A1
Numbers
How Cantonese builds numbers, why 二 and 兩 are both “two”, and the counting habits that differ from Mandarin.
一二三四五六七八九十 — jat1 ji6 saam1 sei3 ng5 luk6 cat1 baat3 gau2 sap6. The construction is identical to Mandarin’s and completely regular: what comes before 十 multiplies it, what comes after adds to it.
十五
sap6 ng5
fifteen
三十二
saam1 sap6 ji6
thirty-two
In fast speech 十 often reduces — 三十二 comes out closer to saa1 aa6 ji6 — which is worth expecting rather than learning, since nobody writes it that way.
二 and 兩
The same split as Mandarin. 二 is the number as a number; 兩 is two of something and goes before a classifier.
兩個人
loeng5 go3 jan4
two people
二個人
兩個人
Standing in front of a classifier, two is 兩. Inside a larger number it stays 二 — 十二個人 is right.
Hundreds, thousands, and 萬
百 baak3, 千 cin1, 萬 maan6. As in Mandarin, the grouping is in fours rather than threes, so 萬 is a unit in its own right and everything above it is counted in 萬s.
一萬
jat1 maan6
ten thousand
十萬
sap6 maan6
a hundred thousand
There is no shortcut. Converting anything large means regrouping rather than translating, and it stays slow for a long time.
Money
蚊 man1 is the everyday word for a dollar, and 個 covers the units below it in speech. 三蚊 is three dollars; 三個半 is three fifty.
幾多錢呀？
Gei2do1 cin2 aa3?
How much is it?
三十蚊。
Saam1 sap6 man1.
Thirty dollars.
Years and phone numbers
Read digit by digit, as in Mandarin. 二零二六年 is two zero two six, never twenty twenty-six. 零 is ling4, and in phone numbers 一 is often said jiu1 to keep it distinct from 七.