There are two words for 'two' in Cantonese.
The first is Yih, which I spelled as Ee in the previous post. On hindsight, Yih is the better spelling and that is what I will use from now on. The second word is Leung, which also means two. Which one to use and when is the tricky part.
It's pronounced almost like lung (your organ for breathing), with just a soupçon of a short 'e' before the 'ung'. Remember that Cantonese is a monosyllabic language. All words have only one syllable, so you do not pronounce Leung as Le-ung (two syllables). It's one smooth trip from the L to the g. Leung.
An aside: if you don't know what the word soupçon means, look it up in the dictionary. Or better yet, see the movie Sideways. It's a pretentious word, no matter who uses it, so let's use it.
According to one resource I'm using, you use leung when you mean two and exactly two. For example, last night I bought some spring onions and I asked the vendor: Gei chin ah?. She replied leung man. Two dollars.
The same resource says that you use yih when the number two is used as part of a larger number. The number 12 is composed of two digits (1 and 2), therefore, you use yih here. We haven't tackled numbers above 10, but 12 in Cantonese is sap yih (not sap leung).
I'm not sure that that is all there is. I'm pretty certain I have encountered cases where that rule is irrelevant. But since my initial goal is to be functional in the language, and not to be a linguist, I'll use that simple rule for the meantime, until I encounter and understand an exception. We'll cross that bridge then.
Next: Graduate level Cantonese - counting from 11 to 20, and beyond.
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