This is a bit of a strange question, but does anyone know how to say Happy Birthday in Cantonese? By this, I mean the general sound out loud rather than the actual characters.

According to this website it is: Sun Yat Fai Lok!

http://www.shabbir.com/romance/bday.html

Thanks for the help, and thanks for this website as well!

You're welcome :-)

Given that Chinese and its dialects are tonal languages, it is not possible to know how to say "Happy Birthday" in any one of them unless you hear it spoken. "Sun Yat Fai Lok" could mean something entirely different with another tone and pronunciation:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonal_language

Does Frankie's reference seem hard to understand? Just take her word for it, and don't say "Sun Yat Fai Lok!" to a native Chinese speaker unless you are really good friends and he or she has a well-developed Western sense of humor. I disagree with this line from her reference:
"The difficulty of pronouncing and of recognizing tonal patterns in words is greatly exaggerated." I have been unable to distinguish my Chinese friend's 8 supposedly distinct ways of saying "wu."