Hong-Kong Protests

horse said:

B N O 4 5 4 1 4 = 死 唔 死 必 死 也。 哎呀！唔點啦！唔點啦！

That would be the way I would deconstruct it.




edit,
(note that 必 also is 一定 and it has the up/enter tone, so that kind of ties that in, if we want to get more linguistic about it, okay, I shut up now).

Ai ya!

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let's be off topic a little bit further , how do you spell Cantonese pronunciation of 1? And 必? I am just puzzled how are they sounding similar.

taxiya said:

let's be off topic a little bit further , how do you spell Cantonese pronunciation of 1? And 必? I am just puzzled how are they sounding similar.

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1 is yaut
必 is biut (the up sound or enter sound)

(but you know, in my rural dialect, it is perfect rhyme, hehe)

gatekeeper is right, it is funnier with "14" instead of "1" "4"

taxiya said:

I grow up in Beijing from a young age, but not native, so I speak 99% standard Mandarin. Beijing natives speak 90% standard. Born in the west, so I also understand Central Plain Mandarin.

Bragging aside, I must admit that the Cantonese part was just my very wild guessing according to my limited experience.

So from Cantonese to Mandarin "sub" is "shi"/10, "sei" is "si"/4. Although I can imagine "sub" being 10 because Cantonese does not have the "sh" sound so "sh" is substituted by "s", but how could "sub" to be must, what character is it? Translation by @horse is "必" which is "Bi" in Mandarin, how would you pronounce "必" in Cantonese to something close to "sub" with the S?

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Hi, taxiya. I'm a Malaysian Chinese, with a Cantonese ancestry, and I usually talk among friends and family in Cantonese although with strong Malaysian "characteristics", so what I say might not be considered authoritative, but here is my take on this:

Breakdown of "B N O 4 5 4 1 4"

BNO = BNO (self explanatory)

454 (sei, m/ng, sei) = 死 唔 死 (sei, m/ng, sei)? (question mark is assumed; meaning "dead or not"/"to be dead or not")

14 (sap, sei; used in the sense of fourteen) = 實 死 (sat, sei; 實 here means "sure to be")

實 & 十 (ten) has slightly different pronunciation, as one ends with a "t", and the other ends with a "p".

必 is pronounced as "bit" in Cantonese, with a "t" ending.


Haha, just in good fun.

Shaolian said:

14 (sap, sei; used in the sense of fourteen) = 實 死 (sat, sei; 實 here means "sure to be")

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@taxiya @horse

Shaolian is right. When I said 'must'. It's a implied 'must'. It is 'sure to be'. But to all Cantonese, 'sure to be' because it's so sure. It then lead to a 'must be. Lol.

Hope that's clear. I ping Ying 實 to be 'Sub' whereas @Shaolian ping Ying it as 'sap'. Neither is satisfactory to my mind. It's difficult to romantised that word 實 in Cantonese.

Gatekeeper said:

@taxiya @horse

Shaolian is right. When I said 'must'. It's a implied 'must'. It is 'sure to be'. But to all Cantonese, 'sure to be' because it's so sure. It then lead to a 'must be. Lol.

Hope that's clear. I ping Ying 實 to be 'Sub' whereas @Shaolian ping Ying it as 'sap'. Neither is satisfactory to my mind. It's difficult to romantised that word 實 in Cantonese.

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實 (solid, surely, must be) in Jyutping (Cantonese romanization) is "sat", but for the lay person I'd say it sounds like the English word "shut" but without the "h". Maybe something like the "Sut" in the English surname of "Sutton".

十 (ten) in Jyutping is "sap", which is close/exactly like "sub" in English.

Haha, yeah, it's an implied "must". When we say it, we just know it

Shaolian said:

實 (solid, surely, must be) in Jyutping (Cantonese romanization) is "sat", but for the lay person I'd say it sounds like the English word "shut" but without the "h". Maybe something like the "Sut" in the English surname of "Sutton".

十 (ten) in Jyutping is "sap", which is close/exactly like "sub" in English.

Haha, yeah, it's an implied "must". When we say it, we just know it

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Glad to have a fellow Cantonese speaker here. As you said. When we say it. We just know it.

I still have trouble with the real pronunciation of 實. In my mind, it sound more like suck but without the 'ck' bit. But hey I'm not a linguist.

I still have my father's but from when he arrived in England. Is titled (I can't type in Chinese on my new phone as I've down loaded the necessary software, so please bear with me). It roughly translated as English without seeking help.

In it, it's got the word in English father and the Chinese pronunciation as 'flower beat.' I hope you get what I meant. Lol and 'mother' as horse beat.

You can see the difficulties in both Cantonese to English and visa versa . Lol

KYli said:

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Excellent, long overdue!

@Shaolian, @Gatekeeper , @horse

Thank you all for the good lessons. So the trick I missed was "實" or "实" in simplified character. It makes much sense to Mandarin speaker because it means "sure" which also sounds as "shi" in Mandarin and close to "sai" in Cantonese. It was however impossible for Mandarin speaker to realize that without being reminded by Cantonese speaker because we don't use 實 in the same way, but 必 or 一定 instead. So it was less of a pronunciation failure of me, but more a sort of "grammar, phrase expression" difference.

A good example is the word "还", pronounced as "hai" in Mandarin, in the standard Mandarin it is used as "also, as well", but in Nanjing dialect (used to be the base of ROC standard Mandarin) it is used as "a question like yes/or, is it?, are you? have you?" which is expressed by "有没有?" in the north.

It is about time to reform RTHK. As a government funded news organization that causing tax payer 1 billion HKD per year, RTHK is one of the most anti-China news outlets in HK