A1
嘅 — whose it is
How 嘅 marks possession and attaches descriptions in Cantonese, when it gets dropped, and the second job it does at the end of a sentence.
嘅 does what 的 does in Mandarin: it goes between the owner and the thing owned, and between any description and the noun it describes.
我嘅書
ngo5 ge3 syu1
my book
老師嘅名
lou5si1 ge3 meng2
the teacher’s name
It is ge3, and it is one of the three or four characters that make a piece of writing unmistakably Cantonese rather than standard Chinese.
Dropping it
With people you are close to and institutions you belong to, 嘅 is left out — the same rule as Mandarin.
我媽咪
ngo5 maa1mi4
my mum
我哋公司
ngo5dei6 gung1si1
our company
我哋 is we — 哋 is the plural marker, where Mandarin uses 们.
Attaching a description
Anything longer than a single-syllable adjective takes 嘅 before the noun.
好靚嘅屋
hou2 leng3 ge3 uk1
a very pretty house
我買嘅書
ngo5 maai5 ge3 syu1
the book I bought
That second one is the pattern worth sitting with: the whole clause goes before the noun and ends with 嘅. Read it right to left and it comes out as English.
嘅 on its own means “mine”
Leave the noun off and 嘅 carries it.
呢個係我嘅。
Ni1 go3 hai6 ngo5 ge3.
This is mine.
And at the end of a sentence
嘅 also closes a sentence, where it adds a note of that’s just how it is — a statement of fact, softened. This use has no equivalent in the Mandarin 的 you may already know, and it is very common.
佢好好人嘅。
Keoi5 hou2 hou2 jan4 ge3.
He’s a really good person, you know.
Cantonese carries a great deal in these final particles, and 嘅 is one of the first to notice.