Yale romanization of Cantonese

Initials

Finals

• Only the finals m and ng can be used as standalone nasal syllables.

Tones

Modern Cantonese has up to seven phonemic tones. Cantonese Yale represents these tones using a combination of diacritics and the letter h. Traditional Chinese linguistics treats the tones in syllables ending with a stop consonant as separate "entering tones". Cantonese Yale follows modern linguistic conventions in treating these the same as the high-flat, mid-flat and low-flat tones, respectively.

Examples

Sample transcription of one of the 300 Tang Poems by Meng Haoran:

Note concerning the jì in the last line of the poem that it is pronounced as high flat here because immediately followed by a tone that begins high and yet that this Romanization's conventions mark it nonetheless as high falling, and the user then needs to remember this rule of tone-sandhi. (Interested readers can confirm this convention by looking at for instance the dictionary by Kwan Choi Wah among the works in the list at bottom below.)

References

References

1. Huang, Parker Po-fei. (1965). "Cantonese Sounds and Tones". Far Eastern Publications, Yale University.
2. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=A3D7CwAAQBAJ The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language]'', p. 40.
3. "Cantonese". Omniglot.
4. "CUHK Teaching Materials".
5. Ng Lam & Chik 2000: 515. "Appendix 3: Tones. The student of Cantonese will be well aware of the importance of tones in conveying meaning. Basically, there are seven tones which, in the Yale system, are represented by the use of diacritics and by the insertion of h for ..."
6. Gwaan 2000: 7. "Basically, there are seven tones which, in the Yale system, are represented by the use of diacritics and by the insertion of h for the three low tones. The following chart will illustrate the seven tones: 3 Mid Level, 1 High Level, 5 Low Falling, 6 Low Level..."