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Both phrases are listed in CantoDict (http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/3497/).

It seems like 剩係 makes more sense, but which is actually correct?

Mou某
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Crashalot
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3 Answers3

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They are both correct but I would say 淨係 is better than 剩係.

  1. 淨 means "pure, clean", while 剩 means "leftover, remains".
  2. The original pronunciation of 剩 is sing6, not jing6.
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淨係 is correct. You can find it in earlier literature, e.g. in the anonymously written prose 俗話傾談 published in Canton back in 1870:

唔通 淨係 你做好細佬，我就唔好細佬嗎 (Oh, [you really think] only you behave as a good younger brother, and I'm not a good one?)

But I wouldn't say 剩係 is wrong. The character rhymes with 淨 (zing6) in spoken Cantonese in the first place. And it's a long and quite common tradition in Chinese (whatever the topolect is) to "borrow" (假借) a rhyming character to signify another one. I had also heard people saying "zing6 hai6" (which could be both 淨係 and 剩係) and "sing6 hai6" (剩係) in the past.

1

I hear 淨係 more than 剩係 in daily conversations though both are correct. 剩 is more Mandarin than Cantonese I think. 剩 means remainder.

user3992
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  • aren't they both pronounced the same in cantonese? – Crashalot Feb 27 '14 at 07:56
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    Nope. 剩 is sing6 and 淨 is jing6. – user3992 Feb 27 '14 at 09:13
  • 淨係 sounds more like 仅剩 or 只剩。 So yeah, 淨係 is the correct one. – user3992 Feb 27 '14 at 16:10
  • hmm, according to cantodict (http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/3497/), they are pronounced the same. – Crashalot Feb 27 '14 at 20:46
  • Look at Wikitionary instead. It's more accurate. – user3992 Feb 28 '14 at 02:11
  • do you have a link to wikitionary? i can't seem to find the cantonese part of the site. – Crashalot Feb 28 '14 at 02:37
  • https://zh-yue.wikipedia.org/wiki

    ahh... I see where the confusion is, 剩 is listed as sing6 and zing6 while 淨 is listed as zing6.

    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%89%A9 and https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%87%88

    Says otherwise.

     – user3992 Feb 28 '14 at 02:43
  • But the Chinese wiktionary and the MDBG dictionary both agree with CantoDict's pronunciations, i.e. zeng6/zing6 for 淨 and sing6/zing6 for 剩. Would you say the Chinese Wiktionary is less accurate than the English one about Cantonese? For the first character, even Baidu Baike agrees. For the second, it doesn't have Cantonese pron info. – MickG Feb 21 '15 at 18:11
  • Also compare [1] and [2]. – MickG Feb 21 '15 at 18:16
  • And @Crashalot I suggest you don't look for a Cantonese wiktionary. It exists, but in the Incubator, so it doesn't have all that much information. Use the Mandarin version version instead. – MickG Feb 24 '15 at 09:29
  • @Crashalot As an English Wiktionary editor, I would say both the Cantonese and Mandarin (Chinese) versions of Wiktionary are quite unhelpful. The Cantonese version is overly prescriptive (not describing real usage) and the Mandarin version is unfortunately taken over by bots for most of its entries. I would suggest the English Wiktionary, but we are still lacking a lot of information for single Chinese characters. – justinrleung Dec 06 '17 at 21:35