 Hakka, as well as numerous other Chinese varieties such as Min and Cantonese, prefers the verb when referring to "saying" rather than the Mandarin (Hakka ).Hakka uses , like Cantonese for the verb "to eat" and (Hakka ) for "to drink", unlike Mandarin which prefers (Hakka ) as "to eat" and "hē" (Hakka ) as "to drink" where the meanings in Hakka are different, "to stutter" and "to be thirsty" respectively.Various dialects of Hakka have been written in a number of Latin orthographies, largely for religious purposes, since at least the mid-19th century.