If you're trying to learn Cantonese Feminine you will find some useful resources including a course about genders: Feminine and Masculine... to help you with your Cantonese grammar. Try to concentrate on the lesson and notice the pattern that occurs each time the word changes its place. Also don't forget to check the rest of our other lessons listed on Learn Cantonese. Enjoy the rest of the lesson!
Learning the Cantonese gender is very important because its structure is used in every day conversation. The more you master it the more you get closer to mastering the Cantonese language. But first we need to know what the role of gender is in the structure of the grammar in Cantonese.
Cantonese feminine refers to female qualities attributed specifically to women and girls or things considered feminine. The complement to feminine is masculine.
The Cantonese third person singular pronoun is keui5. In written Cantonese, the character most commonly used to record this is 佢; it may be used to refer to people of either gender. The practice of replacing the "亻" radical with "女" (forming the character 姖) to specifically indicate the female gender may also be seen occasionally in informal writing; however, this is neither widely accepted nor grammatically or semantically required, and, unlike 佢, the character 姖 has a separate meaning in standard Chinese.
Here are some examples:
| English Gender | Cantonese Gender |
|---|---|
| Feminine | 女性 |
| he is happy | 他很快樂 |
| she is happy | 她很快樂 |
| he is American | 他是美國人 |
| she is American | 她是美國人 |
| man | 男人 |
| woman | 女人 |
| father | 爸爸 |
| mother | 媽媽 |
| brother | 兄弟 |
| sister | 姐妹 |
| uncle | 伯父;叔父;姑父;姨丈;舅父 |
| aunt | 伯母;嬸母;姑母;姨母;舅母 |
| bull | 公牛 |
| cow | 母牛 |
| boy | 男孩 |
| girl | 女孩 |
Notice the structure of the gender in Cantonese.
Below is a list of objects, can you determine whether they're feminine, masculine or plural in Cantonese? Memorizing this table will also help you add very useful and important words to your Cantonese vocabulary.
| English Vocabulary | Cantonese Vocabulary |
|---|---|
| objects | 物件 |
| bathroom | 浴室 |
| bed | 臥室 |
| bedroom | 睡房 |
| ceiling | 天花 |
| chair | 椅子 |
| clothes | 衣服 |
| coat | 外套 |
| cup | 杯 |
| desk | 桌 |
| dress | 裙 |
| floor | 地板 |
| fork | 叉 |
| furniture | 傢俬 |
| glass | 玻璃杯 |
| hat | 帽 |
| house | 屋 |
| ink | 墨 |
| jacket | 外套 |
| kitchen | 廚房 |
| knife | 刀 |
| lamp | 燈 |
| letter | 信 |
| map | 地圖 |
| newspaper | 報紙 |
| notebook | 記事簿 |
| pants | 褲 |
| paper | 紙 |
| pen | 筆 |
| pencil | 鉛筆 |
| pharmacy | 藥房 |
| picture | 圖片 |
| plate | 碟 |
| refrigerator | 雪櫃 |
| restaurant | 餐廳 |
| roof | 屋頂 |
| room | 房間 |
| rug | 小地毯 |
| scissors | 剪刀 |
| shampoo | 洗髮水 |
| shirt | 恤衫 |
| shoes | 鞋 |
| soap | 肥皀 |
| socks | 襪子 |
| spoon | 匙 |
| table | 桌 |
| toilet | 廁所 |
| toothbrush | 牙刷 |
| toothpaste | 牙膏 |
| towel | 毛巾 |
| umbrella | 雨傘 |
| underwear | 內衣 |
| wall | 牆 |
| wallet | 銀包 |
| window | 窗 |
| telephone | 電話 |
Feminine and Masculine have a very important role in Cantonese. Once you're done with the Yue gender, you might want to check the rest of our Cantonese lessons here: Learn Cantonese. Don't forget to bookmark this page.
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