Hanzi → Cantonese Yale romanisation converter. The 1970s Yale University standard, widely used in North American Cantonese teaching. Numeric and diacritic tone modes.
Cantonese Yale Converter (耶鲁拼音)
How to use
Enter Chinese text
Simplified or traditional, single chars or sentences.
Choose tone style
Numeric (digits 1-6, easy to type) or diacritic (classic Yale style with vowel marks and "h" suffix).
See Yale alongside Jyutping
Both systems shown side-by-side for direct comparison.
Copy or print
Suitable for North American Cantonese classes, Sidney Lau textbooks, and traditional teaching contexts.
Cantonese Yale: The North American Teaching Tradition
Cantonese Yale (Yale Romanization of Cantonese) was developed in the early 1970s by Gerard Kok and Parker Po-fei Huang for Yale University\'s Cantonese language program. Its design philosophy was to use letter conventions familiar to English speakers — a parallel project to Hong Kong\'s contemporaneous 教院 standard but explicitly aimed at North American learners.
Yale vs. Jyutping
Both describe the same language (Cantonese), but with different phonetic conventions. Yale initials: j becomes y (yat6 = 一), z becomes j (joum = 做), c becomes ch (chah = 茶) — more intuitive for English speakers. Jyutping: more computer-friendly, with numeric tones and no diacritics. Academia and Hong Kong proper now favour Jyutping; North American Cantonese teaching tradition still leans Yale.
Tone marking
Yale supports two tone notations: numeric (1-6, like ngo5) or diacritic: T1 high-level uses ¯ (macron), T2 high-rising uses ́ (acute), T3 mid-level is unmarked, T4 low-falling uses ̀ (grave) + h-suffix, T5 low-rising uses ́ + h, T6 low-level is unmarked + h. The low tones (4/5/6) get a "-h" suffix — Yale\'s most distinctive feature.
Who still uses Yale?
(1) North American Cantonese programs at universities like Yale, Cornell, UC Berkeley. (2) Sidney Lau textbooks — a traditional HK pedagogy based on Yale principles with small modifications. (3) 1970s-1990s HK educational materials (largely replaced by Jyutping but still in circulation). (4) Second-generation HK diaspora in North America: many 1970s-80s migrant families still teach their children Cantonese using Yale conventions.
This tool first generates Jyutping using RecaJyutping (BSD-2-Clause), then applies the standard LSHK-to-Yale mapping rules. Foundational reference: Matthews & Yip, Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar (Routledge, public-domain reference standard).
10 Facts about Cantonese Yale
Cantonese Yale was developed in the early 1970s by Gerard Kok and Parker Huang at Yale University — predating Hong Kong's LSHK Jyutping (1993) by 20 years.
Yale's "-h suffix" is its signature visual feature — any syllable ending in -h marks a low tone (tone 4, 5, or 6).
Yale writes both Jyutping oe and eo as "eu" (more pronounceable for English speakers) — one of the biggest differences between the two systems.
The major North American Cantonese programs (Yale, Cornell, UC Berkeley, UBC) historically taught Yale. Cornell only switched to Jyutping in the 2010s.
Sidney Lau's "Cantonese as a Second Language" (1970s) used a Yale-like system. This was Hong Kong's most-used Cantonese textbook during the colonial era, influential among British and American expatriates.
Yale's "v" representing the ü-sound is often written as "yu" by computer users — Yale itself accepts "yu" as standard, a flexibility that helped its digital adaptation.
Many older Hong Kong street signs use mixed conventions: "Hung Hom" (紅磡)'s "Hung" is Yale-like; "Kowloon" (九龍) reflects yet another legacy system. HK signage is not uniformly romanised.
Yale handles vowel length more loosely than Jyutping (not strictly distinguishing aa vs. a). This makes it friendlier for non-linguist learners but loses pronunciation precision.
The digital shift: numeric Yale (ngo5) is replacing diacritic Yale (ngóh) because it's easier to type. This transition happened in the 2000s-2010s among North American Cantonese communities.
Pairs with RT-CHN-034 (Jyutping Converter) and RT-CHN-036 (Mandarin Tone Drill) — the complete Cantonese + Mandarin pronunciation toolset.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Depends on context. Jyutping: computer-friendly, academic standard, modern HK teaching → pick Jyutping. Yale: North American university tradition, English-intuitive, Sidney Lau textbooks → pick Yale. This tool shows both, so you can cross-study.
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The underlying tones are identical — both systems describe the same 6 Cantonese tones. Marking differs: Jyutping uses digits 1-6; Yale offers digits or diacritics + "-h" suffix. The same tone has the same meaning in both, just written differently.
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Recommended to know both. Academic resources (CUHK Cantonese Course, HKU courses) default to Jyutping. North American materials (Cornell, UC Berkeley, Sidney Lau) default to Yale. Professional Cantonese researchers typically know both.
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Use numeric mode. Modern North American Yale teaching has shifted toward numeric tones — preserving the Yale letter system while remaining typeable. This tool defaults to numeric.
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Not exactly. Sidney Lau was a 1970s HK-local Cantonese teaching system, contemporary with Yale. Most letter conventions match (j = y, c = ch), but tone marking differs: Lau uses superscript "a/c/e" for tone classes rather than diacritics or numbers.
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Use Jyutping. It's the standard for Cantonese ASR, TTS, IPA transcription, NLP, and other engineering applications. Yale is mainly a pedagogical system; rare in engineering today.
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Mainstream characters: 99%+ accurate. The base mapping is rule-based (initial + final + tone tables). Error sources: (1) polyphones — to-jyutping may pick the wrong reading; (2) rare characters — not in dictionary; (3) edge cases in Yale diacritic placement (e.g. ng-initial syllables). Cross-check the Jyutping column as a sanity check.
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No fully unified version exists. This tool follows the Yale conventions in Matthews & Yip's Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar (the Cambridge reference standard). Other sources vary by ±5% in details (mainly vowel length and merger rules).
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Yes — results are plain text, just select and copy. Table rows can be selected as entire rows.
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to-jyutping open-source library (BSD-2-Clause) provides the Jyutping dictionary, plus the LSHK-to-Yale standard mapping rules (from academic literature, non-proprietary). This tool combines the two; the implementation is fully reproducible.
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