Listen to Podcast | Cantonese: How Do You Say “Favourite Country for Travel”

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New Words

Podcast Transcript | Cantonese: How Do You Say “Favourite Country for Travel”

Arrgh… would you agree with me if I say that holidays are always too short? So how do you usually spend your holidays? Personally, the one thing that I look forward to during holidays is to travel and experience different cultures. Speaking of travelling overseas, do you know how to ask someone what is their favourite country for travel? My name is Eugene from LearnDialect.sg and in today’s Cantonese – How Do You Say Podcast, we will be exploring more on this topic.

So first up, here are some new words that you will be learning today –

最 which means “most”; and

國家 which means “country”.

To ask someone where is their favourite country for travel, I would tap into words we have learnt on the podcast previously and say,

你最鍾意去邊個國家玩? This translates literally into “You most like go which country play?”

Now, we’ve learnt 鍾意 in one of our earlier How Do You Say “I Love You” podcast. Just a quick recap for you, 鍾意 means “like” or “love”. Combining this with the new word – 最 – we literally get “most like” and hence, 最鍾意 is one way to express “favourite” in Cantonese!

By the way, did you know that 鍾意 started as a term unique to Cantonese speakers to indicate fondness? If you are keen to learn more about the unique language features of Cantonese, let me sidetrack a little and shamelessly throw in an ad here… do join us on our Cantonese Course for Beginners. Just visit our website at LearnDialect.sg and look under the tab on “Upcoming Classes”.

Ok, back to today’s podcast. “Where is your favourite country for travel?” translated to Cantonese will be 你最鍾意去邊個國家玩?

We’ve learnt the word – 玩 – in our previous episode. In case you have missed it, it means “play“. Well, so why did we use the same word – 玩 – to infer travel in this scenario? This is simply a colloquial language shortcut. After all, similar to playing, you’ll be having lots of fun travelling to a country that you like, isn’t it?

So I really want to know, 你最鍾意去邊個國家玩? Please share with me in the comments. In our next podcast, I will teach you the names of some countries in Cantonese. My name is Eugene from LearnDialect.sg and see you the next week!

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Our Philosophy for Learning Cantonese in Singapore

At LearnDialect.sg, we want to make learning Cantonese fun, easy and practical for daily conversations in Singapore. As such, rather than figuring out which of the 10 or more Cantonese romanization system to use (e.g. Jyutping, Yale or Cantonese Pinyin etc.), we encourage you to form your own phonics, so that you make an association with these Cantonese words in the quickest way possible. To illustrate, the romanization of the English word, “eat”, is “Sik” using Jyutping and “Sihk” using Yale. However, in our “Have You Eaten?” podcast transcript, you’ll find that we use “sek”, which we think relates to us better. That said, you may use other romanization (e.g “sake”, “xig”, etc), as long as it helps you to make sense of what you hear.