Concluding Dollars and Cents

Cantonese makes it really easy to be functional with numbers and amounts. We just have to memorize 13 words and a couple of simple rules for saying out numbers.

We do encounter special cases, occassionally, and I'm hoping the language will not get back at us somehow by flooding us with dozens of special cases.

Here's an example. For some reason, $10.1 is not sap go yat as the pattern for all other values logically leads us to assume. When we want to say $10.1 (or $10.2, or $10.3, etc.), we have to say the equivalent of 'ten zero and two' instead of just 'ten and two.'

Her's another special case. This time it concerns the amount $20. In street language, and that means any informal restaurant, small shops, and certainly the wet market, the Cantonese use yaah man to mean $20 instead of yih sap man.

You don't need to use this colloquialism, and you can just stick with yih sap man and you will be understood. But you do want to know about it because they will use it on you.

To pronounce yaah man, just imagine how a Chinese person might sound when trying to imitate a thick-accented Jamaican saying 'yeah, man'.

Here are some $20-odd dollar amounts in street language:

• $20 - yaah man
  
• $21 - yaah yat (man) [the man is optional]
  
• $29 - yaah gau (man)

That's not difficult. So far, Cantonese numbers and amounts seem tameable, and I'm beginning to think it's possible to distill the rules to just a few working ones, and that's what I'm going to do now.

Here's our first attempt at a distillation:

1. To say an amount in dollars, just say the amount as a number, and add man at the end:

• $10 - sap man
• $34 - sam sap man

2. To say an amount that consists of dollars and cents, say goh between the dollars and the cents. And remember, the cents should be expressed in terms of tens of cents.

• $12.10 - sap yih go yat man (ten two one)
• $153.70 - yat baak m sap sam go chat man (yat baak = one hundred, m sap = 50, sam = 3, chat = 7)

3. Special case: when the amount is $10.xx you say sap leng go xx(10 and 0) instead of sap go xx or yat sap go xx.

• $10.30 - sap leng go sam
• $10.50 - sap leng go m
  

4. Special case: in street language, $20 is more often referred to as yaah man instead of yih sap man.

Just four rule, which represent our 'survival' kit.

They absolutely do not cover the whole spectrum of how to say any and all amounts in Cantonese, but they cover probably 95% of what you need to understand and %95 of what we need to use. They won't be enough when we try to buy a Rolls-Royce costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, but that doesn't happen often.

We'll stick with these four rules for now and revise them if we encounter cases that confound our rules.

Next: Is Hong Kong rude?