Cantonese Final Particles (尾音)

Cantonese is a language that's famous (or infamous, depending on how you look at it) for its sentence final particles (尾音 mei2 jam1).  In English, we usually modify the mood or meaning of a sentence by uttering it in a different tone.  However, since Cantonese is a tonal language, where changing the tone of a word may actually change the word into a different word, there is much less flexibility to do so.  This is where the sentence final particles come in.  These particles are often used to modify the mood or sometimes even the meaning of a sentence.  Its purported that Cantonese may have up to a hundred of these particles, but in reality the ones used in daily life number much less.  This article lists some of the most common ones encountered in everyday speech.

Before you begin

It should also be noted that learners should not attempt to use these particles until they fully understand their usage.  Using the wrong particle in a sentence may make a sentence sound extremely funny, strange, or even rude and insulting.  It is okay for students of Cantonese to leave out particles most of the time when they are still learning; the main meaning of the sentence will still be conveyed.  However, to become fully fluent, the particles should eventually be mastered.  Students of Cantonese should try to learn only a few at a time and verify with native Cantonese speakers to ensure that they are being correctly used.

You may also notice that more than one particle can be combined in some cases.  This is explained further near the end of the article.  Also at the end of the article is an explanation about the Chinese characters used to write the particles.

Basic particles

The following list is a list of the most common particles that should be mastered first.  The usage of some of these particles may be necessary to convey the correct meaning in a statement or question.

More advanced particles

The following is a list of other particles that may be encountered.  Usage of these particles is not completely required, but they may help to clarify the meaning of a statement or question.

Combining particles

Particles may also be chained together to convey more than one mood.  The contractions exhibited in the above lists are already the result of the chaining of two particles together.  There are unwritten rules about which particles can be combined and in what order they occur which are probably too complicated to explain here.  However, one good rule of thumb is that 嘅 ge3 always comes before the other particles.  In addition, the particles used in questions (呀 aa3, 咩 me1, 呢 ne1, 嗎 maa3, etc.) always come last.

The best bet for students of Cantonese is to first master the single particles before moving onto combining more than one together.  Even then, there are very few cases where you would need to combine more than two.  Again, check with a native Cantonese speaker before you start using such combinations.  In addition to the contractions above, the most common are 嘅嘞/嘅嚹 ge3 laak3/ge3 laa3 (assertion + relevance), 嘅咩 ge3 me1 (assertion + surprise), and 嚹咩 laa3 me1 (relevance + surprise; sometimes ends up being pronounced le3 me1).  For example:

• 佢琴日已經返咗屋企嘅嚹 = He already went home yesterday.
• 我唔返得屋企嘅咩? = I'm unable to go home?  [Really?  Why not?]
• 佢已經返咗來嚹咩? = He already came back?  [Really?  I wasn't aware of this.]

Here's one case where three particles are chained together:

• 係噉嘅啦嘛! = [Of course] it's been this way!  (嘅 + 嚹 + 呀嘛 = 嘅啦嘛)

Written characters for particles

It should be noted that there has not been any standardization for writing these particles (standard written Chinese is based on the Mandarin dialect, which has its own set of particles, and most of the time the particles aren't even indicated in writing).  Therefore they may be written differently depending on who is doing the writing.

So don't be surprised if you see a different character written for a particular particle.  You may see different sources write the aa particles using either 呀, 吖,ㄚ or sometimes even 啊.  The laa particles may sometimes be interchangably written as 嚹, 啦, or 喇.  The same may be true for the other particles.  This article has tried to list the characters that seemed most consistent among different sources and to list more than one if alternatives are common.  Particles are mostly used for speech so learners should try to focus on the verbal usage and not the written characters anyway.

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