Cantonese (HK)

Cantonese is a major regional language of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, as well as Hong Kong and Macau. As a broad term, Cantonese is often used to refer to the entire Yue Chinese branch (the formal name for Cantonese is 粵語 literally meaning 'the Yue language'), though as a narrow term Cantonese refers specifically to the Yue Chinese variety spoken in Guangzhou (Canton City) and nearby parts of the Pearl River Delta (in the most narrow sense of the word, Cantonese would refer only to the speech of Guangzhou proper). Either way, the standard urban Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong remains extremely close to Guangzhou Cantonese, differing mostly in the larger amount of words borrowed from English as well as other contemporary slang, which cycles in and out of fashion at a very fast pace.

The above scheme shows Cantonese under the typical arrangement of consonant initials most typically done for comparative purposes across Sinitic varieties. Under a different phonological organization, one can also posit that there are additional consonant initial phonemes /j/, /w/, /kʷ/, and /kʷʰ/, and thereby trim down the total number of rimes in Cantonese (next section below).

Rimes

Plain Rimes

Nasal Coda Rimes

Checked Coda Rimes

The asterisk marks uncommon rimes occurring only in vernacular/loanword layers of vocabulary.

In Lexx Rom as in Hanyu Pinyin, standalone i, u, and ü are spelled yi, wu, and yü. When functioning as medials after the null initial, they are spelled y-, w-, and yü- respectively, though in the rime -iu the core vowel is /i/, so it keeps the i while adding y- in front to become yiu, rather than yu.

Cantonese has a number of rimes with a medial -i-/-u- that only occur with the null initial, and will only be seen in the form with initial y- or w-. It is viable to analyze y- and w- as being the initials themselves, and add two more initials gw- and kw- to cover the other instances, but here the rimes are listed separately for consistency with the presentation format used for other Sinitic languages as well as in order to present an exhaustive list of vowel combinations for learners to reference to and practice pronouncing.

Tones

The Ru tones (Upper Yinru, Lower Yinru, and Yangru) are identical to the Yinping, Yinqu, and Yangqu tones (tones 1, 3, and 6) respectively, other than only lasting slightly shorter due to getting checked by the ending codas (-p, -t, -k). Therefore, it is viable to consider Cantonese a 6-tone language rather than a 9 tone language, as there are only 6 different tonal contours to keep track of once disregarding tone length.

Of the remaining 6 tones, tone 5 (Yangshang) is quite subtle, basically being a a version of tone 2 (Yinshang) that doesn't rise as high, meaning that in faster connected speech it can sometimes surface as something similar to tone 3. It is acceptable for learners to pronounce it as tone 2 (indeed some native speakers even merge the two tones together, or merge tone 5 into tone 3). Over time, a learner can develop an ear to adjust the tone 5 so that it doesn't rise as high as tone 2 and figure out in which words under which prosodic contexts the tone 5 reduces almost to a tone 3 level.  

Tone 1 is a high tone, variable between high flat or high falling. Some speakers (tending towards the middle-aged-elderly side) make a distinction of these that was originally conditioned on part of speech, but this is highly uncommon in contemporary Cantonese. There is generally a higher chance that this tone surfaces as a high falling tone when in sentence-final position and with emphasis, so that for example when used as a sentence-final particle, the word 添 tīm is generally pronounced with a high falling tone.

Tones 3 and 6 are flat tones, though in sentence final position they can have a little bit of non-contrastive trailing lowering in pitch.

Tone 4 is what has been described in acoustic phonetics as the "countour-unspecified low tone," which is cross-linguistically common in mainland East/Southeast Asian tonal languages. This tone is right at the lowest level of pitch that the voice can go down to, and pushes down even more, as much as possible. This tone can occur with some creaky voice, which helps distinguish it from Tone 6, which is a pure low flat tone that isnʻt quite as low. Historically, this tone has been described impressionistically as a low falling tone, but the falling contour is not necessarily present.