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More on Cantonese Phonetics System

 

1. Simplified Chinese has been in use in China since 1950s and 1960s. However, traditional Chinese has continued to be mostly used in Hong Kong. To look up simplified Chinese words, speakers of Cantonese, a dialect mostly spoken in Hong Kong (and southern China) may find it more convenient to use Cantonese Phonetic System.
    

2. In a way similar to the Hanyupinyin system describing pronunciation of mandarin, the Cantonese Phonetic System describes pronunciation of Cantonese also in Latin alphabets.
    

3. Unlike the Hanyupinyin system, where tones of a word are denoted by diacritic marks, the tones of Cantonese are denoted by numbers.
    

4. The Cantonese Phonetic System used in the 558 Chinese/ English dictionary adopts a 6-tone approach, and each tone is represented by a number between 1 to 6, with 1 being associated with the highest tone, and 6 with the lowest.
    

5. For example, to look up the word "国" (as in "中国" meaning "China", or "国家" meaning “country”), one can locate it and its corresponding page in the dictionary from searching its Cantonese pronunciation, “gwok 3” in the Index of Cantonese Phonetic System, which is also alphabetically arranged.