Listen to Podcast | Cantonese: How Do You Say “Sorry”
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New Words
| English | Cantonese | Jyutping | Our Romanization |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sorry | 對唔住 (对不起) | Deoi3 m4 zyu6 | Deoi mm ju |
| Buy | 买 | Maai5 | Maai |
| Made a mistake | 搞錯 | Gaau2 co3 | Gaau cor |
| No such intention / Excuse me | 唔好意思 (不好意思) | M4 hou2 ji3 si1 | mm hou yi si |
Podcast Transcript | Cantonese: How Do You Say “Sorry”
Hi there! My name is Eugene and welcome back to our Cantonese – How Do You Say Podcast on LearnDialect.sg. In your daily conversations, how often do you have to apologize? For me, I apologize all the time as I am rather clumsy, often knocking things over. As such, knowing how to say sorry is rather important for me.
In Cantonese, we express sorry as 對唔住. For example, 對唔住, 我冇买你要食嘅雲吞面 which translates into “Sorry, I did not buy the wanton noodles that you wanted”. I would say 對唔住 represents a more serious manner of apology. If the situation is not too serious, you can use 唔好意思 to express your apology. For example, 唔好意思, 我冇Facebook. By saying 唔好意思, you convey a sense of embarrassment or shyness too. Or if you want to admit that you are wrong, you can say 唔好意思, 我搞錯咗.
Typically, I would use 唔好意思 together with 唔該, especially when I am asking for directions. For example, 唔好意思, 唔該, 請問你, MRT點行? You’ll find that in such context, 唔好意思 serves as a polite prelude to 唔該 which means “Excuse me”.
Once again, apologies can be expressed by Cantonese people via:
對唔住; and
唔好意思.
Hope you find the varying degrees of apologizing in Cantonese useful. Feel free to share with us your thoughts by leaving us a comment. I’m Eugene from LearnDialect.sg. 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.
Native speaker of Cantonese passing by 🙋🏻. I’m 100% sure it should be 唔好意思 m4 hou2 ji3 si1 instead of 冇意思, they mean completely different things and the latter does not and will never be used to mean “sorry! Thank you!
Hi JC! You are absolutely correct in pointing out that 冇意思 should not be used in this context – thank you for your feedback! The above content has been corrected to reflect the correct Chinese characters – 唔好意思 – to be used for the context of “Sorry/Excuse me”.
To our readers, kindly note that 唔好意思 might sound like “冇意思 – mou yi si” if the first two characters are pronounced fast and thus lead to confusion. For the avoidance of doubt, 冇意思 could mean meaningless or no fun e.g., “what you are saying is meaningless/no fun”