I read this thread with great interest as I too am learning my father's language. I regret in my younger and more rebellious years, I just wanted to be educated in English. Now I am just playing catch up. My dad was from Guangdong, to be specific, Luodeng (Luo Ding in Mandarin). Anyway what I want to find out is this sentence:

食 飽 先 然 後 睇 戲
sik baau sin jin hau tai hei

Thing is, Malaysians don't normally say in such a way. They will probably say

"sik baau sin cin tai hei"

What I want to know is 'cin'. Is the written '前'? Thus

食 飽 先 前 睇 戲

Is this sentence correct? 前 is usually pronounced 'cin' but in the sentence above it would normally be pronounced ching? Or maybe it's my father's village pronunciation?

Cantonese is interesting in that the written, spoken and formal is very different and there are a lot of characters that mean nothing in Mandarin. Those really keen to know more about this can look up:

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-unique-C...nese-characters

Hong Kong Cantonese lessons with native speakers can be found here:
http://jblmflc.com/Cantonese/Cantonese%20%...20Page%20AA.htm

My friend's dad use to say 'yak fan' too. Interestingly, the grandad will say 'bha fan' (like saying 'climbing'). They happened to be from Sei Wui (四會).

Here is an entry from Cantonese Sheik regarding 'yak' (喫). It means to eat.

http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/phorum/re...p?1,53120,53153