r/Cantonese

I watched some youtube videos of Chinese Malaysians and they not only speak Cantonese or Mandarin but also read and write Chinese very well. Do they have very tight knit communities compared to the US, UK or Canada?

This is the beginning of an entry from the classic medical text Shennong Bencaojing:

丹雄雞：［味］甘，微溫。［主］（女人）崩中，漏下，赤白沃。補虛，溫中， ...

For a discussion in another forum related to this text, I asked an LLM service (Gemini) to provide a literal reading, one-hanzi-to-one-syllable, of that text into modern Cantonese. This is what it produced:

daan1 hung4 gai1 : [mei6] gam1, mei4 wan1. [zyu2] (neoi5 jan4) bang1 zung1, lau6 haa6, cik1 baak6 juk1. bou2 heoi1, wan1 zung1. ...

Then I asked it to make as few changes as possible to make this text grammatically correct Cantonese. It produced

daan1 hung4 gai1: [mei6] gam1, mei4 wan1. [zyu2 jiu3 hai6 ji1] (neoi5 jan4 ge3) bang1 zung1, lau6 haa6, cik1 baak6 juk1. [zung6 ho2 ji5] bou2 heoi1, wan1 zung1, ...

People have questioned these "translations" because they were provided by an LLM, and I was told to verify them with humans. Unfortunately I cannot read Chinese, and I don't speak any Chinese language, including Mandarin and Cantonese. Could someone please tell me whether they are accurate, given the requests I made?...

Thanks in advance, --jorge

My parents don't speak english and aren't very financially literate. I am more knowledgeable about the topic, but I can't translate the reason they should be investing for the life of me.

I was wondering, are there any Cantonese youtube videos that could explain investing in a simple way to my parents?

Thanks!

We live in Canada and both of us (parents) speak Cantonese, but cannot read or write as we grew up in Canada.

We want our toddler to be able to speak both Cantonese and Mandarin in the future and hopefully read/write some Chinese (traditional).

Should we send our 3 year old to Cantonese or Mandarin school? They’re weekly classes.

I was reading Lost Department Stores of Old San Francisco and felt a little forlorn, when all of a sudden this was recommended to me! I hope that videos like these can preserve these little moments of now-bygone times.

A bit of an odd question but I'm second generation Chinese and trying to name our son. I wanted to use 奇 for his third character, but wanted something more neutral in connotation while keeping the same sound (different tones ok). I saw 崎 in an online dictionary and really liked the idea of adding an earth radical to it, but I've only ever seen this character in Japanese Kanji names. I know we share a writing system, but some words I only really see in Japanese Kanji because they're so archaic in Chinese.

Is this word used in Chinese at all, and would it be out of place as a boy's name?

My partner and I are planning to have kids in 1-2 years. We are both CBC and have been living in HK for 8 years now but also considering moving back to Canada.

Primary reason for staying in HK is so they can get local education which would make it easier to be fully trilingual in Cantonese, Mandarin and English (reading and writing).

Has anyone else made a similar decision? How did you decide? We both have family and relatives in HK and Canada. I know cost of living is a big factor, but not the most important issue for us. Any other factors to consider?

Hi everyone, being an ABC in Australia, I don’t really know what my Chinese name means.

Some Cantonese speaker said it means smart and some Shanghainese dude said shake shatter rising or something. 😂😂😂

I just like to understand my name a bit more and see why named me this. TIA. 🙏

wrong tag

It seems like that it went offline on the apple podcast app. Does anyone have an alternative site where it still works or does posses the mp3 files of the podcast? Thanks in advance!

I am a native speaker but nowadays people don’t write songs like this anymore + neither my parents nor friends know these songs

Here are the songs I like:

帝女花 (the opera from 50s)

圓月彎刀

笑看風雲

故鄉的雨

上海灘