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Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanisation

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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.

Contents

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, the 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 illustrates and explains how the proper nouns in Hong Kong are transcribed and romanised, and lists the corresponding pronunciations of the spellings with respect to IPA and Jyutping.

Usage

The Hong Kong Government adopts the Eitel/Dyer-Ball system of romanisation, which is based on the spoken Cantonese language. It was first adopted in 1960 to standardise the romanisation of place-names throughout Hong Kong. The standardised place-names were published in the 1960 government publication "A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories". Prior to this 1960 publication, there was no standard, consistent way of romanising place-names in the territory, which, predictably, often led to confusion. Since then, the romanisation system has been extended to the names of local Chinese, which gives romanised 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 romanisation (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.

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

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 as are distinctions between aspirated and unaspirated stops. The distinctions between the long vowel [a] and the 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.)

Consonants

Initials

Finals

Vowels, diphthongs, and syllabic consonants

  • ^ The standard pronunciation of 五 is [ŋ̩]. However, a more common pronunciation 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.

    • Pronunciation in English

    The romanised words are normally pronounced in a somewhat anglicised way, with the following characteristics which are different from 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 /ŋ/ does 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.

    • Final consonants

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

    • Vowels, diphthongs, and consonants

  • The letter a is to be pronounced [a] or [ɐ]; however, English speakers pronounce it [ɑː] at the end, and [æ] before consonant.
  • The digraph ai is to be pronounced [ai] or [ɐi]; however, English speakers not familiar with the romanisation may pronounce it differently according to English pronunciation rules, [eɪ].
  • The digraph au is to be pronounced [au] or [ɐu]; however, English speakers not familiar with the romanisation may pronounce it differently according to English pronunciation rules, [ɔː].
  • The letter i is to be pronounced [i], but [e] before k and ng; English speakers not familiar with the romanisation may pronounce it as [ɪ] as in English.
  • The digraph ei is to be pronounced [ei]; however, English speakers not familiar with the romanisation may pronounce it [aɪ].
  • The digraph ou is to be pronounced [ou]; however, English speakers not familiar with the romanisation may pronounce it [aʊ] or [uː].
  • The digraph iu is to be pronounced [iu]; however, this sound does not exist in English. English speakers mispronounce [juː].
  • The letter u is to be pronounced [u], but [o] before k and ng; before a consonant, English speakers not familiar with the romanisation may pronounce it as [ɐ] as in English.
  • The digraph eu is to be pronounced [œ]; however, this sound does not exist in English. English speakers mispronounce [juː] or [uː].
  • The letter u (when after y) or the digraph ue is pronounced [y] as in Cantonese (it's pronounced from lip-rounded /i/); however, this sound does not exist in English. English speakers mispronounce [juː] or [uː].
  • 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), but [uy] before b, p, m, f, w; however, these sounds do not exist in English. English speakers mispronounce as a succession of two vowels [uː.i].
  • The syllabic consonant m and ng are pronounced [m̩] and [ŋ̩] The sound [ŋ̩] 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, the tone is the only way to distinguish the surnames 伍 [ŋ̩˨˧] and 吳 [ŋ̩˩], but both are written "Ng", and appear as "Wu" in Mandarin. Note that the standard pronunciation of 伍 is [ŋ̩˨˧] with a rising tone, but 吳 is pronounced [ŋ̩˩] with a low tone. In North America, as a single [ŋ] does not exist in English, ng is usual pronounced as [ɪŋ].

    • References

    Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanisation Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA