Cantonese grammar #1: Cantonese Pronouns 【我、你、佢、我地、你地、佢地】

Introduction

In our first Cantonese grammar lesson, we’re going to cover one of the simplest, but most essential things in Cantonese – pronouns.

If you don’t already know, a pronoun is I, he, she, it, you, etc. The reason a pronoun is called  “pronoun” is because pronouns are used as substitutes for nouns, i.e. things like Mary, phone, gel, etc. And the prefix in English “pro” can indicate substitution, i.e. Pro + noun = substituting a noun.

Okay, so let’s get started.

(Last Updated: 9th May, 2017.)

Vocabulary

S/W/B = Spoken / Written / Both

Word	Character	Jyutping	S/W/B
I	我	ngo5	B
you	你	nei5	B
he / she / it	他/她/它	taa1	W
he /she / it	佢	keoi5	S
to come from	嚟自	lei4 zi6	S
Hong Kong	香港	hoeng1 gong2	B
UK	英國	jing1 gwok3	B
South Africa	南非	naam4 fei1	B
me	我	ngo5	B
him / her / it	他/她/它	taa1	W
him /her / it	佢	keoi5	S
to like	鐘意	zung1 ji3	S
to give	畀	bei2	S
(classifier for electronics)	部	bou6	B
telephone	電話	din6 waa2	B
not	唔	m4	S
we / us	我地	ngo5 dei6	S
you	你地	nei5 dei6	S
they / them	他/她/它們	taa1* mun4	W
they / them	佢地	keoi5 dei6	S
Nepal	尼泊爾	nei4 pok3 ji5	B
India	印度	jan3 dou6	B
X cuisine	X + 菜	coi3	B
to be (somewhere)	喺	hai2	S
(classifier for thin things)	張	zoeng1	B
on top of	上面	soeng6 min6	B
to not have	冇	mou5	S
myself, yourself, etc.	自己	zi6 gei2	B
to be alright, no problem	冇問題	mou5 man6 tai4	S
Ocean Park (theme park)	海洋公園	hoi2 joeng4 gung1 jyun2	B
each other	互相	wu6 soeng1	B
to exchange (e.g. gifts)	交換	gaau1 wun6	B
gifts, presents	禮物	lai5 mat6	B
to shake hands	握手	ngaak1 sau2	B
similar	相似	soeng1 ci5	B
to agree	同意	tung4 ji3	B

*S = Spoken Cantonese only, W = Written Chinese only, B = can be used both places

Subject pronouns in Cantonese: I, you, he, she, it

We’ll have a look at some basic pronouns for indicating one person or thing first. Let’s start by having a look at what these words are in Cantonese.

Word	Character	Jyutping	S/W/B
I	我	ngo5	B
you	你	nei5	B
he / she / it	他/她/它	taa1*	W
he / she / it	佢	keoi5	S

(Be sure to follow along the video / audio to listen to the pronunciation.)

* ”He”, “she” and “it” are pronounced exactly the same.

As you can see, it’s pretty straightforward. A quick note on pronunciation, though. A lot of words that start with a “n” in Jyutping, for example, the “nei5” above, are actually pronounced with an “l”, as in “lei5” by most people nowadays. The “n” sound is archaic and used mostly by people from previous generations (my grandma, for instance, pronounces it like that). Either is perfectly acceptable, but “l” sounds more modern.

In addition, we’ll differentiate between written Chinese and spoken Cantonese early on. As you can see above, “he/she/it” is translated to 佢 in spoken language, but 他/她/它 in written language. I personally believe in starting characters and differentiating between the spoken and written registers early, but that’s a discussion in another post.

Cantonese subject pronouns examples

The best way to understand grammar principles, by far, is through examples. The short version reasons are because (1) you can see how these are used naturally, (2) how to use them correctly, and (3) what situations these structures are used.

Pronouns in Cantonese you can expect to be used in the same way as in English.

Let’s start with some simple ones.

I’m from Hong Kong.
我嚟自香港。
ngo5 lei4 zi6 hoeng1 gong2

You are from the UK.
你嚟自英國。
nei5 lei4 zi6 jing1 gwok3

She is from South Africa.
佢嚟自南非。
keoi5 lei4 zi6 naam4 fei1

Pretty straightforward hmm?

Let’s look at the next set of pronouns.

Object pronouns in Cantonese: me, you, him, her, it

English has an additional category of pronouns – object pronouns. These indicate the “target” of a verb. For example, “I give this book to him” – “him” would be an object pronoun.

The good news is that in Cantonese, we don’t separate between these and the subject pronouns. In other words, they’re exactly the same. Just to be clear, we’ll repeat the table above.

Word	Character	Jyutping	S/W/B
me	我	ngo5	B
you	你	nei5	B
him / her / it	他/她/它	taa1*	W
him / her/ it	佢	keoi5	S

Let’s have a look at some examples.

Cantonese object pronouns examples

He likes her.
佢鐘意佢。
keoi5 zung1 ji3 keoi5

I give the phone to you.
我畀部電話你。
ngo5 bei2 bou6 din6 waa2 nei5

You are not me.
你唔係我。
nei5 m4 hai6 ngo5

It’s a bit unnerving to see “he, she, it, him, her” said in the same way as with the example above, but I assure you it’s correct. You can listen and repeat a couple of times until it feels a bit more natural to you.

Plural pronouns in Cantonese: we, they, you, us, them, you

Next up, we have the plural pronouns.

The way to form plural pronouns is super easy. All you have to do is to pop in 地 (dei6) after the pronoun, like so:

I / me → We / Us
我 → 我地
ngo5 → ngo5 dei6

You → You
你 → 你地
nei5 → nei5 dei6

He/She/It/Him/Her → They / Them
佢 → 佢地
keoi5 → keoi5 dei6

Again in a table:

Word	Character	Jyutping	S/W/B
we / us	我地	ngo5 dei6	B
you	你地	nei5 dei6	B
they / them	他/她/它們	taa1* mun4	W
they / them	佢地	keoi5 dei6	S

And a look at examples.

Cantonese plural pronouns examples

We are not from Hong Kong.
我地唔係嚟自香港。
ngo5 dei6 m4 hai6 lei4 zi6 hoeng1 gong2

They are from Nepal.
佢地係嚟自尼泊爾。
keoi5 dei6 hai6 lei4 zi6 nei4 pok3 ji5

You like Indian food.
你鐘意印度菜。
nei5 zung1 ji3 jan3 dou6 coi3

At this point, in terms of a traditional grammar lesson, we’re about done. But taking into consideration Cantonese is spoken, I have to extend it by discussing a special case: it.

Saying “it” in Cantonese

Let me clarify.

In English, for instance, you might say things like “it’s on the table”, “she doesn’t have it”. If we took these two examples and transliterated them, however, we get something a bit funny sounding:

佢喺張枱上面。
keoi5 hai2 zoeng1 toi2 soeng6 min6

佢冇佢。
keoi5 mou5 keoi5

As an exercise, try to see if you can feel what’s wrong. Say these two sentences out loud a few times.

Can you spot it?

In the beginning of the lesson, I made a note to talk about the fact that “he/she/it” are pronounced exactly the same in Cantonese. This has an interesting effect: unlike in English, where people and objects can be differentiated, Cantonese can’t separate the two.

Can you guess what happens?

As a result, 佢, when acting as a translation for “it”, is associated only with living things (people or animals), but not with dead objects.

Referring back to the two sentences above, the first sentence to a native speaker might then sound like “he / she is on the table” and “she doesn’t have him”. And of course, neither phrase makes a lot of sense in an ordinary context.

So in Cantonese, if we want to refer to an object, we can’t use 佢. Instead, we have to either (1) use the specific name of the object, or (2) we can just drop it completely.

Knowing this, how do we fix the above two sentences?

Substituting “it” in Cantonese: Strategy #1

Using the first strategy, we have:

(Let’s assume “it” refers to a phone here.)

It’s on top of the table.
部電話喺張枱上面。
bou6 din6 waa2 hai2 zoeng1 toi2 soeng6 min6

She doesn’t have it.
佢冇呢部電話。
keoi5 mou5 ni1 bou6 din6 waa2

(Thanks to Derek Lau for pointing out this mistake.)

*I’ll supplement this by saying this is okay, but a more natural way of saying this is

部電話唔喺佢嗰度。
The phone is not with her.
bou6 din6 waa2 m4 hai2 keoi5 go2 dou6

Substituting “it” in Cantonese: Strategy #2

Using the second strategy, we have:

It’s on top of the table.
喺張枱上面。
hai2 zoeng1 toi2 soeng6 min6

She doesn’t have it.
佢冇。
keoi5 mou5

*Interestingly enough, this shorter version sounds perfectly natural in Cantonese.

That’s it for this lesson.

In the comments area, please construct your own sentences to practise what you’ve learnt today – I look forward to hearing from you. 🙂

The Cantonese reflexive pronoun 自己

In English, there’s a tendency to say things like “I’m going to Maine myself”, or “He’s gonna be alright by himself”. Or maybe you’re familiar with the notion of reflexive verbs in French and Spanish, like “je me lave” or “me baño” – yup, we’re talking about words like myself, yourself, himself etc.

In Cantonese, as usual, it’s very simple. To express the following,

myself
yourself
himself / herself / itself
ourselves
yourselves
themselves

all you have to do is to add this

自己
zi6 gei2

Let’s have a look at a few examples.

I’m going to Maine myself.
我自己去緬因州.
ngo5 zi6 gei2 heoi3 min5 jan1 zau1.

He’s gonna be alright by himself.
佢自己冇問題。
keoi5 zi6 gei2 mou5 man6 tai4.

You want to go to Ocean Park by yourself?
你想自己去海洋公園？
nei5 soeng2 zi6 gei2 heoi3 hoi2 joeng4 gung1 jyun2?

However, sometimes you might hear people say

自己一個 / 自己一個人
zi6 gei2 jat1 go3 / zi6 gei2 jat1 go3 jan2

And that’s generally interchangeable with 自己 – as an example, the three examples above could have been replaced by 自己一個 or 自己一個人.

Each other in Cantonese with 互相

This is something that’s not really thought of as “grammar” in English, but in French and Spanish, some verbs can turn to mean “do X with each other” when adding “se” in front of the verb (or the back of the verb in Spanish).

For example, you could say “they exchanged gifts with each other”, “they shake hands with each other”.

Let’s see how they could be translated in Cantonese.

佢地互相交換咗禮物。
keoi5 dei6 wu6 soeng1 gaau1 wun6 zo2 lai5 mat6.

佢地互相握手。
keoi5 dei6 wu6 soeng1 ngaak1 sau2.

Please note that this is strictly used to describe two people or animals doing something towards each other. For example, you can’t use 互相 when saying this like “these two people are similar to each other”, or “we agree among each other”. To express these, it’s better to rephrase them to avoid the usage of “each other” and then re-wording back to Cantonese.

For example, we might say instead

These two people are similar.
哩兩個人好相似。
li1 loeng5 go3 jan4 hou2 soeng1 ci5

Everyone agrees.
大家都同意。
daai6 gaa1 dou1 tung4 ji3

Please stay tuned for the next one!

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