Welcome to Volume 100 — a milestone every Cantonese learner should mark the way our grandmas marked a good catch at the market: with a loud laugh and a bigger bag. For this edition we are heading somewhere every Hong Kong childhood passes through: the wet market (街市). These are the ten words that your mum, your popo and every auntie with a bamboo trolley use every single morning — the vocabulary that turns a shopping trip into a cultural inheritance.
If you learned Cantonese only from Cantopop and movies, the wet market is where that vocabulary gets humbled. The rhythm here is different: short sentences, loud questions, a lot of pointing, and a very specific set of words you will not hear anywhere else. Let's dive in.
The 10 Wet Market Words
1. 街市
gaai1 si5 — Jyutping romanisation
Meaning: Wet market — the covered or open-air community market where you buy fresh produce, meat and fish.
Explanation: Literally "street market." Hong Kong's gaai1 si5 is nothing like a supermarket — it is a sensory, loud, humid, deeply social place where generations have shopped the same way. The word carries the warmth of ordinary life.
2. 檔口
dong3 hau2 — Jyutping romanisation
Meaning: A market stall or stand.
Explanation: Every wet market is made of dozens of dong3 hau2 — the vegetable stall, the fish stall, the pork stall. A loyal customer sticks to the same stalls for decades, and the auntie behind the counter will remember your mum's name.
3. 斤
gan1 — Jyutping romanisation
Meaning: Catty — a traditional Chinese unit of weight. In Hong Kong, 1 catty equals approximately 605 grams (around 1.33 pounds).
Explanation: Despite the metric system, the wet market still runs on catties. Every price tag you see on fish, pork and vegetables is per gan1. If you cannot think in catties, you cannot shop here.
Those first three words are enough to walk in the door — but the next three are what turn you from a tourist into a regular. If you want to carry a piece of this everyday ritual with you, our 飲湯 Yum Tung oversized tee is cut from the same cloth of Cantonese home life — the Sunday soup your mum made with the ingredients she picked at the street stall.
4. 新鮮
san1 sin1 — Jyutping romanisation
Meaning: Fresh.
Explanation: The most important adjective in any wet market exchange. Say it with a rising curiosity (as a question) and you are checking; say it flat with a nod and you are praising. Vendors will swear everything is san1 sin1 — you learn to read their eyes.
5. 平啲
peng4 di1 — Jyutping romanisation
Meaning: "A little cheaper" — the opening move in every polite bargain.
Explanation: No one pays sticker price at the wet market without at least asking. Peng4 di1 is said with a half-smile, almost under your breath — it is a greeting, a loyalty signal and a request all at once. A regular gets ten cents off; a stranger gets a laugh.
6. 貴
gwai3 — Jyutping romanisation
Meaning: Expensive.
Explanation: The counterweight to peng4 di1. "Gwai3 ah!" said with a frown is the universal Cantonese shopper's complaint — half theatre, half honest sticker shock. Even millionaires say it at the fish stall.
7. 阿姐
aa3 ze2 — Jyutping romanisation
Meaning: "Big sister" — the polite way to address an adult woman you do not know, especially a vendor.
Explanation: Call every market auntie aa3 ze2 (never "aunty" in English — that lands badly). It softens any request, flatters just enough to grease the bargain, and signals that you were raised right.
8. 魚佬
jyu4 lou2 — Jyutping romanisation
Meaning: Fishmonger — literally "fish guy." Casual and affectionate, never rude.
Explanation: Hong Kong wet market jobs come with their own nicknames: the jyu4 lou2 sells fish, the 豬肉佬 (zyu1 juk6 lou2) sells pork, the 菜檔 auntie sells vegetables. These are terms of community, not titles — call your fishmonger jyu4 lou2 after years of loyalty, and he will pick the best grouper for you first.
9. 揀
gaan2 — Jyutping romanisation
Meaning: To pick, to select — the single most important verb in a wet market.
Explanation: At a supermarket you grab; at a wet market you gaan2. You pick each piece of fruit, each prawn, each slab of pork belly. A good customer knows how to gaan2 without insulting the vendor — a careful tilt of the head, a nudge of the finger, never a full dig through the pile.
10. 磅
bong6 — Jyutping romanisation
Meaning: To weigh (on a scale); also "a pound" as a unit.
Explanation: The sound of the metal scale clinking is the soundtrack of every wet market. Vendors say "bong6 bei2 nei5" — "I'll weigh it for you" — before pulling the slab off the hook. If you watch the needle move, that is called 睇秤 (tai2 cing3). Every regular watches the needle.
Why This Vocabulary Matters
If you grew up Cantonese anywhere in the world, these ten words are muscle memory. If you did not, these are the words that give you entry to a culture that still shops the way our great-grandparents did — a daily walk, a short bargain, a known face behind the counter. In a city of 7-Eleven and Taobao, the gaai1 si5 is the last loud, unfiltered classroom of Cantonese that still works.
The wet market is also where Cantonese cooking starts — not in a cookbook, but in the pick. A Cantonese mum choosing a fish is doing engineering: eye brightness, gill colour, flesh spring, scale shine. That knowledge is passed down the way our 食飯 Dinner is Ready oversized tee is passed around a family table — loud, unceremonious, essential. And on the days you brought home something a little strange from the stall, your mum's 熱氣 Yeet Hay embroidered tee was always right there in spirit, warning you not to eat too much fried stuff with it.
A Dying Classroom
Hong Kong's wet markets have been shrinking for a decade — supermarket chains, delivery apps, and vanishing old vendors. But every surviving gaai1 si5 keeps teaching a kind of Cantonese that textbooks cannot. If you want to practise your Cantonese, skip the app for a week. Just go to the market with an aunt or a grandparent and listen. Every one of these ten words will fall into place within two visits.
Volume 100 of this dictionary is a thank-you to the people who taught us Cantonese without ever meaning to: the vendors, the aunties, the regulars who shouted peng4 di1 at every pork chop in Kowloon. Here's to another hundred.
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