Thanks for the input, I looked again and found the book uses Neih instead Leih. I know it's standard pronunciation but I have been saying it the lazy way as long as I can remember after I was told 'That's how Hong Kong people say it anyway, no big deal'. I must've subconsciously typed Leih based on my own experiences but if you get the book then you'll see that everything listed as 'You' is translated to 'Neih.'
However the book doesn't use any numerical tone system, only accents on different parts of each word. If someone is brand new to Cantonese then Yale or Jyutping systems won't be mentioned at all. I know, for me, when I started with the tones they were too difficult but I can see how an intermediate learner would find them necessary.
For the other issue, I will concede that 'Ho M Ho Ah' might be better for How Are You? instead of Are you OK? But as a native English speaker trying to study characters, sometimes tiny differences can change the meaning for me. If I am learning to read this, to my mind, it's asking if there's an issue (你有冇事呀). If a hypothetical someone fell down or lost something, of course you can ask both 你有冇事呀 or 好唔好呀 ... but I think one question is asking if there's an issue, the other is a yes or no 'Are you good?'
You are right that it's only minor, but I have gotten tripped up with these differences when I didn't know what the characters were. Here are another two straight examples from the book.
You are good boy / girl
Neigh Ho Gwaai
你好乖
Oh no!
Ai yah / Baih La / Sei La!
哎呀 弊喇 死喇!
The translation of Gwaai is just listed as 'good' but 乖 in use is more of 'well-behaved, attentive, obedient'. Anybody with a decent level of Cantonese will see this as a doable translation, but if you know nothing about the language you can miss the true use of the character 乖 (because thinking 'good' is just too vague for 乖). Also if you are starting from scratch with no reading of Chinese whatsoever, you might think that Sei La just means 'Oh No!', when the character is used as slang from death. Saying 弊喇 is if you get cheated, a new learner has no reference to that meaning. These aren't that important in the long run and as I wrote before, I am nit-picking, but I know if it confused me at the beginning it might confuse others. Some books have side notes that explain character usage, this book doesn't and I find it a small negative (although it is a GREAT book because of everything else).
OK, I hope this clears everything up. If people check out the book later please enjoy it. (And yuetwoh I will edit the minor correction for 多謝晒. )
However the book doesn't use any numerical tone system, only accents on different parts of each word. If someone is brand new to Cantonese then Yale or Jyutping systems won't be mentioned at all. I know, for me, when I started with the tones they were too difficult but I can see how an intermediate learner would find them necessary.
For the other issue, I will concede that 'Ho M Ho Ah' might be better for How Are You? instead of Are you OK? But as a native English speaker trying to study characters, sometimes tiny differences can change the meaning for me. If I am learning to read this, to my mind, it's asking if there's an issue (你有冇事呀). If a hypothetical someone fell down or lost something, of course you can ask both 你有冇事呀 or 好唔好呀 ... but I think one question is asking if there's an issue, the other is a yes or no 'Are you good?'
You are right that it's only minor, but I have gotten tripped up with these differences when I didn't know what the characters were. Here are another two straight examples from the book.
You are good boy / girl
Neigh Ho Gwaai
你好乖
Oh no!
Ai yah / Baih La / Sei La!
哎呀 弊喇 死喇!
The translation of Gwaai is just listed as 'good' but 乖 in use is more of 'well-behaved, attentive, obedient'. Anybody with a decent level of Cantonese will see this as a doable translation, but if you know nothing about the language you can miss the true use of the character 乖 (because thinking 'good' is just too vague for 乖). Also if you are starting from scratch with no reading of Chinese whatsoever, you might think that Sei La just means 'Oh No!', when the character is used as slang from death. Saying 弊喇 is if you get cheated, a new learner has no reference to that meaning. These aren't that important in the long run and as I wrote before, I am nit-picking, but I know if it confused me at the beginning it might confuse others. Some books have side notes that explain character usage, this book doesn't and I find it a small negative (although it is a GREAT book because of everything else).
OK, I hope this clears everything up. If people check out the book later please enjoy it. (And yuetwoh I will edit the minor correction for 多謝晒. )