tou5 ngo6肚餓肚饿
Jyutpingtou5 ngo6
Yaletóuh ngoh
Definition
Hungry; starving; the feeling of wanting to eat or having an empty stomach.
colloquialbodyfood
How it's used
Expressing hunger in Cantonese almost always requires the intensifier 好 before 肚餓 to sound natural in a sentence. While 肚餓 is the standard way to describe the sensation, you might also hear people use 肚空空 to describe a hollow feeling in the stomach when they have not eaten for a long time.
Examples
I didn't eat lunch, I'm so hungry now.
Are you hungry? Let's go grab a late-night snack together.
Related words
Common mistake
Avoid using the Mandarin term 餓 directly as a standalone adjective in spoken Cantonese, as it sounds unnatural and overly formal. Always use the full compound 肚餓 to convey the state of being hungry.
Grammar color guide
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Grammar guides
- In 30 secondsThe whole language at a glance. No tenses, no plurals, six tones, sentence particles. Read this before you dive into any specific topic.
- ParticlesSentence particles add tone, emotion, and nuance. Learn the most common particles in Cantonese and how to use them.
- Possession (嘅)How to say my, your, and his, and how to link a describing word to a noun, all with the little word 嘅 (ge3).
