Can3 You1 Read3 This4?

To indicate the tone at which a Cantonese word must be spoken at, linguists have devised ways to mark up English words used to romanise Cantonese words.

To romanise means to spell out a non-English word in using roman characters (i.e., a,b,c,d...etc). That is what we have been doing since our very first posts. When we write, gei chin ah, we are romanising the Cantonese words with roman spellings that we think approximate the actual pronounciation of the Cantonese word. (Cantonese is of course, not natively written using roman characters).

Since tones are critical in Cantonese, a romanisation without any indication of tone is virtually useless.

There are several extant standards for Cantonese romanisation; what we will use is the Lau System. In this system, each of the various tones used in Cantonese are each assigned a number, and the number is appended at the end of each romanised word, so the reader is informed as to which tone the word must be pronounced.

This is an example of romanisation using the Lau system: Gei² chin⁴ ah³?

It's a very simple and effective system. If you know what 2, or 3, or 4 means, then you know which tone to employ.

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Next: Ready your singing voices and clean your ears. Introducing the tones.