Cantonese Grammar - Negations

Negations

Many negation words start with the sound m- in Cantonese; for example, 唔 m4 "not", 冇 mou5 "to not have (done sth)", 未 mei6 "not yet". Verbs are negated by adding the character 唔 m4 in front of it. For example:

我食得花生 ngo5 sik6 dak1 faa1 sang1 "I can eat peanuts"
(Where 食 sik6 is the verb "to eat")

becomes:

我唔食得花生 ngo5 m4 sik6 dak1 faa1 sang1 "I can't eat peanuts"

The exception is the word 有 jau5 'to have', which turns into 冇 mou5 'to not have' without the use of 唔 m4.

The negative imperative is formed by prefixing 唔好 m4 hou2 (also pronounced mou2) or 咪 mai5 in front of the verb:

唔好睇戲 m4 hou2 tai2 hei3 "Don't watch movies"

咪睇戲 mai5 tai2 hei3 "Don't watch movies"

In contrast to the examples of sentential negation above where the entire sentence is negated, 唔 m3 can be used lexically to negate a single word. The negated word often differs slightly in meaning from the original word; that is, this lexcial negation is a kind of derivation. Evidence for this is that they can be used with the perfective aspect particle 咗 zo2, which is not possible with sententially negated verbs.

見 gin3 "see" --> 唔見 m3 gin3 "lose"

記得 gei3 dak1 "remember" --> 唔記得 m3 gei3 dak1 "forget"

錯 co3 "wrong" --> 唔錯 m3 co3 'pretty good; not bad' / 冇錯 mou5 co3 "right"

我唔見咗我本書 ngo5 m3 gin3 zo2 ngo5 bun2 syu1 "I lost my book"

is perfectly acceptable, but

'*'我唔食咗嘢 ngo5 m4 sik6 zo2 ye5 "I did not eat"

is ungrammatical. (The correct expression should be 我未食嘢 ngo5 mei6 sik6 ye5: 我(I)未(not yet)食(eat)嘢(something/anything).)