Macau Government Cantonese Romanization

The Macau Government Cantonese Romanization (Portuguese: Romanização Cantonesa do Governo de Macau; Chinese: 澳門政府粵語拼音) refers to the mostly consistent system for romanizing Cantonese as employed by the Government of Macau and other non-governmental organizations based in Macau. The system has been employed by the Macau Government since the Portuguese colonial period and continues to be used after the 1999 handover of the territory. Similarly to its counterpart romanization system in Hong Kong, the method is not completely standardized and thus is not taught in schools, but rather employed by government agencies to accurately display the correct pronunciation of Cantonese in public signage and official usage.^[1]

The Macau Government romanization of Cantonese uses a similar convention to that of the Hong Kong Government's but is based on Portuguese pronunciation rather than English, given the colonial history of Macau.^[2] Therefore, the two governmental standards have differing orthographies for the same Cantonese pronunciation; for instance, the place name known as 石排灣 in Chinese is romanized as Seac Pai Van in Macau but as Shek Pai Wan in Hong Kong.