this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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Some of the words in my native language I thought I knew were actually corrupted... like I thought it was pronounced one way, but its actually not... (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works to c/casualconversation@piefed.social
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This probably make zero sense to English speakers here, but:

One of the one I realize is: 唔好 (don't/no)

Jyutping (romanization): (m⁴ hou²) and the way I heard/pronunced it morphed into one character like 母 (mou²)

即刻 (Now/Immediately) (zik¹ hak¹) Somehow became like (zik¹ kak¹)

There no character with pronounciation kak¹ not even ones with a different tone.

Also I think I also have some random Taishanese sounds/vocabulary mixed in...

Doesn't help the only people I speak this language to 99% of the time is with family, so if there is an error, I would never know about it.

Probably how pronounciations become different as a population disperses to different regions.

I wonder if I ever go to Hong Kong... if I could pretend to be a local and see if anyone would expose me xD.

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[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I found some paper on ongoing phonetic variations in HK Cantonese, and I couldn't find anything similar to what you're doing. So it's possible people would notice you aren't a local. But if I had to guess they'd have a hard time pointing where you're from, because the sound changes you're doing (assimilation) are really common across languages, so they're bound to pop up over and over.

It's possible the Taishanese vocab gives you away, though.

Just to be sure it's assimilation: how would you pronounce ⟨一刻⟩ (jat¹ hak¹)? I'm guessing something like (jat¹ tak¹**), is this accurate? If yes, the underlying "rule" seems to be "replace [h] with a copy of the preceding consonant; if this results in a sequence of two nasals, simplify it".

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

No I didn't used to read written cantonese a lot, so I only knew the sounds, so I assumed it was like probably some dialect thing and I didn't realize the zik¹ kak¹, that the kak¹ is supposed to be 刻, so I thought its a unique word to cantonese. So then when I tried typing zik kak on Jyutping Keyboard, nothing seemed correct, then I realized the closest thing is 刻, but I only knew the mandarin pronunciation as in 立刻, so I had to look up the dictionary for the corect Jyutping romanization.

Also I never heard 一刻 IRL, except like maybe HK TV shows, but its rarely heard so I kinda forgot it.