How do you say it in Cantonese?

Cantonese has a small number of initial consonants, and most Cantonese dialects have about 20 initial consonants. Most Cantonese (except Guangfu Cantonese) commonly have dental initial consonants [?θ?] or lateral fricative initials []. The latter is also commonly found in Zhuang, Lingao, and Li languages. Some Cantonese dialects have implosion voiced sounds, and some have full voiced sounds at the same time, such as Gouluo dialect, Danzhou dialect, Pinghua dialect, etc.

Most of the fully voiced initial consonants of Medieval Chinese have been devoiced in modern Cantonese. There are four main aspiration states of the medieval fully voiced initial consonants that are pronounced as stops or affricates according to the ancient four tones: [source request]

Aspirated in flat tones, unaspirated in oblique tones. Such as Wuzhou, Guangzhou, Nanning, Qinzhou Cantonese.

Aspirate in the flat tone, ascending tone, and entering tone, and do not aspirate in the falling tone. Such as Guigang Cantonese.

No air supply at all. Such as Yulin, Hejie, Qingtang Cantonese.

Always provide air. Such as Lianzhou Cantonese.

The aspiration of the medieval fully voiced initial consonant in today’s reading of stops or fricatives is one of the references for the classification of Cantonese dialects. In the Middle Ages, all voiced initial consonants were devoiced and pronounced as unaspirated voiceless consonants, including Goulu dialects and Pinghua dialects.

In the Middle Ages, the fully voiced initial consonants were all pronounced as aspirated and voiceless after being devoiced, mainly in Wuhua dialect; in Guangfu dialect, Siyi dialect and Gaoyang dialect, the character for Yangpingyang is pronounced as aspirated, and today it is pronounced as Yangquiyang. The words entered are not aspirated [19].

Most of the ancient micro-initial characters in Cantonese are pronounced [m-] today, which is the most developed branch of the ancient phenomenon of micro-initial characters in Chinese varieties.

In Cantonese, the ancient supraspinal sounds are not retained at all, but now Wu Min still retains some of the supraglossal sounds. In particular, the Fujian language has been separated from centralized management for a long time and retains most of its initial consonants. Cantonese does not conform to the ancient saying that it has many tongues. Some scholars believe that it is necessary to clarify the process of Cantonese being officialized in modern times.

Extended information

As for the origin of Cantonese, there are theories such as Yayan from the Northern Central Plains and Chuyu from Chu State. Cantonese is one of the southern dialects that retains more elements of Medieval Chinese. Its most prominent feature is that it relatively completely retains the ubiquitous "entering tone" in Medieval Chinese.

The first official and authoritative pronunciation and rhyme book in Chinese history, "Guangyun" (full name: "The Song Dynasty Revisited Guangyun"), the pronunciation of the words marked in it is highly consistent with today's Cantonese. Some scholars argue that the intonation of Cantonese is consistent with the rhyme of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, while some linguists believe that the phonetic appearance of Cantonese today shows a phenomenon that is very close to the Chinese synonyms of the Sui and Tang Dynasties.