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Yair
Two Cantonese questions
1.
我一聽到你嘅電話,我就嚟
What does the 聽到 mean here? To “hear” or to “pick up the phone”?
2.
有車嚟啦
“There is a car coming”
what does the 啦 mean?
I know this particle in Mandarin, but it clearly has a different meaning here, because the 啦 in Mandarin makes it past tense + emphasis (啦=了+啊). This sentence is in present tense, so the meaning in Cantonese must be different (and of course Cantonese doesn’t use 了 to indicate past tense anyway). Could somebody please clarify what 啦 means?
Feb 8, 2017 6:07 PM
Answers · 4
2
1.我一聽到你嘅電話,我就嚟
What does the 聽到 mean here? To “hear” or to “pick up the phone”?
聽到these two words alone mean 'heard'. In this sentence, 我一聽到你嘅電話,我就(趕過)嚟。(After we talked on the phone, I rush here immediately.) 我就(趕過)嚟is the cause, so I assume you have heard your ringtone and have picked up the phone. We talked on the phone, maybe I told you something, and you rushed here asap.
2.
有車嚟啦
“There is a car coming”
what does the 啦 mean?
I know this particle in Mandarin, but it clearly has a different meaning here, because the 啦 in Mandarin makes it past tense + emphasis (啦=了+啊). This sentence is in present tense, so the meaning in Cantonese must be different (and of course Cantonese doesn’t use 了 to indicate past tense anyway). Could somebody please clarify what 啦 means?
Actually you know the answer already! :) In 有車嚟啦(“There is a car coming”), the 啦 makes it present tense + emphasis!
Or you can say 有車啦/架車嚟啦, are more efficient, because you are standing and waiting for a car/a bus, and you see it maybe from a 3-5 seconds distance and you tell your friends 有車啦/架車嚟啦。
February 8, 2017
1
1. Without further context, it is impossible to determine the tense of the sentence. Two translations are possible: "I came here right after receiving your phone call" or "Once I have received your phone call, I'll come right away".
2. The sentence is very commonly used at a bus stop to draw the listener's attention to the fact that the desired bus is coming. 啦 serves this purpose. Here it is pronounced as laa3 instead of laa1. I prefer 喇 to 啦 to avoid confusion.
February 9, 2017
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Yair
Language Skills
Catalan, Dutch, English, Gaelic (Irish), Gaelic (Scottish), Hebrew, Italian, Romanian, Spanish
Learning Language
Gaelic (Irish), Gaelic (Scottish), Italian, Romanian
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