Listen to Podcast | Cantonese: How Do You Say “Slower” & “Faster”

Psst… You can find our How Do You Say Podcasts on Spotify too! Head to Spotify – LearnDialect.sg or search for LearnDialect.sg on Spotify.

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Podcast Transcript | Cantonese: How Do You Say “Slower” & “Faster”

Hello everyone, welcome back to our Cantonese – How Do You Say Podcast on LearnDialect.sg. If you have been listening to our podcast, 你有冇學咗乜嘢? 有冇乜嘢要我講多一次? 你明唔明我講咩? Was I speaking too fast or slow for your liking? How do you ask someone to talk slower or faster in Cantonese then? My name is Eugene and let’s find out how to do that today!

Cantonese people use the word 慢 to mean “slow”. Hence, to emphasize the need to slow down, you can repeat the word twice. For example, 慢慢講 means “speak slower”, 慢慢行 means “walk slower” and 慢慢食 means “eat slower”. On the contrary, if you need someone to be faster, Cantonese use the words – 快啲. As such, 快啲講 means to speak faster, 快啲行 means to walk faster and 快啲食 means to eat faster.

Now, here’s a fun fact for you. Did you know that while Cantonese, Hokkiens and Teochews in Singapore use similar Chinese characters to represent “slower”, they have different ways of expressing “faster”? If you are keen to find out how Hokkiens and Teochews in Singapore express “faster”, do check out our Hokkien and Teochew podcasts too!

So in today’s podcast, we have learnt 慢 means “slow”, 快 means “fast” while 慢慢 means “slower” and 快啲 means “faster”. Try using and practising these words in your daily Cantonese conversations. My name is Eugene from LearnDialect.sg and look forward to seeing you next week!

Love what you are reading? We’ve got lots more to share during our Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese express workshops. Join us to pick up words and phrases for everyday use in Singapore. More importantly, you can help to keep these languages alive!

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.