Cantonese on iPhone & iPad

How to write, type, listen, dictate, and use Siri in Cantonese with your Apple iPhone or iPad.

Write✓

Type~

Listen✓

Dictate✓

Siri✓

Write

To input Chinese by Handwriting or strokes:

Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Chinese (Traditional)
Select your preferences:

‘Handwriting’ (繁體手寫)
‘Stroke’ (繁體筆畫)
‘Cangjie’ (繁體倉頡)

(Handwriting)

(Stroke)

(Cangjie)

Now, wherever you see the keyboard, you can Hold the Globe icon ( 🌐 ) and select the keyboard you want.

Image showing the iOS Keyboard with the Globe pressed, to switch Keyboards.

Type

Cantonese can be typed with a variety of romanization (pronunciation) methods. These include Yale (耶魯:Yèh-lóuh), Jyutping (粵拼:Jyut6ping3), Cantonese Pinyin, Sidney Lau, and Loose Romanizations (e.g. 香港:'Heung Gong').

Yale and Jyutping are the two most popular official Cantonese romanizations. Yale is more intuitive for native English speakers, whilst Jyutping is more intuitive to Pinyin users and native Cantonese speakers.

Typing in Cantonese is not yet officially supported on iOS. However, third party keyboards can be used to type Cantonese on an iPhone or iPad. These include:

CantoKey 粵拼輸入法 (Uses Jyutping)
中文輸入法 - 倉頡、速成、廣東話輸入法
廣東話輸入法
廣東話鍵盤
Google Keyboard – Instructions by Cantolounge (Based on Yale)
迪迪輸入法 - 廣東話輸入法

🙇 Please also consider asking Apple to: "Please add an official Cantonese Yale or Jyutping keyboard to iPhones."

Dictate

*Note: These instructions are for devices running iOS 11 or higher.

To input Cantonese Chinese by speaking to your iPhone (Speech to Text):

Go to Settings > General > Keyboard
Ensure “Enable Dictation” is On
Select Dictation Languages
Select Cantonese

Image showing Cantonese selected as a Dictation Language on iOS

Now, wherever you see the keyboard, you can hold the Dictation button (  ) and select Cantonese (粵語). You can also hold the Globe button ( 🌐 ) when dictating to change languages.

Image of iOS Cantonese Dictation Options overlay - on Chinese Handwriting Keyboard.

Image of iOS Cantonese Dictation Options overlay - on Dictation Keyboard.

Note: You must have a default Chinese input method, before being able to dictate in Cantonese (see “Write” section).

Note 2: To use punctuation, you would say "問號" for "?", "感嘆號" for "!", and "句號" for "。".

Listen (TTS)

To get your iPhone to read out Cantonese Chinese text (Text To Speech):

Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > Speech, and turn on “Speak Selection”. This will show a Speak button when text is selected.
(Optional) You can also turn on “Speak Screen”. This allows you to hear the content of the screen when you swipe down with two fingers from the top of the screen.
Under Voices > Chinese, select "Chinese (Hong Kong)"

Now you can get your iOS Device to speak Cantonese by highlighting text and selecting Speak.

iOS Speak Option for Chinese Cantonese text

Siri

Go to Settings > Siri & Search > Language and select “Chinese (Cantonese - Hong Kong)”

Now you can use Siri in Cantonese.

Image of Siri on iPhone being asked to set a 7am alarm, in Cantonese Chinese.

Footnotes

Note: This document is written for devices running iOS 11 or higher. Instructions vary for older devices.

To find the iOS version installed on your device, go to Settings > General > About.
If you are not running iOS 11, you can update it wirelessly or through iTunes.

Note: For bilingual users, iOS11 has separated Siri, Dictation, and Region from each other - allowing for better bilingual usage (e.g. English and Cantonese).

If you have any questions or suggestions, please get in touch at: cantonese.tools@gmail.com