If you learnt Cantonese before, you may know that Hong Kong people like skipping two nasal sounds "n" and "ngo".
Therefore, 你nei5(You) and ngo我 (I) would become lei5 and o5.
For beginners, when teachers talk about this point, you may be confused about that, or you may think that lazy-sounds is minority.
But actually, in Hong Kong, they are very common. As I am working in a primary school in Hong Kong, I can say at least half of teachers here would pronounce lei5 for you, and 30% of teachers would pronounce o5 for I even though they know the correct way to pronounce.
If you watch TVB (the most famous Cantonese TV channel in the world), those programs expect that news would have lazy-sounds, and even officials from Educational Bureau would pronounce them on a public speech.
And there are some discussion on what is lazy-sounds as well, such as 安(Safe), some books would regard the correct pronunication as on1 and some are ngon1.
Interesting! I'm curious about this, because it seems to me that I've observed just the opposite with regard to the initial "ng" sound. I've been told that Cantonese speakers will often add "ng" to the beginning of any word that begins with a vowel. Based purely on the shows and movies I've seen from Hong Kong, this has seemed to me to be true. In fact, as far as I can remember, I've only seen one HK movie where an actor pronounced 愛 as "oi3" rather than "ngoi3," even though dictionaries list "oi3" as the "correct" form.
Even in Cantopop songs, which seem to follow a slightly more standard pronunciation (sometimes keeping "nei5" instead of "lei5," for instance), it seems like I almost always hear the singers add "ng" to the beginning of words that technically begin with a vowel sound. Maybe I'm just imagining the "ng" some of the time, because I'm expecting it to be there? Or maybe it's because I'm mostly watching movies and listening to music from the 80's and 90's? Is this a language feature that's currently changing?
"lazy-sound" is the direct translation of 懶音. It is a common term we use. It means lazy but is not really negative. People will not be offended by it.
100% of my HongKongese friends skip the nasal sound, for me personally I never pronounce the "N" and "Ng". If you doubt it, ask anyone to say Milk ngau4 naai5. I don't think any native speaker will focus on the nasal sound regardless of it is an initial or final. The easy rule is to ignore all the nasal sounds when you hear and when you speak.
