Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanisation

The Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanisation ("not" an official name) is the more or less consistent way for romanising Cantonese proper nouns employed by the Hong Kong Government departments and many non-governmental organisations in Hong Kong. It is not known whether there are strict guidelines for the method circulating in the government, or the method has just established itself and become a common practice over time. The system has been widely used by the Hong Kong Government from the very early days of British rule, and has since gone through some changes between the two World Wars.

The convention is similar to the one devised by Ernst Johann Eitel, which is likely German-based.

Since the method is not standardised, Hong Kong Education and Manpower Bureau has approved Standard Cantonese Pinyin system for teachers in primary and secondary schools. Besides this, Linguistic Society of Hong Kong promotes their own Jyutping system. Both schemes are employed by the government to illustrate accurate pronunciation of Cantonese words.

This article illustrate and explain how the proper nouns in Hong Kong are transcribed and romanised, and the corresponding pronunciations of the spellings with respect to IPA and Jyutping. IPA notice

Usage

It is used in romanising names of people, when the applicant does not produce one by her/himself, and geographical names, for places which do not have an English name.

For place names, the type of the place in English (e.g., "Street" and "Road") are often used instead of a romanization (which would have been "Kai" and "Lo" in the previous example), with just a handful of rare exceptions (for example, the “Fong” in “Lan Kwai Fong”, which would have been a “Square” if a translation were used). "Wan" and "Bay", "Tsuen" (or "Chuen") and "Estate" (or "Village"), are, however, equally common. Some places, such as "Un Long", was later renamed as "Yuen Long" according to this standard, with the exception "Un Chau Estate" / "Un Chau Street Estate". Nonetheless, the names "Hong Kong" and "Kowloon" are not transliterated based on this system, as they were already named as such prior to the founding of the colony.

When the romanisations are spoken in an English conversation, they are pronounced in a somewhat anglicised manner. All words are consistently pronounced in tone equivalent to the Yin Ping tone or tone 1. A good everyday example is the broadcast of station names on MTR trains.

Some instant messaging users, having problem to type in Chinese characters, model this rule of romanisation for communication but they use voiced consonants instead of voiceless unaspirated, such as using 'b', 'd' or 'g' where this system may have used 'p', 't' or 'k'.

pelling

It is not a fully standardised system, and many of the phonemes correspond to more than one letter combination, or the other way round. All tones are omitted. Distinctions between aspirated and unaspirated stops are also omitted. The distinctions between long vowel [IPA|a] and short vowel [IPA|ɐ] are omitted like Fat (發, [fIPA|at] ) and Fat (佛, [fIPA|ɐt] ).

Some of the inconsistencies are due to a distinction that has been lost historically (a distinction between palatal and alveolar sounds, viz. "ch" versus "ts", "sh" versus "s", and "j" versus "z"). These consonants are no longer distinguished in present-day speech.

Under the following table, geographical names are used to illustrate. (Biographical names are not used as people have the right to decide how their names be romanised, although the same rule usually applies.)

Consonants

Initials
* The standard pronunciation for 五 is [IPA|ŋ̩] . However, a more common pronuniation in Hong Kong is [IPA|m̩] and many [IPA|ŋ̩] words are merging with it. The only word that was originally pronounced as m̩ is "唔 (not)", and it is not used in place names.

Pronunciation in English

The romanized words are normally pronounced in a somewhat anglicized way, with the following characteristics which are different than what the above discussion on spelling might indicate:

Initial consonants

*The letters p, t, k, plus the combinations kw and ts, are normally aspirated as per English; some English speakers in Hong Kong (including radio announcers) may choose to pronounce them unaspirated if the original Cantonese sounds are known to be unaspirated.
*The sound ng is pronounced as in Cantonese; however, because initial nasal consonants do not occur in English, English speakers usually have difficulty with them. (It is possible for it to be mispronounced as IPA|/n/.)
*The sound sh is pronounced as English sh (IPA: IPA|/ʃ/), despite such a sound being absent from Cantonese.
*The sound ts is to be pronounced as English ts (German z), but in practice might be pronounced as English ch (IPA: IPA|/tʃ/); however, because this sound does not normally occur at the initial position in English, English speakers will have difficulty pronouncing the sound. In Canada, ts is usually mispronounced as a simple IPA|/s/ or /z/ even among the Chinese.

Final consonants

*The letters p, t, k are pronounced as in English.

Vowels, diphthongs, and consonants

*The letter a, when followed by a consonant, is pronounced IPA|/æ/ as in English
*The letter a is to be pronounced IPA|/a/ elsewhere; however, English speakers not familiar with the romanization (e.g., Canadians) may pronounce it differently according to English pronunciation rules, for example ai as IPA|/ei/.
*The letter u is to be pronounced as in German (i.e., like oo as in foot in English); before a consonant, English speakers not familiar with the romanization (e.g., Canadians) may pronounce it as IPA|/ʌ/ as in English.
*The digraph eu is to be pronounced as in Cantonese (i.e., like "er" of "her" in English English); however, as this sound does not exist in English, it may end up being pronounced as IPA|/ʌ/ (e.g., in Canada)
*The letter u (when after y) or the digraph ue is pronounced IPA|/y/ as in Cantonese (which can be produced from lip-rounded IPA|/i/); however, as this sound does not exist in English, it may end up being pronounced as IPA|/u/ (e.g., in Canada)
*The diphthong ui is to be pronounced a diphthong IPA|/ɵy/ (e.g., similar to the diphthong denoted by "öy" in Finnish or "ui" in Dutch); however, as this sound does not exist in English, it may end up being pronounced as a succession of two vowels IPA|/u:i:/, as in "ooey".
*The syllabic consonant m and ng are pronounced as in Cantonese. However, as these sound do not exist in English, English speakers will have difficulty pronouncing it. Even many Hong Kong locals and Mandarin speakers (syllabic consonants are rare in Mandarin) have trouble distinguishing [IPA|m̩] and [IPA|ŋ̩] . This results in a phonological shift in Hong Kong Cantonese that sees a merge of [IPA|ŋ̩] into [IPA|m̩] . In fact, articulation is the only way to distinguish the surnames 伍 [IPA|m̩] and 吳 [IPA|ŋ̩] in Hong Kong speech. Both are anglicised as Ng, and appear as "wu" in Mandarin. Note that the Standard Cantonese pronunciation for 伍 is actually [IPA|ŋ̩] and it appears its phonologic shift has occurred "faster" than 吳.

ee also

*List of common Chinese surnames shows how they are romanised in this scheme.
*Standard Cantonese

External links

* [http://input.foruto.com/ccc/jyt/ 粵語拼盤] : Learning the phonetic system of Cantonese
* [http://www.lshk.org/ Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK)]
* [http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/essays/jyutping.htm Jyutping Pronunciation Guide]