• Aspect marking: There are no grammatical tenses in most Sinitic languages. Mandarin compensates with 3 aspect markers and a range of adverbs. Cantonese uses 39 aspect markers instead - few are understood in Mandarin. Some examples:
我食飯: I eat/ate/will eat
我食咗飯: I have/had/will have eaten
我食緊飯: I am/was/will be eating
我食過炒飯: I have/had/will have eaten fried rice before
我食住飯(等你): (I'll wait for you) while I eat
我食完飯: I am/was/will be done eating
我食埋飯: after I am/was/will be done eating (9/13)