Smart Subtitles for Cantonese

Watching a Cantonese video with Smart Subtitles on, the words worth learning first stand out. An underline shows how common each word is, and a tap tells you what it means in that exact sentence. The words are ranked by how people in Hong Kong actually talk, in the traditional characters you see on screen, so 而家, 即係 and 乜嘢 count as everyday words, not rare ones.

Cantonese needed its own setup. Most Chinese language tools are built for Mandarin, and they stumble on the words that make Cantonese Cantonese, like 嘅, 喺 and 咗, because Mandarin doesn't use them. So instead of borrowing what works for Mandarin, the ranking comes from Cantonese sources: a community-built Cantonese dictionary and recordings of real everyday conversation in Hong Kong.