Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanisation / 香港政府式粵語拼音方案


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 a 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.

Contents

[hide]
1 Usage
2 Spelling
2.1 Consonants
2.2 Vowels, diphthongs, and syllabic consonants
3 Pronunciation in English
3.1 Initial consonants
3.2 Final consonants
3.3 Vowels, diphthongs, and consonants
4 See also
5 External links
[edit] Usage

The Hong Kong Government adopts the Eitel/Dyer-Ball system of romanization, which is based on the spoken Cantonese language. It was first adopted in 1960 to standardize the romanization of placenames throughout Hong Kong (the standardized placenames were published in the 1960 government publication A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, Hong Kong. Prior to this 1960 publication, there was no standard, consistent way of romanizing names of places in the territory, which, predictably, often led to confusion. Since then, the romanization system has been extended to the names of local Chinese, which gives romanized Hong Kong Chinese names a distinctive character.

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'.

[edit] Spelling

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 [a] and short vowel [ɐ] are omitted like Fat (發, [fat]) and Fat (佛, [fɐt]).

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.)

[edit] Consonants

Initials

IPA Jyutping Romanisation Example in Chinese
pʰ p p Sai Ying Pun 西營盤
p b p Po Lam 寶琳
tʰ t t Tuen Mun 屯門
t d t Tai O 大澳
kʰ k k Kai Tak 啟德
k g k Tai Kok Tsui 大角嘴
kʷʰ kw kw Kwai Chung 葵涌
kʷ gw kw Cha Kwo Ling 茶果嶺
m m m Yau Ma Tei 油麻地
n n n Nam Cheong 南昌
ŋ ng ng Ngau Tau Kok 牛頭角
l l l Lam Tin 藍田
f f f Fo Tan 火炭
s s s So Kon Po 掃捍埔
sh Shau Kei Wan 筲箕灣
h h h Hang Hau 坑口
j j y Yau Tong 油塘
w w w Wong Tai Sin 黃大仙
tsʰ c ch Heng Fa Chuen 杏花邨
ts Yau Yat Tsuen 又一村
ts z ts Tsim Sha Tsui 尖沙嘴
Finals

IPA Jyutping Romanisation Example in Chinese
-p -p -p Ap Lei Chau 鴨脷洲
-t -t -t Tsat Tsz Mui 七姊妹
-k -k -k Shek O 石澳
-m -m -m Sham Shui Po 深水埗
-n -n -n Tsuen Wan 荃灣
-ŋ -ng -ng Tsing Yi 青衣
[edit] Vowels, diphthongs, and syllabic consonants

IPA Jyutping Romanisation Example in Chinese
aː aa a Ma Tau Wai 馬頭圍
ah Wah Fu Estate 華富邨
ɐ a a Tsz Wan Shan 慈雲山
o Hung Hom 紅磡
u Sham Chun River 深圳河
ɛː/e e e Che Kung Miu 車公廟
iː/ɪ i i Lai Chi Kok 荔枝角
ze Sheung Sze Wan 相思灣
z Tung Tsz 洞梓
ee Tat Chee Avenue 達之路
ɔː/o o o Wo Che 禾輋
uː/ʊ u u Kwu Tung 古洞
oo Mei Foo 美孚
œː eo eu Sheung Wan 上環
eo Nam Cheong Street 南昌街
ɵ oe u Shun Lee Estate 順利邨
yː yu yu Yu Chau Street 汝州街
u Kau U Fong 九如坊
ue Yung Shue Wan 榕樹灣
aːi aai ai Chai Wan 柴灣
ɐi ai ai Mai Po 米埔
aːu aau au Shau Kei Wan 筲箕灣
ɐu au au Sau Mau Ping 秀茂坪
ei ei ei Lei Yue Mun 鯉魚門
ee Lee On 利安
ay Kam Hay Court 錦禧苑
ai Shui Hau Sai Ngan Ma 水口四眼馬
i To Li Terrace 桃李台
iːu iu iu Siu Sai Wan 小西灣
ɔːi oi oi Choi Hung Estate 彩虹邨
oy Choy Yee Bridge 蔡意橋
uːi ui ui Pui O 貝澳
ɵy eoi ui Ma Liu Shui 馬料水
ou ou o Tai Mo Shan 大帽山
m̩ m
ŋ̩ ng ng Ng Fan Chau 五分州[1]
^ The standard pronunciation of 五 is [ŋ̩]. However, a more common pronuniation in Hong Kong is [m̩] and many [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.
[edit] 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:

[edit] 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 /n/.)
The sound sh is pronounced as English sh (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: /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 /s/ or /z/ even among the Chinese.
[edit] Final consonants

The letters p, t, k are pronounced as in English.
[edit] Vowels, diphthongs, and consonants

The letter a, when followed by a consonant, is pronounced /æ/ as in English
The letter a is to be pronounced /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 /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 /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 /ʌ/ (e.g., in Canada)
The letter u (when after y) or the digraph ue is pronounced /y/ as in Cantonese (which can be produced from lip-rounded /i/); however, as this sound does not exist in English, it may end up being pronounced /u/ (e.g., in Canada)
The diphthong ui is to be pronounced a diphthong /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 /uːiː/, as in ooey.
The syllabic consonant m and ng are pronounced as in Cantonese. These sounds do not exist in English. Many Hong Kong locals do not distinguish [m̩] and [ŋ̩]. This results in a phonological shift in Hong Kong Cantonese that sees a merge of [ŋ̩] into [m̩]. In fact, articulation is the only way to distinguish the surnames 伍 [m̩] and 吳 [ŋ̩] in Hong Kong speech. Both are anglicised as Ng, and appear as "wu" in Mandarin. Note that the standard pronunciation of 伍 is actually [ŋ̩] and it appears its phonologic shift has occurred "faster" than 吳.
[edit] See also

List of common Chinese surnames shows how they are romanised in this scheme.
[edit] External links

粵語拼盤: Learning the phonetic system of Cantonese
Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK)
Jyutping Pronunciation Guide

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_ ... manisation