 。 for a full stop, ， for a comma and 「 」 around speech.
Nothing here is needed to finish the path. Open it when a mark or a shape stops you, and walk past it otherwise. Stroke order matters for writing and for looking a character up by hand; for reading, it matters only in that it explains why two characters that look alike are counted apart.
The marks on a Cantonese page
| Mark | What it does |
|---|---|
| 。 | a full stop — a small hollow circle sitting in its own square |
| ， | a comma, also full-width |
| 、 | a list comma, used between items in a list and nowhere else |
| 「 」 | corner brackets, where English uses quotation marks: somebody is speaking |
| ？ | a question mark, though a Cantonese question often has a question word and no mark |
| 《 》 | around the title of a book or a film |
Traditional and Simplified, side by side
| Traditional | Simplified | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 見gin3 | 见 | see |
| 樹syu6 | 树 | tree |
| 風fung1 | 风 | wind |
| 飲jam2 | 饮 | drink |
| 問man6 | 问 | ask |
| 門mun4 | 门 | door, gate |
Cantonese books, and every Cantonese book in this library, use the Traditional column. The Simplified column is here so that a character you meet elsewhere does not look like a different language.
Characters that only written Cantonese uses
- 嘅of, ’sge3我嘅貓ngo5 ge3 maau1“my cat”
- 喺at, inhai2喺山上hai2 saan1 soeng6“on the hill”
- 咗already donezo2走咗zau2 zo2“left, went away”
- 冇have notmou5It is 有 “have” with its two inner strokes taken out — the having has been emptied.冇水mou5 seoi2“there is no water”
- 嘢thingje5食嘢sik6 je5“eat something”
- 佢he, she, itkeoi5佢哋keoi5 dei6“they”
- 哋the plural mark on a pronoundei6我哋ngo5 dei6“we”
- 啲a bit; somedi1好啲hou2 di1“a bit better”
- 嚟comelai4嚟屋企lai4 uk1 kei2“come home”
- 瞓sleepfan3瞓咗fan3 zo2“fell asleep”
- 搵look for, findwan2搵水wan2 seoi2“look for water”
- 畀givebei2畀我bei2 ngo5“give me”
Notice how many carry 口 on the left. When Cantonese needed characters for its own spoken words, it built them by putting a mouth beside a character that sounded roughly right — so a mouth on the left is a fair signal that you are looking at a word Mandarin does not have.
More meaning pieces
- 女womanabout women and family媽maa1“mother”
- 日sun, dayabout light and time時si4“time”
- 月moon — or fleshabout months, and confusingly also about the bodyTwo moons side by side make “friend”.朋友pang4 jau5“friend”
- 火 灬fireabout fire, heat and cookingUnderneath a character it flattens into four sparks.煙jin1“smoke”
- 土earthabout soil, ground and places地dei6“ground, land”
- 金metal, goldabout metal and money銀ngan4“silver”
- 田fieldabout farmland, and it hides inside many characters as pure shapeA field divided into four plots by its ditches.男naam4“man”
- 艸 艹grassabout plants, and it sits as a lid on topTwo blades of grass poking up over the character.花faa1“flower”
- 雨rainabout weather雪syut3“snow”
- 山mountainabout hills山saan1“hill”
These sit alongside the ones in the character section. Together they cover a large share of the characters in an ordinary book.