Listen to Podcast | Cantonese: How Do You Say “No Problem”

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Podcast Transcript | Cantonese: How Do You Say “No Problem”

Hi everyone! My name is Eugene and once again, welcome to Cantonese – How Do You Say Podcast on LearnDialect.sg. In today’s podcast, we will be covering a useful Cantonese phrase for daily conversations that has dual meaning. This Cantonese phrase is 冇問題. Once you learn how to pronounce this phrase, you can either use it to express “no problem” or to indicate that you have “no questions”. Talk about killing 2 birds with 1 stone!

Now, let’s start by learning how to express “no problem”. For example, if I wasn’t able to help you buy wanton noodles, but yet you are totally fine with it, this is how our conversation would sound like,

I’ll say 對唔住, 我冇买你要食嘅雲吞面.

You’ll say 冇問題!

Well, by now, you should be quite familiar with this word – 冇 – as I’ve taught it a couple of times. 冇 means “no” and 問題 – the new phrase today – refers to “problem”. So 冇問題 literally means “No problem”.

Or the next time someone tells you that he/she is running a little late but you are ok to wait, you can practise saying 冇問題!

Besides referring to a problem, another meaning for 問題 is “question”. So sometimes, you may hear someone asking 有冇問題? This translates into, “Any questions?” If yes, you can respond by saying 有. However, if you have no further questions, you will say 冇問題.

So how? 有冇問題? I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s Cantonese – How Do You Say Podcast. Feel free to share with us your thoughts by leaving us a comment. 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.