There are quite a few resources available for learning spoken Cantonese but i’ve found it difficult to find resources to learn Cantonese grammar.
For example, the sentence “he asked me to send you some photos” is, in my opinion, not a difficult sentence to translate in many languages but it seems particularly difficult in cantonese:
佢叫我 send的畫比你 keui yiu ngoh send dik waak bei nei he + ask + I + send + of + photo + ? + you
I have found this is called the “passive voice” but i don’t understand the sentence order or why/where this “bei” is used.
Does anyone have any good resources for learning cantonese grammar, especially making sentences?
I have read this comment on wiktionary "For pronunciation and definitions of 比 – see 畀 (“(Cantonese) to give; for; to; by; etc.”). (This character, 比, is a variant form of 畀.) ", i asked 2 native speaker friends to translate this sentence and one used 比 and the other used 俾.
I am learning both at the same time, although this seems to not be a good idea! Usually iwth other languages i learn to speak and write at the same time. Definitely there’s more resources for spoken cantonese. The problem is if i want to tell someone something, i have no idea how to write what I want to say…
At the time I learnt English, someone told me that if you’re communicating with a native speaker, the receiver is probably competent to understand what you want to express.
You should not worry too much about writing. If not sure, just use words with the same pronunciation, or even words from other languages, like “d/啲”.
good to know, thank you! i was worrying about how to write what I wanted to say but it sounds like native speakers often use characters that sound like what they’re looking for
I will spend more time on listening and speaking. Thanks for all your help!
There… you won’t see that anymore, as I have actually gone ahead and deleted the etymology from wiktionary. While many (myself included) use 比 in place of 畀 when we feel like it, strictly speaking this substitution is not correct. It is in a way similar to people writing “your going to paint me a picture” instead of “you’re going to paint me a picture”. Very commonly seen, but not correct technically speaking.
would you mind adding it back in that case? Perhaps you could add a note that this is a common mistake by native speakers (in fact, it was a native speaker who used 比 which led to my confusion). As someone learning cantonese, it helps to know what the typical mistakes made by native speakers are.
Nope not gonna do it :)
In Cantonese especially written Cantonese there are quite a number of ambiguities. I can readily think of one other example just like this - "黐"線 and "痴"線. Native speakers would see either of these terms and know the meaning right away (crazy), but it should be written as 黐線 not 痴線.
Again, very commonly seen, but not necessarily correct.
Haven’t checked, but honestly I doubt a lot of these cases are noted in the wiki as “common mistake by native speakers”.
I think the point is - it is probably sufficient for wiki to just contain what is correct. And the more you use the language, the more you will realize there are lots of unspoken rules that adds to the complexity (and beauty) of a language.
this is another helpful example lol