Cantonese-display-enabled PLC

This will be supported via a nice in-app option with a prettier UI and search support soon, but for now, load this file into Pleco (via the built-in web browser or a USB upload):

http://d26r4pfa6wznjb.cloudfront.net/p2cebasic-canto-130113.zip

Open up the Pleco File Manager (Settings / File Manager), tap on it once to unzip it, then tap on the "plecopackage" file inside of it to extract the dictionary - this will replace the built-in PLC dictionary with a version that includes Jyutping Cantonese romanizations in brackets at the start of each definition. Admittedly not much, but it's a start, and the ability to see the Cantonese pronunciation for words is probably the single most common feature request pertaining to Cantonese that we get.

If you decide you don't like this version, simply delete it in "Add-ons" and you'll automatically be returned to the regular PLC.

Note: PLC may end up getting put into "demo mode" when you install this; if so, restart Pleco and that should get it back to normal.

Thanks Mike! I'm really happy!

thanks for this Mike! it is a very welcome addition, it saves me a lot of time from having to go into the more info section to see the cantonese pronunciation.

Yes, thank you. Cannot wait for the dictionaries!!!

While I've got some interested people here: can anyone provide any guidance on Cantonese accents and on what to look for when we're hiring people to record Cantonese audio for us? I know next to nothing about Cantonese myself - I can certainly differentiate it from other Chinese "dialects," and can even speak / understand a few words, but I have no idea if there's a dramatic difference between Guangzhou / Shenzhen / HK / Malaysia / Vancouver / San Francisco Cantonese accents, or if any particular way of pronouncing it would be considered more "standard."

to answer your question Mike: HK Cantonese is pretty much the standard these days, both because of the influence of TV and films, etc., coming from Hong Kong, and because of the size of the Cantonese-speaking market there. Guangzhou Cantonese sounds a little bit old-school to HK speakers, and Malaysian Cantonese definitely has some aberrant pronunciations (from the HK point of view). Most people in Shenzhen do not speak Cantonese, and if they claim that they do I'd say there's an extremely high probability they are not native speakers. With overseas communities you'll get a lot more variability because the speakers might have come from a lot of different places originally. I, for example, am from San Francisco and keep n- and l- distinct, but on the other hand I tend to merge gw- and g- before the vowel "o", whereas in HK the opposite tends to be more common.

Cantonese speakers are also aware that certain pronunciations are more "correct" and may expect those in recordings. For example, the n/l and g/gw mergers I mentioned above are both considered "lazy pronunciations". Most everyone in HK says laai5chaa4 'milk tea', but the dictionary pronunciation for 奶 is naai5, and presumably that's what you want recorded. If that's the case you'll want someone who's capable of making the distinctions, even if they don't make the distinction in their every day speech (e.g. that's the case for me with g/gw; i know exactly which words use gw-, and can make the distinction if needed).

meanwhile here's a question: characters like 重 with multiple pronunciations. Right now all the Cantonese pronunciations are glommed together, but is there any way to match them up with the corresponding Mandarin ones? E.g. cung4 matches up with pinyin chong2, and cung5/zung6 match up with pinyin zhong4. In other words, if it's read in Mandarin as chong2, it will be read in Cantonese as cung4 (and never as the other other two).

Dom has given a great overview. I think a HK speaker with a background in studying or teaching Cantonese would be ideal for recordings.

As for the l/n thing on the recordings, I would actually go with the way the majority of people speak in HK, leih rather than neih for example (Hong Kong Cantonese is considered the prestige dialect). People buying the addon will generally want to hear how people actually speak on the street, not in the exceptions. Matthews and Yip's Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar is a great introduction for newcomers to Cantonese. In his book Matthews goes with the l rather than the n and explains the reasoning behind this decision in the opening chapter.

Thanks for that detailed explanation! Sounds like HK is the way to go, yes.

dom said:

meanwhile here's a question: characters like 重 with multiple pronunciations. Right now all the Cantonese pronunciations are glommed together, but is there any way to match them up with the corresponding Mandarin ones? E.g. cung4 matches up with pinyin chong2, and cung5/zung6 match up with pinyin zhong4. In other words, if it's read in Mandarin as chong2, it will be read in Cantonese as cung4 (and never as the other other two).

Click to expand...

That's being dealt with shortly. We just signed a deal to update PLC to the newest edition of the dictionary it's based on (with parts of speech and far fewer Socialist-era example sentences, among other nice improvements), and while it's easy enough to carry forward the multi-character Cantonese readings we've created to the new dictionary, single-character ones really need to be manually checked and edited right into the definition. So we're waiting for the new edition to do that so we don't have to do it twice.

Tezuk said:

As for the l/n thing on the recordings, I would actually go with the way the majority of people speak in HK, leih rather than neih for example (Hong Kong Cantonese is considered the prestige dialect). People buying the addon will generally want to hear how people actually speak on the street, not in the exceptions. Matthews and Yip's Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar is a great introduction for newcomers to Cantonese. In his book Matthews goes with the l rather than the n and explains the reasoning behind this decision in the opening chapter.

Click to expand...

I'd be disinclined to do that at first because we've had a lot of complaints about the (few) instances where they do that in our Mandarin recordings - we could consider recording accented versions of words as an "alternate" audio option at some point (perhaps doing the same for Mandarin too), but the basic Cantonese audio needs to be more proscriptive than descriptive.

Just curious, would there ever something like the Mandarin text to speech thing for Cantonese too? Or is it technically not possible right now?

scykei said:

Just curious, would there ever something like the Mandarin text to speech thing for Cantonese too? Or is it technically not possible right now?

Click to expand...

Certainly technically possible, but I'm not aware of any offline Cantonese TTS systems that are available to license on iOS / Android at the moment.

I cannot figure out how to install this on my iPhone. Do I start on the
browser in my Macbook, or the browser on the iPhone? I tried both,
but they both dead-ended.

giacomin@wisc.edu said:

I cannot figure out how to install this on my iPhone. Do I start on the
browser in my Macbook, or the browser on the iPhone? I tried both,
but they both dead-ended.

Click to expand...

You need to start the browser from within Pleco:

Menu->Settings->Web Browser

These instructions make no sense. What do I do once I get into the Safari settings? We need
some serious step-by-step in order to install this on an iPhone.

Alexis said:

You need to start the browser from within Pleco

Menu->Settings->Web Browser

Click to expand...

Don't use Safari. Open Pleco, go to settings (in Pleco), and select Web Browser (in the Pleco settings).

Is there a way to make this work with Android?

bao mingguang said:

Is there a way to make this work with Android?

Click to expand...

On Android it's built in - turn on the Cantonese option in Settings / General.

Too cool for words! Now I'm wondering what else I've missed in this new release.

I went and read the (very long-running) thread on Cantonese. I appreciate all the effort you've gone to in order to provide this feature. Thank you so much.

bao mingguang said:

I went and read the (very long-running) thread on Cantonese. I appreciate all the effort you've gone to in order to provide this feature. Thank you so much.

Click to expand...

No problem! Lots more Cantonese stuff coming...

Anyone willing to listen to Cantonese recording samples from a couple of candidates and let me know what you think? (not posting them here but I can PM you with them)