Bite 1 - Greetings

早晨

It literally means “good morning”. Used, well, in the morning.

In every following bites we’ll bite into, a box like this contains the Traditional Chinese characters and romanized pronunciations for every phrase we learn. The romanization we use is Jyutping developed by Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK). Enjoy!

早    晨
zou2 sun4

Try an energetic version:

… and the slooooow version:

早---晨---
(never mind this, it’s just how slow I’m going to be)

Sounds different?

Tones in Cantonese are crucial. Different tones conveys completely different meanings. Yet a lot of times we do not need pitch-perfect tones. If you hear differences between fast and slow versions, the slow version always have the accurate tone.

Hello / 哈佬

Yes. You see it right. THIS IS LEGIT CANTONESE!

Of course we pronounce it the Cantonese way.

He -llo
ha1 lou3

Happy:

Snail:

你好

2020-11-16 update: 你好 is a new addition! Biters who have read this bite before, sorry. We wasn’t so organized at the first try.

A more formal and polite way to say hello.

你    好
nei5 hou2

A polite nei hou:

now do it slooow and clear:

Wrap-up

That’s it! First bite. We hope it was fun and easy. See you!