Proper Cantonese pronunciation
After the 1980s, the proper Cantonese pronunciation has been much promoted in Hong Kong, with the scholar Richard Ho as its iconic campaigner. The very idea of "proper" pronunciation of Cantonese Chinese is very controversial, since there is no such thing as "mispronunciation" in descriptive linguistics. Law et al. defines "lazy sounds", most commonly discussed in relation to phonetic changes in Hong Kong Cantonese, as a phrase that often has an implication of the speaker being "unwilling to put forth sufficient effort to articulate the standard pronunciation".
The promotion of "proper" Cantonese Chinese pronunciation is partly a reaction to the so-called "lazy sounds" (懶音 laan5 jam1) adopted by the younger generations. The "lazy" pronunciations, or sound changes include:
The nine attested phonetic sound changes in Hong Kong Cantonese, or "lazy sounds" in the format of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) can be tracked in the following table:
To, Mcleod and Cheung delve deeper in these sound changes in contemporary Hong Kong Cantonese, and focus in particular on the four syllable-final consonants: [-ŋ], [-n], [-k], and [-t]. After conducting original research on the pronunciation of words containing these syllable-final phonetic changes, To et al. argue that syllable-final environment sound changes occur due to the tongue position at the preceding vowel, as it opts for maximum ease. Thus, their argument attests for two process: alveolarization (occurring in [-ŋ] > [-n] transitions and [-k] > [-t] transitions) and velarization (occurring in [-n] > [-ŋ] transitions and [-t] > [-k] transitions).
The following table shows the environments where the processes of alveolarization and velarization tend to occur:
Alveolarization tends to occur when there is a preceding mid-front or central vowel, and velarization tends to occur when the attested preceding mid-back vowel [ɔ] is present. The last example in table 2 indicates that the attested [ɪŋ] sequence doesn’t change, as the position of the tongue for the high, lax, front vowel is already in close proximity to the position needed to make the velar consonants.
To et al.'s research presents that the process of co-articulation accounts for the birth of lazy sounds. In present Hong Kong Cantonese, alveolarization is a more popular phenomenon than velarization, and the syllable-final alveolar consonants [-n] and [-t] tend to be preserved even when the preceding vowels prompt a tongue position that is further back. An example would be “dry” [kɔn]. It is rare for people to pronounce this with a syllable-final [-ŋ], although it still occurs, as 7.1% of adults tested by To et al. do this.
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