Talk:Cantonese phonology

Recent sound mergers

It'd be good to elaborate on this, e.g. does -ing merge into -in for some speakers or do they always remain distinct ([ɪn] vs [iːn])? And what finals exactly undergo -k --> -t? 46.186.37.98 (talk) 00:19, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I think you are referring to "lan yam" or lazy sounds. I think -ɔk is the most prevalent of the rimes that merge -k and -t. I am not sure about merging -ing and -in, but I do know about -ɐng and -ɐn, -ɛng and -ɛn, -ɔng and -ɔn and certainly -ang and -an. I sometimes make these mergers in colloquial speech. But I never merge -ing and -in, or -ʊng and -ʊn. Never gonna give you ^up, never gonna let you _down 21:56, 9 August 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hmanck (talk • contribs)

Cantonese with eleven tones?

Although it is often said to have nine or eleven...

I would like to see some references explaining how Cantonese can be analyzed as having ELEVEN tones. I've sometimes seen scholars suggesting the existence of such analyses, but so far I've failed to find any. I understand an analysis of nine tones (separating the high, mid and low-mid entering tones from their non-entering counterparts) and that of ten tones (acknowledging that some speakers differentiate a high tone from a high-falling tone). But, eleven?--Serafín33 (talk) 20:12, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Must be referring to the 'modified' tones. Worded poorly. We need to specify if these are distinguishable from the other 6, and how. — kwami (talk) 05:36, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Yin and Yang

I think it's inappropriate to say that Yin and Yang tones are called dark and light tones in the article. --95.116.254.100 (talk) 01:21, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Numeric values

Could someone add numeric values for the tones, similar to other Sinitic languages, e.g. 55, 35, 33, 21, 13 and 22 for the six tones, not sure about checked tones. --Anatoli (talk) 01:12, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

General Critique

Overall, this article serves to present the basic segments of Cantonese phonology but lacks citation, clarification and structure. The section entitled “Sound”, which argues the popular but possibly erroneous claims regarding sound distribution, lacks reference to scholarly literature. Furthermore, the definitions are vague or lacking for many key terms, such as “syllables”, “terminals” and “tones”. Lastly, the structure of this article could benefit from an introductory paragraph connecting the subsections and their relation to each other as well as to the basic phonological distribution within the dialect. Perhaps a concluding subsection discussing the presence of these distributions in more depth would also enrich the article. In all, this article is a suitable introduction to the basic features present in Cantonese phonology, but could be improved through additional citations, explanations and organization. Baillie2 (talk) 04:00, 19 September 2014 (UTC)baillie2

Final consonant assimilation

Native speaking here. Not sure if anyone else realizes this, but when a Cantonese speaker pronounces words quickly the final stops (-p, -t, -k) often becomes assimilated to the next consonant, especially if the next consonant is a plosive (or stop consonant). This is similar to the sokoun phenomenon in Japanese. Consider, 日本: in careful speech, Cantonese renders this as (jat pun). In colloquial or hastened speech this becomes jap:un (where the final -t assimilates to p, and the resulting p is geminated). This is similar to the classic Japanese pronunciation of the two characters as Nippon. This rule seems to apply also to -t and dental affricates and fricatives: 一齊 (together; separately: yat tshai, assimilated: yatsh:ai) and (one bamboo, mahjong tile; separately: yat sok, assimilated: yas:ok). Is there research on this? 136.228.180.74 (talk) 15:26, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Palatalization before /i/ and /y/

The article claims that consonants are not palatalized before vowels, but the reference [4] contradicts this. I can't get the full text for the other one, [3] iopq (talk) 17:47, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

For the Zee (1997), see here. I agree that things are changing - Cantonese is palatalising /ts/, /tsh/ and /s/ increasingly. Bauer & Benedict's classic tome also says that there is palatalisation only before the palatalising vowels, but this 2017 study states that the palatalised version has generalised, and attributes it to contact with English. In early 2015, I wrote this answer for StackExchange, but I wonder if it needs to be revised. In any case, the Wikipedia article definitely needs to be edited. Michael Ly (talk) 11:50, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Romanisation

It would be very helpful to map these sounds to the standard romanisations, especially Jyutping, as the article as it is now is very difficult to follow unless one already speaks Cantonese. m.e. (talk) 06:08, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Wrong Figure in Zee (1999)

The image represented in the link is clearly different with the one on webpage. Liuheywing (talk) 09:17, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

They convey the same information. We can't duplicate the exact images unless they're released under a compatible license. Nardog (talk) 09:23, 11 May 2023 (UTC)