The Yale romanization of Cantonese was developed by Gerard P. Kok for his and Parker Po-fei Huang's textbook ''Speak Cantonese'' initially circulated in looseleaf form in 1952 but later published in 1958. Unlike the

Yale romanization of Mandarin The Yale romanization of Mandarin is a system for transcribing the sounds of Standard Chinese, based on Mandarin Chinese varieties spoken in and around Beijing. It was devised in 1943 by the Yale sinologist George Kennedy for a course teaching C ...

, it is still widely used in books and dictionaries, especially for foreign learners of

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding ar ...

. It shares some similarities with

Hanyu Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...

in that unvoiced, unaspirated

consonants In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...

are represented by letters traditionally used in English and most other European languages to represent voiced sounds. For example, is represented as ''b'' in Yale, whereas its aspirated counterpart, is represented as ''p''. Students attending

The Chinese University of Hong Kong The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is a public research university in Ma Liu Shui, Hong Kong, formally established in 1963 by a charter granted by the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. It is the territory's second-oldest university a ...

's New-Asia Yale-in-China Chinese Language Center are taught using Yale romanization. Despite originally being a romanisation scheme to indicate pronunciations, some enthusiasts actually employ the Yale romanisation to explore writing Cantonese as an alphabetic language, elevating it from its assistive status to a written language in effect.

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''.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..." Traditional Chinese linguistics treats the tones in syllables ending with a stop consonant as separate "

entering tone A checked tone, commonly known by the Chinese calque entering tone, is one of the four syllable types in the phonology of Middle Chinese. Although usually translated as "tone", a checked tone is not a tone in the phonetic sense but rather a syl ...

s". 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 Meng Haoran (; 689/691–740) was a major Tang dynasty poet, and a somewhat older contemporary of Wang Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu. Despite his brief pursuit of an official career, Meng Haoran mainly lived in and wrote about the area in which he was ...

References

External links

Comparison chart of Romanization for Cantonese with Yale, S. Lau, Guangdong, Toho and LSHK (uses Shift JIS encoding)

MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary (supports Cantonese Yale romanization)
{{Portal bar, China, Hong Kong, Language Cantonese romanisation Writing systems introduced in 1970 Languages of Hong Kong