Practice Cantonese tones with Cantonese songs

Cantonese songs are the best tool to practice with tones

Generally, Cantonese songs have a fundamental difference with Mandarin songs. When the composers write lyrics for Mandarin songs, they usually don’t consider the original tones of the the characters. But Cantonese preserves the tradition of Chinese composing, which means the original tones of the characters are taken into account in the lyrics. Therefore, unlike Mandarin, Cantonese lyrics don’t need the accompany of music to carry out its melody, just read the lyrics out loud in the original tones, the tone variation itself carries out the melody of the song.

We can take advantage of this and practice our tone with Cantonese songs. Below are the Jyutping-annotated lyrics of three well-known Cantonese songs, 漫步人生路, 財神到 and 富士山下. Just click the button to listen to the pronunciation of a single character, link them together and they will turn into the song’s rhyme.

For more Cantonese songs annotated with Jyutping, go to 粵拼歌詞網。

漫步人生路

作詞：鄭國江

財神到

作詞：許冠傑

富士山下

填詞：林夕