As in English, Cantonese descriptors come right before the thing they describe.  There are a few differences between Cantonese and English adjective phrases, though.  For one, Cantonese uses a special particle (ge) to separate the descriptions from the thing being described.

Note that some adjectives do not require the ge particle, although it is still correct to use it even in these cases.  Colors in particular are often used without the ge.

Cantonese adjective phrases can be very complex, combining long series of descriptions and varying types of modifiers.  More will be said on this in a later lesson.

Possessives

In English, words change form to show possession (thief's painting), ownership (collector's painting), and relationship (thief's mother).  Most words add a form of (-'s).  Others, like pronouns, undergo more drastic changes.  Additionally, some words have different possessive forms depending on whether they are the subject or object of the sentence.

Cantonese words do not change form.  Instead, possession is treated the same way as any adjective phrase.  The possessive noun or pronoun goes on the left, the particle ge goes in the middle, and the object goes on the right.  This is true whether the possessive is acting as the subject or object of the sentence.

Any question in English where a person would be asked to answer "yes" or "no" could be made into a choice-type question using a verb and its negative.  In English it would seem like an interrogation, but in Chinese such questions are the standard and not at all rude.

Forming The Negative

To form the negative of most verbs the prefix \mh\ is added before the verb or adjective being negated.

The verb "to have" is a special case.  Instead of using the \mh\ 唔 particle to negate it, /yauh/ 有 is

Using Choice-Type Questions

As noted earlier, Cantonese forms most choice-type questions by offering a verb and its negative as choices.  This is done by putting the verb in its usual place in the sentence and then following it directly with its negative form.  Verbs with two syllables follow a special rule.  The positive form the second syllable is omitted while the negative form is written out in full.  This abbreviation is not a requirement, the full form can also be used, but native speakers almost always shorten the question.

Not all choices are made from a verb and it's opposite, however.  Sometimes the two choices are just exclusive of each other.  One such choice is whether an event has occurred or has not yet (as opposed to whether it will or not).  meih 未 means "not yet".  To make a choice-type question with meih you use the entire verb phrase as the first choice and meih as the second choice.  The sentence ending particle "a" 呀 is almost always added to end of questions in this form.

Another choice-type question that offers choices that are not necessarily opposites uses dihng 定 or dihng haih 定係.  When used to make a question, these terms have the equivalent meaning of "or" as in "Do you want pizza or tacos?".  The question is formed by separating the two choices with dihng or dihng haih.  Note that these terms are NOT used to make a statement with "or".  The statement "You can have either pizza or tacos." would be formed by a different term (waahk /je/ 或者).

Note that some of the examples above are pretty much nonsense.  It takes a little imagination to see how the sentence "Do you want to go to Hong Kong or give him a pen?" or "Do you want to be happy or go to England?" would ever be used.  The point of leaving in the nonsense questions is to show the versatility of the grammar structure.  (In the first case, you could have someone who is very impulsive about to buy a $1000 pen as a gift for a friend.  A friend, knowing how impulsive he is, and that he wants to go to Hong Kong, offers sage advice in the form of that question...  In the second case, you have a person who has met the love of her life in Hong Kong but offered a very lucrative job in England.  When told she is about to leave, her love tries to get her to stay by asking...)

Measure Words in Use

The most obvious use of measure words is in counting or specifying nouns.  Where in English we only need a specifier to say "a car", "3 cars", "that car", "each car", etc., Cantonese requires a specifier and a measure word.  Additionally, Cantonese can use reduplication with measure words to refer to a class of items.

Note that if no specifier is given, it is assumed that there is only one.  Also, when the number yih 二 "2" would be the specifier, it is always

Also note that the plural marker -di- 啲/D is used to specify an unknown quantity.  It generally cannot be used with a specific number or with /muih/ 每 since it specifies "each and all."  The exception of -yat- "1", which is a special case where the contrast is used no mean "one or more."

Reduplication can refer to all existing objects of a type, or to all objects in a particular context.

Notes and Additional Uses

• There are many more measure words than those listed here.  This is not intended to be a comprehensive list.  Some measure words are only used for one or two nouns.  It is suggested that you learn the proper measure word for an object when first learning that object as a new vocabulary word.
• If an object is already understood by speaker and hearer it can be replaced by a specifier and measure word.  The measure word acts much like a pronoun.  For example, if two people are using different colored pens one could say to the other "/bei/ /go/ \ji\ /ngoh/" ("give me that") instead of "/bei/ /go/ \ji\ -bat- /ngoh/" ("give me that pen") and it would be grammatically correct.
• Measure words can replace the particle ge (see Grammar Lesson 5) to show possession and relation from one noun to another.  Example: My pen can be written "/ngoh/ \ji\ -bat-" instead of "/ngoh/ ge -bat-"
• Measure words can be used to show fractional numbers.  Generally this is used with go 個 when working with money and time as most other measure words are not used with objects that are readily divisible.  (see Skills Lesson 3)
• Some measure words act as both nouns and measure words.  In such cases they can usually be measured in turn by the general measure word "go", although it is not required.  For example, the command "give me that cup" can be expressed either "/bei/ /go/ go -bui- /ngoh/" or "/bei/ /go/ -bui- /ngoh/".
• Many items have more than one measure word (example: \che\ 車 can be measured by bouh 部, ga 架, or /leuhng/ 輛), and many measure words can be applied to almost any object (e.g. -di-, deui, gauh, and any of the container measures).
• The "default" measure word is go 個.  Many words that have a more specific classifier can still use, go.  Often times native speakers will be casual/lazy and use go instead of the correct classifier for less frequently used items, but that is not license to indiscriminately use go in place of correct measure words.  A non-native may perceived to be making an error in places where a native is just using a more casual register.  One should only imitate native short-cuts if they appear to be consistent.
• While you can generally state that a measure words has a certain description, it does not mean that all objects fitting that description can be measured by that measure word.  For example, "snake" and "dragon" are both animals, but they are not measured by the measure word for animals (jek 隻), instead they are measured by the measure word for "long, skinny objects" (\tiuh\ 條).
• -ni-,  /go/, -bin-, and -di- are Cantonese specific words which have Cantonese dialectal characters.  (The character for -bin- is shown since it is a common character in standard Chinese.)  These characters have the written equivalents of je 這, /nah/ 那, \nah\ 哪, and \se\ 些 respectively.