same phoneme ). The long vowel symbol "" can also be omitted since these allophonic long and short vowels have different points of articulation in modern Cantonese. Vowels The 10 basic vowel phonemes are: , , , , , , , , and as shown in the following table: For the long Close-mid front unrounded vowel , is used instead of in IPA. For the long Close-mid back rounded vowel , is used instead of in IPA. must be followed by vowels , or finals , , , , , . The use of a more phonetic (i.e., narrow) transcription for vowels, for example distinguishing between and . When adopting a phonetic transcription for vowels, the symbol is often replaced by the symbol . Falling diphthong finals All vowel phonemes except form 9 finals themselves. Some vowel phonemes can followed by vowel phonemes , or to form 8 falling diphthong finals: Nasal phoneme finals Some vowel phonemes can followed by nasal stops , or to form 17 nasal phoneme finals: Plosive phoneme finals Some vowel phonemes can followed by unaspirated plosive consonants , or to form 20 stop phoneme finals: Syllabic nasal finals Syllabic and are also two finals in Cantonese: and . Summary Here are the 53 finals in a table: Character example with initial. No character with exact pronunciation. Character example with initial . In the absence of an initial, pronounced with becomes , becomes , becomes , becomes , and so forth. Character example with initial . In the absence of an initial, pronounced with becomes , becomes , becomes , becomes }. Character example with initial . In the absence of an initial, pronounced with becomes , becomes , becomes . Initials Initials are made up of consonants. Most characters are preceding finals with initials while some characters are pronounced without initials. There are 19 initials in total. Unlike English, Cantonese has no voiced-voiceless contrast. Instead, aspirated-unaspirated contrast plays an important role in distinguishing meanings. Since there are no voiced plosive and affricative consonants in Cantonese, the scheme makes use of these unused voiced symbols for unaspirated. In modern Cantonese, all non-nasal initial consonants are voiceless. However, there are many contrasting aspirated and unaspirated pairs of such initial consonants. The S. L. Wong system uses in the broad transcription to represent the phoneme written (also written , "devoiced b") in narrow transcriptions, and uses in the