Abstracts of Keynote Talks

“Cantonese Poets on Culture and Cantonese Poets in Cantonese on Love” (David Honey)

This presentation will introduce the major exponents of a distinct Cantonese thematic poetic muse and its chief historical exponents, starting with the Tang poet Zhang Jiuling 張九齡, Song writers Li Maoying 李昴英 and Yu Jing 余靖, early Qing poets The Three Great Masters of Lingnan 嶺南三大家, Qu Dajun 屈大均, Chen Gongyin 陳恭尹, and Liang Peilan 梁佩蘭. An alternate framework to analyze the development of a Cantonese muse is to tracc the various iterations of the leading poetry society founded in the late Yuan and enduring through the early Ming, The Southern Garden Poetry Garden 南園詩社. It persisted on and off throughout the Ming and Qing periods until a last reconvention during the early Republican era.

In contrast to these mainstream poets on Cantonese culture and custom, we will next examine two different types of Cantonese poets who composed verses in Cantonese. First is the famous singer from Hong Kong during the seventies Sam Hui, the king of so-called Cantpop. Among my
favorite songs of him celebrating the hard life of lower and middle class Hong Kong-ites are 鬼馬雙星, 天才與白痴, 半斤八兩, 賣身契, 制水歌, 摩登保鑣, and 念奴嬌. Second is Jiu Ji-yung(pinyin Zhao Ziyong] 招子庸, a mid-Qing poet who composed 92 poems on the theme of love.

“Managing Variation in Cantonese Lexical Items and Orthographic Conventions for Dictionaries and Keyboards.” (Lau Chaak Ming)

Cantonese has become increasingly popular in informal written communication in Hong Kong, yet it lacks a standardized writing system. Variations in character choice for Cantonese-specific morphemes are widespread due to the absence of standardization. Regional differences in glyph standards also result in multiple ways of writing or typing certain characters. Although the sound system of Hong Kong Cantonese is relatively stable, ongoing phonological changes continue to arise. Despite a gradual convergence, these variations remain significant and must be carefully considered when compiling any lexicon.

This talk draws insights from two lexicon projects, words.hk (a collaborative online Cantonese dictionary) and TypeDuck (a Cantonese input method tool), to explore how we address various levels of variation—phonological, orthographic, grammatical, and regional. We will discuss the numerous decisions required to balance the language’s diverse written and phonetic forms with practical usability. While these projects do not aim for top-down standardization, they strive to reduce variation by promoting and respecting usage that is already widespread, while curbing unfounded etymological claims. Our guiding principles are designed to accommodate a wide range of users, ensuring our solutions are both inclusive and practical. We hope that these efforts will better support the development of Cantonese and other Yue varieties in the long term.