Yes and no. Cantonese has 9 tone categories that have 6 distinct tone contours. The 3 additional tones fall under the checked tone category (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checked_tone) for historical purposes, but their realized pronunciations coincide with the tone contours of 3 of the other 6 tones, so for most practical purposes, many sources describe Cantonese as having 6 tones.
I have an old Quora answer here that goes into more detail: https://qr.ae/pyNupi
I like to tell complete newbies that Cantonese roughly has "4 tones."
- High level
- Mid level
- Low (includes "low falling" and "low level")
- Rising (includes "low rising" and "mid rising")
I've combined similar tones into the Low and Rising categories. If you are a non-native Cantonese speaker, and don't differentiate between "low falling" and "low level", native Cantonese speakers will still understand you.
It's difficult for a non-native speaker to distinguish between "low rising" and "mid rising".... so just treat it as a rising tone. I'm a native speaker and sometimes I forget which type of rising tone a particular word is.... I didn't learn it that way, haha. I just learned to say the word the same way my parents did.
The 7th, 8th, and 9th tones are short versions of the three level tones, and they all end in a consonant (like "k"). If you pronounced them the same, but make the syllable very short, you'll be fine.
So yeah.... think of it as 4 tones, just like Mandarin. Three different level tones at high, middle, low pitches, and one rising tone :-).
> If you are a non-native Cantonese speaker, and don't differentiate between "low falling" and "low level", native Cantonese speakers will still understand you.
Whilst it is true that in the case of Cantonese some tones can be misused without the loss of the comprehension in a conversion, and the non-native speaker will still be understood if the surrounding context is clear and concise, that is not the case with the low falling tone, which is the most unforgiving of all. Cantonese speakers are prone to get thoroughly confused when the low falling tone is substituted for a flat low tone or a low rising one. Consider 墳墓 and 分母 when the context is insufficient to deduce which word was actually meant; it is perhaps not the best example but I can't think of a better one at the moment.
> It's difficult for a non-native speaker to distinguish between "low rising" and "mid rising".... so just treat it as a rising tone. I'm a native speaker and sometimes I forget which type of rising tone a particular word is.... I didn't learn it that way, haha.
Most native speakers of tonal languages are not even aware of the fact their native language has tones. They don't think about it, they don't think about the tones. Tones are a concept for speakers of languages that do not have the tones in the first place.
It depends. Some people classify it as 6 tones, some as 9. The extra three are "entering <x> level tone", which are sort of shortened versions of a different tone.
So: some words end in a stop, which is sometimes counted as a different tone even though the pitch pattern isn't different. For example, consider fan versus fat.
TLDR: No. There are 6 tones in Cantonese, the 9 "categories" are made referring to Middle Chinese.
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Middle Chinese had 4 tones[1]. The 4th tone, "entering" (or "checked"), is words that end in stops (p/t/k). Because of the way it evolved, none of those words in Cantonese have tones 2, 4, or 5 (but not exactly, see below). In other words, they all have tones 1, 3, or 6.
To emphasize this observation and to make a connection to the 4 tones in middle Chinese, some analysis call them tones 7, 8, 9, with names upper dark/lower dark/light entering[2].
But such an analysis has nothing to do with how a modern Cantonese speaking brain process the sounds. E.g. Cantonese has a tone-change to tone 2 for the diminutive form, when this happens to a word that ends with p/t/k[3], the 9 tone framework cannot describe that.
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Caveat: when I said "Cantonese" above I mean the dominant dialect of Cantonese spoken in Guangzhou/Hong Kong.
What's the Americans obsession with checks? I worked and lived in other countries , including Asia, Europe and Latin America. Most of them moved on to digital payment (especially China) where I found the US and Canada still heavily relied on a piece of paper to process a large amount of funds with no security.
In US, I realized even buying groceries they accept checks written at the counter.
I'm in the US and I use checks for some bills because they charge me a fee to pay with other methods (off the top of my head, my property taxes and electric bill have these drawbacks). I tend to use the bank bill pay system for these instead of writing an actual check though.
One of my previous companies use their self-hosted Gitea. That's all good and stuff, but they don't have a dedicated DevOps person, so we actually have to spend extra maintenance on it.
Moreover, we were going through SOC-2 auditing at that time and it is much easier to just store our source code in one of the SaaS option like Github/GitLab/Bitbucket for our auditors to check without having me to screenshot everything for them.
I realize all of their social media accounts disappear as well - FB, Instagram, YouTube, etc. Honestly I feel so bad for their employees and most HK people.
I am a football guy. Anyone said we tolerate UEFA/FIFA's corrupted system is because ESL is not any better. ESL lacks of a real relegation/promotion system with other teams, and that's a huge blow to European's traditions of "competitiveness" and "dream" about having a small team going all the way to the top tier competition and even beat them. (Check out the year when Leicester won the English Premier League)
The ESL is simple a closed system, similar to what NBA in US in that there is not relegation/promotion from other lower division leagues, and that means they only play against themselves. Poorly performed team do not need to worry about getting relegated, hence there's really no competition there. And that kills the sporting spirit and the fundamental value behind sports.
Do we believe in UEFA/FIFA? Hell no, but we do believe in football pyramid system and ESL just don't have it. ESL is not the solution to the current problem in European football. It also creates a barrier to not let smaller teams to be part of the competition.
