Haven’t read Part 1 yet? Read it here: https://haemzbaengzlaengz.medium.com/a-guide-to-jyutcitzi-part-1-of-many-to-come-f6fc8811274d
Looking for the answers for the exercises in Part 1? They’re at the end of this story!
Welcome to a guide/tutorial/you-name-it for learning Jyutcitzi, which is a novel script designed for the scribing of Cantonese. The guide consists of multiple parts, where each part will fit into one Medium story (NB: I haven’t written all of them yet, but I know there are quite a few to write, please bear with me!).
By the end of this part (Part 2), you will learn:
- how to add tones (聲調) to Jyutcitzi
- how the blocks can be composed to form Jyutcitzi for vocabulary with zero onset or final, like 呀 (aa3) and share (se1 aa4)
- how the blocks can be composed to form Jyutcitzi for vocabulary with consonant cluster onsets, like block (blok1)
To help you understand the Jyutcitzi script, various exercises are provided after new concepts are introduced. You are encouraged to attempt them, and answers will be provided at the end of the post. Answers to the exercises will be provided at the start of the next part (to be posted in a separate Medium story at a later date).
Note: For simplicity, this guide adopts Jyutping for the phoneticization of Cantonese. However, extensive knowledge on Jyutping or any other Cantonese romanization scheme is not necessary for this guide.
Before we move on to the new concepts, let’s recap what we learned in Part 1. Basically, we learned that Cantonese syllables can be decomposed into three parts, namely onset (聲母), final (韻母) and tone (聲調), and that the assembling of Jyutcitzi blocks via top-bottom or left-right spatial rules allows Jyutcitzi to systematically capture the onset and final of each syllable.
Tones in Jyutcitzi
Okay let’s talk about tones. Tones are added to Jyutcitzi via tick marks on the Jyutcitzi’s top-right corner. Since there are six tones, we introduce six tick marks, namely ¯, ´, `, ⁼, ˝ and ﾞ for tones one to six respectively. The reason for using tick marks over Arabic numerals is simple: they fit better with Jyutcitzi’s Honzi aesthetics. Examples of Jyutcitzi with tones are in the image below:
Note: Readers familiar with previous versions of Jyutcitizi will know that the Suzhou numerals (蘇州數目字)〡, 〢, 〣, 〤, 〥 and 〦 were used for marking tones:
However, as you can see, the addition of these bulky Suzhou numerals prevent the Jyutcitzi’s from being square-shaped, which is an integral feature of Jyutcitzi characters. This is why Jyutcitzi has switched to using tick marks now.
Exercise 6: Write the following Cantonese-specific Honzi phrases using Jyutcitzi with tones. To help you, the Jyutping pronunciation of each phrase has been provided.
(a) 砵仔糕 (but3 zai2 gou1)
(b) 直筆甩 (zik6 bat1 lat1)
(c) 一樖樹 (jat1 po1 syu6)
(d) 巖巉 (ngaam4 caam4)
(e) 有錢佬 (jau5 cin2 lou2)
In terms of usage, tones are optional when writing Jyutcitzi. The main motivation for keeping it optional is because native Cantonese speakers often do not think in tones when writing. Moreover, mandatory use of tones for every Jyutcitzi would slow down writing by increasing the number of strokes for each character.
While there are no official rules dictating the annotation of tones, I personally suggest the following guidelines:
- Include tones in Jyutcitzi when a character of Sinitic origin needs to be disambiguated within a specific sentence context. For example, consider the following ambiguous sentence:
Without tones, there is no way of telling whether this sentence means “I need to go buy(買) a camera on Monday(星期一)” or “I need to go sell(賣) a camera on Sunday(星期日)”, since the third character in the sentence could be either 一(jat1) or 日(jat6), and the sixth character in the sentence could be either 買(maai5) or 賣(maai6). We can easily resolve the ambiguity by including tones in the third and sixth character, as shown in these two sentences:
- Tones can be safely ignored for English (or Western) vocabulary which is directly imported into Cantonese. For example, for the sentence「你重未debug到你啲code呀？」, tones won’t be required for the English words “code” and “debug” when writing in Jyutcitzi.
- Tones should be included for grammatical particles whose Jyutcitzi are ambiguous. This is important, since these particles from the bread and butter of the sentence, and often only differ by tone. In particular, grammatical particles at the end of the sentence can encode for the speaker or writer’s emotion, which is essential for understanding the sentence. Simply put, the difference between
1. 「搞掂咗啦(laa1)」and 「搞掂咗喇(laa3)」; or
2. 「你嚟學嘢咋(zaa3)」and「你嚟學嘢咋(zaa4)」
is huge! - Tones are generally not required for the negative marker 𠄡(唔), which always reads m4.
It is important to note that the use of Jyutcitzi in written Cantonese does not necessarily imply the immediate and complete elimination of sinoglyphs from written Cantonese. In fact, it is the existence of a Cantonese phonetic script like Jyutcitzi which allows a spectrum of writing orthographies to be created, with Honzi-dominant and Jyutcitzi-only orthographies on the two ends of the spectrum and a range of Honzi-Jyutcitzi mixed scripts in between.
But I digress, the notion of when to use Jyutcitizi in Cantonese writing is a topic for another Medium post. Anyways, this is a good point to stop for some exercises.
Exercise 7: Write the following Honzi-Latin mix script sentences using Jyutcitzi. Where appropriate, annotate Jyutcitzi with tones.
(a) 我唔知點解佢會reject我囉。
(b) 份成交記錄唔見咗嘅？
(c) Carbon dioxide 係由一個 carbon atom 同兩個 oxygen atom 組成嘅。
（place a space between the English words for better readability）
(d) 噉都係果d野㗎啦，廿零蚊個餐又湯又盛唔通有得你食天九翅咩？
Jyutcitzi with Zero Onset or Zero Final
Next, we introduce the method for making Jyutcitzi with zero onset syllables zero final syllables. As the name suggests:
- zero onset syllables only have a non-zero final sound.
Examples include 呀(aa3) and 㖡(e6) - zero final syllables only have a non-zero onset sound.
Examples include “s” in “des” (short for “desperate”) or the “p” in “top” (top1)
Note that zero onset syllables are naturally present in Honzi, whereas zero final syllables occur exclusively in English and other Western languages. In fact, it is the inclusion of zero final syllables which enables Cantonese-English code-switching in the Jyutcitzi script, which would otherwise be impossible in a pure Honzi script. Moreover, code-switching in the Jyutcitzi script is more aesthetically pleasing than in the existing Honzi-Latin mixed script since Honzi and Latin characters inherently don’t fit together aesthetically.
To build Jyutcitzi for zero onset or zero final syllables, we place the zero Jyutcitzi block「𭕄」at the top and the single Jyutcitizi block at the bottom. Note that . Note that 「𭕄」has two dots to the left and one to the right, and is different to 「⺌」. To illustrate this rule, we use the following image containing the Jyutcitzi for 呀(aa3), 㖡(e6), des and top.
The Cantonese lexicon contains words “des” or gwes from “progress”, which have syllables ending in -s. In consideration of Jyutcitzi’s aesthetics and the naturalization of the -s ending in Cantonese, we allow the zero-initial block「厶」to be combined with the previous syllable using the dual spatial rule, i.e. combine using:
- a left-right spatial rule if the previous syllable uses a top-bottom spatial rule
- a top-bottom spatial rule if the previous syllable uses a left-right spatial rule
For instance, the two different ways of writing “des” and “progress” (po1 gwes4) is demonstrated in the following image:
Exercise 8: Write the following phrases using Jyutcitzi with tones. To help you, the Jyutping pronunciation of each phrase has been provided.
(a) 娿哿 (o1 go4)
(b) 科勞牙 (fo1 lou4 aa4, derived from English “follower”)
(c) footage (fut1 tezj4)
(d) medium rare (mi1 di1 am1 we1 aa4)
(e) Department of Justice (di6 paat1 man1 of6 zaas1 tis4)
Consonant Clusters in Jyutcitzi
However, the rules introduced thus far still cannot handle words like “Instagram” (in1 staa4 gwem4) and “cash” (kesh1) since they contain syllables with consonant clusters in either the onset or final. To fix this, we introduce the following new rules:
- If the onset is a consonant cluster, vertically stack all the consonants, and use the left-right spatial rule to combine the onset with the final.
- If the final is a consonant cluster, use the left-right spatial rule to combine the consonants, with at most two “final consonants” in each Jyutcitzi. Combine the first consonant with the preceding onset block if the preceding syllable has a zero onset. The spatial rule for each Jyutcitzi is determined by the first consonant present in the block.
For example, the Jyutcitzi for the words “Instagram” (in1 staa4 gwem4), “structure” (sdwak1 coe4), “cash” (kesh1), “sphinx” (sfingks1) and “shares” (she1 aas4) is written as follows:
Exercise 9: Write the following onset consonant cluster-containing phrases using Jyutcitzi. To help you, the Jyutping pronunciation of each phrase has been provided.
(a) spagetti (sbaa3 ge1 ti4)
(b) professor (pwou3 fe1 saa5)
(c) staycation (sdei1 kei1 soen4)
(d) Pound Sterling (paang1 sdoe1 ling4)
(e) pain au chocolat (paan1 ou3 shok1 ko1 laa1)Exercise 10: Write the following final consonant cluster-containing phrases using Jyutcitzi. To help you, the Jyutping pronunciation of each phrase has been provided.
(a) touch screen (tatcj1/tatch1 skwin1)
(b) ants (ents1)
(c) fish (fisj1/fish1)
(d) refurbishment (wi3 foe1 bish4 man4/wi3 foe1 bisj4 man4)
And that’s it, we have introduced all of the Jyutcitzi for transcribing the phonetics of Cantonese!
End-of-Part Exercises
The only way to familiarize yourself with Jyutcitzi is practice practice practice, so here are some exercises to get started! To facilitate learning, the exercises are ordered by increasing difficulty.
Exercise 11: [Review of Jyutcitzi rules from Part 1] Write the following English-derived Cantonese phrases using Jyutcitzi. To help you, the Jyutping pronunciation of each phrase has been provided.
(a) 泊車 (paak3 ce1, 泊 comes from English “to park”)
(b) backup (bek1 ap1)
(c) background (bek1 gwaang4)
(d) bullshit (bu1 shit1)
(e) cafe (kaa3 fei1)
(f) casual (ke1 sjou4)
(g) fact check (fek1 cek1)
(h) download (dang1 lou1)
(i) follow (fo1 lou4)
(j) hard disk (haak1 dis1)
(k) link (ling1)
(l) phy chem bi (fi1 kem1 baai6, derived from English “physics”, “chemistry” and “biology”)
(m) social media (sou1 sjou1 mi1 di4 aa4)
(n) target (taa1 get4)
(o) upload (ap1 lou1)
(e) 影selfie (jing2 seu1 fi4)
(f) medium well (mi1 di1 am1 weu1)Exercise 12 : Write the following zero onset/final-containing phrases using Jyutcitzi. To help you, the Jyutping pronunciation of each phrase has been provided.
(a) escalator (es1 kaa1 lei1 taa4)
(b) law firm (lo1 foem1)
(c) confirm (kon6 foem1, kan6 foem1)
(d) kebab (ke6 bap1)
(e) Chris Wong (kwis1 wong1)Exercise 13: Write the following consonant cluster-containing phrases using Jyutcitzi. To help you, the Jyutping pronunciation of each phrase has been provided.
(a) start (sdaat1)
(b) scan QR code (sgen1 kiu1 aa1 kuk1)
(c) summer internship (sam1 maa1 in1 toen4 ship4)
(d) fair trial (fe1 aa1 twaai1 ou4)
(e) stock (sdok1)
(f) proposal (pwou3 pou1 sou4)
(g) contract (kon1 twek4)
(h) freerider (fwi1 waai1 daa4)
(i) cosplay (kos1 plei1)
(j) twitter account (twit1 taa1 aa3 kaang1)
(k) trick or treat (twik1 o3 twit1)
Answers to Exercises in Part 1
