[hnfong]

Tangential fact - while, as you described, most popular songs in Cantonese have tones matching the melody (usually the melody is written first, then lyrics are filled in), many songs from Christian churches don't follow this practice. (I don't know why, maybe a lack of lyricists for translation from English/Latin to Cantonese during earlier years?)

So, in Hong Kong, when somebody writes a song/lyric that doesn't quite have matching tones, we ask "which church are you from?" to make fun of it.

[ackfoobar]

> many songs from Christian churches don't follow this practice. (I don't know why, maybe a lack of lyricists for translation from English/Latin to Cantonese during earlier years?)

If you want the Cantonese lyrics to be translations of English lyrics, it severely limit the words you can choose, to the point it is impossible to fully match the melody.