The stereotypical “foreign accent” of Cantonese
There has been some portrayal/imitation of a foreign accent of Cantonese, mostly applying to India and the Western world. The accent is perhaps unsurprisingly based off of, again, English. Below I will list some points:
HK Gov Romanization/LSHK - Foreign accent in IPA: Explanation
> p,t,k/b,d,g - [pʰ,tʰ,kʰ]: More of a perceived accent due to the spelling. Where the Cantonese initials are Romanized with voiced initials (which is rare), the aspiration will not be part of the stereotype. This is due to how voiceless stops in English are inherently aspirated in word-initial positions.
> -p,-t,-k/-p,-t,-k (unreleased, limited to coda positions) - [pʰ,tˢ,kʰ] (aspirated, except for -t, which has a fricative release): Again, it is how the phonemes are perceived to be pronounced in English. A typical Hong Kong accent (which is perhaps not very widespread any more) has final stop consonants unreleased. Teachers then train students to release these consonants, as aspirates for /p/ and /k/ and with a fricative release for /t/.
> Tones: basically just a mismatch of tones. However, in anglicized Cantonese pronunciation, almost all syllables are pronounced with tone 1s.
> ch[‘],sh,(ts[‘],s)/z,c,s - [tʃ~dʒ tʃʰ ʃ]: Hong Kongers consider a distinction between affricates and non-affricates more important than a distinction between shibilants and non-shibilants (this distinction no longer exists in standard HK Cantonese). Thus, they would prefer that anglophones pronounce the Cantonese [ts, tsʰ] as /dʒ, tʃ/ instead of /s, s/, which is how anglophones pronounce written <ts>. In fact, the overmispronunciation of “Wan Tsai” (Eitel: ₍Wán ⁽Tsai /wan˥ tsɐi˦˥/, LSHK: waan1 zai2) as “wan sye” prompted the HK Government to respell it as “Wan Chai”. As such, “ts” is encouraged to be pronounced as “ch” /tʃ/ instead of “s”, which contributes to the stereotypical “foreign accent” of pronouncing the sibilants as shibilants. The Yale Romanization, where the affricates are written as <j> and <ch>, reflects this. A further point is that, since there is no longer a shibilant-nonshibilant distinction in standard HK Cantonese, the orthographic <sh> has been perceived (results from an interview I conducted asking what people think of the spelling <sh>) as “a Western way of pronouncing /s/”.
> ai,au/(a)ai,(a)au - [aɪ,aʊ]: The difference between LSHK “aa” /a/ and “a” /ɐ/ has been neutralized in the HK Government Romanization. As a result, “aai” and “ai” are both written as simply <ai>, and likewise with <au>. HKers recognize the English [ɐɪ, ɐʊ] as sounds appearing in some words, but do not treat them as allophones of /aɪ, aʊ/: 1) Canadian raising is not systematically employed throughout English vocabulary, being absent from words like “price” and “Christ”; 2) The word “Skype” has been perceived (by a number of my HK classmates at least) as a combination of “sky” [skaɪ] and “pe”, leading to the pronunciation [skaɪ pʰ(i:)]. In fact, one person got laughed at for saying [skɐɪpʰ]. In any case, the Cantonese <ai> and <au> are taken as their “default values” in English, as they will never be followed by another consonant (in the same syllable). Thus, LSHK -aai and -ai are both pronounced [aɪ] in the stereotypical foreign Cantonese accent. Similarly for HK Gov <au>.
> -eung,ung,-un/-oeng,-ung,-eon - [œŋ,ʊŋ,ɵn]: These sounds (including their checked tone counterparts, that is, the replacement of the “ng” with “k”), which are perhaps rather unfamiliar to anglophones aren’t changed much in the anglicized pronunciations of Cantonese Romanization. As such, it seems fair to deduce that they are not changed in the “foreign accent”. I will provide more evidence: All these sounds are perceived to exist in English:
[œ] is perceived to exist in words like “learn” [lœn], English diaphone /ɜr/
[ʊŋ] in words like “don’t” [tʊŋ], diaphone /oʊn/
and [ɵn] in words like “action” [ɛkʃɵn], from /ən/ after shibilants
As such, speakers of “Hong Kong English” (going with the definition used in this blog) likely do not see these are sounds foreign to English, and do not change these in anglicized Cantonese. Thus, it is likely that these stay about the same in the stereotyped “foreign Cantonese accent”, perhaps with just /ɹ/ coming after [œ].
> yu,ue/yu - [y~(j)u]: The vowel [y] is another phoneme that doesn’t exist in English, but does in Cantonese. In the HK Government Romanization, it is generally written as <ue>, but also often just <u> in “yu”. The anglicization of this has been mixed: I’ve heard both [y] (unchanged) and [u] (but [ju] in <yu>). The Hakka [i] seems not to be a part of the stereotyped Western pronunciation, though it could be a marker of a non-Cantonese (or Mandarin) Chinese speaker.
> ng-/ng- - [--]: The initial ng- is often just ignored in HK Cantonese, and is thus just as often ignored in anglicized pronunciations. Ironically, the common English mispronunciations as /n/ or /g/ are not generally included as part of the stereotype.
> a-/(a)a- - [ɛ] (more common before nasals): This comes from the fact that in English, <a> before another consonant is pronounced as (diaphonemically) /æ/ (for speakers with æ-tensing, it could become /e[ə]/). This gets imitated by HKers as [ɛ]. As a getaround, some people spell /ɐ/ (which only ever comes before another consonant/semivowel) as <u> (again, based off of the English “short u” /ʌ/).
> -i/-ei - [i]: The Eitel spelling of [ei] as <i> prompted this other stereotype of the “Western pronunciation”. This was also in my interview about the orthographic <sh>. In reality though, it is perhaps a more archaic form of Cantonese, though by Ball’s time we know that the proper pronunciation of the final is already [ei], as Ball criticized Eitel for failing to represent proper Cantonese.
> -e/-e - [i]: Stemming perhaps from English words like “he” and “apostrophe”, the final <e> is, despite how its intended pronunciation is /ɛ/, often stereotyped as /i/ in the Western accent. This prompted some people, like a former classmate of mine (whose surname is “Chair” [車]), to write /ɛ/ as <air> (based off of RP /ɛə/ > /ɛ:/). My English teacher pokes fun at this by pronouncing her surname (in English) as /tʃɛə/ though.
> -o/-o - [oʊ]: A conflation of LSHK -o /ɔ/ and -ou /ou/ can be observed, as Eitel (a German missionary) writes /ɔ/ as <o> and /ou/ as <ò>, likely mishearing it for [o(:)]. In English, a word-final <o> is usually (diaphonemically) /oʊ/, and thus that becomes part of the stereotype. Many HKers use <aw> (like in the surname “Law” [羅]) to represent coda /ɔ/.
