Sunday, January 9, 2011

HEA

Cantonese has the sound HEA. Proper vowel and consonant should be 'he'. It is not the same as the English's pronunciation of the pronoun 'he'. The vowel 'e' sounds like 'er' and so most HK people spell it as 'ea' which is like 'E'+'A' and 'A' actually sounds like 'R'. It is hard to follow some STANDARD.

The group of 'e' vowel's characters include 啤(be), 咩(me), 啡(fe), 爹(de), 呢(ne), 嘅(ge), 遮(ze), 車(ce), 些(se) and 爺(je). 'he' has no character but it looks like the sound comes from 係嘅切 which is the chinese way to spell the sound. It uses the consonant of 係 which is 'h' and vowel of 嘅 which is 'e'. Since 切 means cut, so the 'he' or 'hea' (unofficial) means cut the 係嘅, both means right. Therefore the meaning of 'he' or 'hea' is not having or doing the right thing. According to some current interpretation, wasting time doing some useless activities, no particular goal for anything.

Cantonese evolves long time ago, over thousands year and each sound is embedded in the character and the sound implies certain meaning, feeling and expression.

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