In the languages of the world, it is more common to form complex words by adding suffixes to the end, rather than prefixes at the beginning. It has been argued that this pattern may reflect the salience of word beginnings (Hawkins and Cutler 1988, Hupp et al. 2009). For example, Hupp et al. (2009) find that English speakers rate sequences of syllables that differ at the end as more similar than those that differ at the beginning. However, subsequent research has shown that people’s perceptions of sequence similarity are affected by the word-formation patterns in their native language. While the beginnings of sequences are perceived as more salient by speakers of suffixing languages (e.g., English), the ends are more salient to speakers of prefixing languages (e.g., Kîîtharaka, Martin and Culbertson 2020). Thus, it remains unclear whether universal perceptual preferences are linked to the predominance of suffixing in the world’s languages. We address this question by investigating perceptual-similarity judgments in speakers of Cantonese – a language with little affixation. We find that, like English speakers, Cantonese speakers perceive the beginnings as more salient, in sequences of shapes and syllables. This finding revives the possibility of a universal perceptual bias, albeit one that can be strengthened or attenuated with language experience.