About
Introduction
CantoWords is a Cantonese dictionary based on 粵典 (words.hk). We use crowd-sourcing methods to sustainably develop a comprehensive Cantonese dictionary that will be useful for both beginner and advanced users. We aim to provide complete explanations and illustrative example sentences.
Tenets
CantoWords is a descriptivist dictionary -- our goal is to document the actual contemporary state of the Cantonese language in Hong Kong, not to set an 'authoritative' standard. In addition to usage that is accepted by mainstream Cantonese users, we also document features that are used by a substantial minority.
Purpose
When we started the project, Cantonese dictionaries in Chinese included only words that are not Mandarin; whereas those in English focused on translating simple words and phrases. We believe that making a comprehensive, bilingual Cantonese dictionary would raise the status of Cantonese as a standalone and complete language, helping us pass on our heritage.
Open Content
We believe in ideas of open content, and we publish our content under a relatively permissive license. In addition, some of our data that may be useful for developing input methods, natural language processing etc. is released in the Public Domain.
Want to help?
As long as you use Cantonese in your daily life, no matter where you live, we are more than happy to invite you to our editor team.
If you are interested in joining us, please contact us via either email or Facebook
Special Credits
- Hong Kong Cantonese Corpus (HKCanCor)
- Department of Linguistics, HKU
- 林璃蝶女士
- Can Cheng
- 昭源字體 Chiron Fonts
- Dr. Chaak-Ming Lau
Become a Patreon supporter
We have set up a Patreon page, and we need your support!
Patrons
- 史兄
- James Kong
- element14
Active Editors
- Edwardjyu
- HulK
- Pi
- Zingwaa
- bullsword
- element14
- heitung