the complete guide to learn cantonese · 粵典 (jyut6 din2) 96 粵語審音配詞字庫 (jyut6...

The Complete Guide To Learn Cantonese 【廣東話學習指南】

Introduction

Learning any language can be daunting. More so when you're thinking of (or are

already) taking on one of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers -

Cantonese. If you've wondered about things like "where should I start", "how do I learn

Cantonese tones", "should I learn Cantonese characters", you've landed in the right

place.

In this guide, I will show you everything you will need in order to establish an excellent

set of fundamentals in Cantonese moving forward. This isn't intended to show you how

to get to fluency - but I want to show you the ropes to get your Cantonese to a decent

intermediate level. In other words, this is like a road map you can use to "see" clearly

what things you'll be doing to get to that level.

*An important note: Before we start with this guide, please know that what I write here

is not absolute. As a matter of fact, language learning advice has always been, and always

remain subjective and varies according to every language learner.

But I have, to the best of my ability, attempted to represent each component accurately,

in writing, based on my personal experiences learning other languages as well as

teaching Cantonese. So I hope you’ll see that I, just like you, am just another learner, and

you can feel free to disagree with any perspectives I have.

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That said, there’s a mix of opinionated, and non-opinionated content in here. For

example, I recommend going through pronunciation first when learning Cantonese

(opinionated), but I also put up videos introducing you to the exciting world of

pronunciation (non-opinionated), in hopes you’ll find them useful.

I’ll also assume you want to learn Cantonese to speak and communicate to around a B1

(~B2) level, so this guide is written with that objective in mind.

Alright, that’s all I have to say for now, let’s dive right in!

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Table of contents

Introduction 2

Table of contents 4

Part 0: 7 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Learning Cantonese 8 Question 1. Why are you learning Cantonese? 8 Question 2: To what level do you want to learn Cantonese? 11 Question 3: What do you plan to do with Cantonese? 12 Question 4: Do you have enough time to devote to learning Cantonese? 13 Question 5: Is Cantonese going to be the only foreign language you learn, or is it one in many? 14 Question 6: Do you speak any Asian languages to a good level of fluency? 15 Question 7: Are you musical? 17 Related posts from polyglots 18

Part 1: How To Sound Like A Native Speaker - Romanization, Jyutping and

Tones 19 The starting point: pronunciation 19 The importance of pronunciation 20 Shadowing your way to pronunciation level fluency 22 Jyutping chart 23 Jyutping vs. Yale - Cantonese romanization systems 24 An introduction to Cantonese tones and romanization 26

Introduction to Cantonese pronunication 26

Part 2: Learn To Speak Cantonese Correctly through Structures 27 Structures vs. Grammar 27 Why learn structures at all 28 How To Learn Structures 30 Cantonese grammar decomposition 31 Cantonese grammar resources 32

Part 3: How To Be More Precise In Cantonese - Learning Words 35

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New Words Via Direct Translation 35 How to get to a strong B1~B2 level in Cantonese 37 Grammar as templates 40 How To Use A Chinese Dictionary 43 Recommended Chinese dictionaries 43 Checking your translations 44

Part 4: Learning Chinese Characters - To Do Or Not To Do? 45 The limits of Cantonese romanization 45 Chinese characters - to learn or not to learn? 49 Two Caveats in Learning Characters 50

Reading Chinese vs. writing Chinese 50 Spoken Cantonese vs. written Chinese 52

21 Videos to Help You Get Started with Learning Chinese Characters 52 Learning the basic radicals and what they mean 53 Understanding stroke order to make your handwriting more native 53 Copy the 楷體 font in order to neaten up your handwriting 54 Hanzicraft to understanding what character components are ( ) 54

Recommended frequency lists 54 Tools to learn Chinese characters 55 How polyglots conquered Chinese characters 56

Part 5: How To Find The Right Cantonese Teacher For You 57 Why I don’t recommend doing “language exchanges” 60

Part 6: Finding Inspiration When Stuck 65 Getting to a B1 Cantonese level 65 My personal thoughts on learning Cantonese 68 Inspiration from top experts and polyglots 70

On forgetting things 71 On preparation in learning Chinese before speaking 71 On goal setting 72 On speaking from day one 72 On how to speak a language 73 On the importance of the linguistic core 73

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On the notion of difficulty 73 On getting used to new sounds in a language 74 On reasons to learn Cantonese 74 On learning like a child 75 On what starting as a stone cold beginner feels like 75 On the importance of knowing the why 76 On the language learning equation 76 On independent learning 76 On language learning obstacles 77 On questioning the “follow a course and do as it says” approach 77 On comparing us to other language learners 78 On “talent” 78 On individual work 79 On perfectionism 79 On learner’s block 80 On celebrating success 80 On learning by yourself 80 On the original purpose of learning languages 81 On motivation for learning Chinese 81 On appreciating foreign scripts 82 On inspiration 82 On the ease and difficulty of every language 83 On time, money and ability 83 On the objective of a class from a teacher’s perspective 83 On the most important goal of learning a language 84

Part 7: Cantonese Dictionaries And Typing Cantonese 85 Problems with Typing Chinese 85 Using a Chinese dictionary 88 Two Types of Chinese Dictionaries 92 7 Videos on Cantonese typing and using Chinese dictionaries 93 Recommended Cantonese dictionaries 94

Pleco’s ABC Cantonese Dictionary (USD 29.99) 94

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Adam Sheik 95 粵典 (jyut6 din2) 96 粵語審音配詞字庫 (jyut6 jyu5 sam2 jam1 pui3 ci4 zi6 fu3) 96 Linguee 97 Character to Jyutping converters - to use or not to use? 98

Cantonese Trivia and FAQ’s 100 1. Where is Cantonese spoken? 100 2. How different are Mandarin and Cantonese? 100 3. What are the differences between written and spoken Cantonese? 103 4. What are Cantonese particles? 104 5. How can I guess the reading of a Chinese character? 106 6. What’s a Chinese character? 109 7. Is there a proficiency exam like the HSK? 109 8. How long will it take me to learn Cantonese? 110 9. Is it possible to learn to speak Cantonese without knowing how to write it? 112 10. How hard is learning Cantonese? 113 11. Should I take classes to learn Cantonese? 114 12. Should I learn Cantonese? 115 13. When should I start to learn Chinese characters? 115 14. Are there some budget ways to learn Cantonese? 116 15. Can Mandarin speakers understand Cantonese? And vice versa? 117 16. Do children in Hong Kong learn Cantonese through romanization? 117 17. Which is harder - Cantonese or Mandarin? 118 18. Are there six, seven or nine tones? 118 19. Is Cantonese a dying language? 120 20. What is CEFR? What are proficiency levels? 125 21. How popular is Cantonese compared to other Asian languages? 126

Conclusion 128

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Part 0: 7 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Learning

Cantonese

Learning Cantonese, or any other language, is a massive undertaking. Before diving

into the actual learning process, I highly recommend asking yourself these seven

questions to figure out what learning Cantonese means to you. If you take a bit of time

to answer them truthfully and to the best of your ability, one year down the road, you’ll

look back thanking yourself for taking this seriously.

Here they are.

Question 1. Why are you learning Cantonese?

Since this is quite a huge commitment, I’ll start off with the most important question.

When starting out with the basics, it barely makes a difference whether you know

clearly why you’re learning a language or not. After all, the material is generally

straightforward, learning the pronunciation, basic structures and words, and it could be

fun going through the basics.

But as you continue learning Cantonese, it gets harder. I don’t say this to scare you, the

learner, but I say this because that’s when knowing and not knowing the “why” really

starts to make a difference - it’ll directly affect whether you’ll be sufficiently motivated

to continue or not.

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After the initial honeymoon period wears off with Cantonese, you’ll start to think about

things like designing a Cantonese study routine, whether to learn Chinese characters or

not, getting conversational practice with a native. These are all activities that require a

certain time commitment and if your reasons are unclear, you’ll find it very hard to pull

through these tasks.

However, I have to insist on pointing out an important distinction: coming up with

reasons and coming up with your reasons.

If you do a simple Google search, you’ll easily find articles and blog posts that are titled

“10 good reasons to still learn Cantonese” or “Top 20 reasons you should learn a

language”. While we should appreciate these reasons, it’s really important to not mix

reasons with personal reasons.

In other words, just because, for instance, Cantonese represents quite a large population

(around 60 - 100 million speakers), it shouldn’t mean it should become your reason to

learn Cantonese. After all, what has 60 million speakers got to do with you anyway?

Compare that with *a student I recently met from Brazil (yup, I teach Cantonese).

When I asked him why he wanted to learn Cantonese, he told me that he grew up

watching Cantonese movies and was interested in the culture. During our introductory

lesson, I could clearly tell he was extremely careful with his pronunciation

(romanization and tones), and he was able to produce these sounds really well.

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Whether he did so because he liked Cantonese culture, or just because he’s a detail

oriented person, I have no way of knowing. What I can be sure of is that, if he’s willing

to go the extra mile to pay attention to these details, this dedication will serve him well

when he has to move on to an intermediate stage of learning, and beyond.

Or take another student I worked with in the past. She’s American and has a fiancé

who’s from Hong Kong. This means that every time during family reunions with her

extended family-in-law, because some members of them don’t speak any English, she

could either not say very much or learn Cantonese to connect with her fiancé’s relatives.

Because of a very strong reason to learn the language, she has made remarkable progress

(and the credit goes to her, not me or other teachers - she invested a lot of time and

effort to continually expand her vocabulary and consolidate basic structures in

Cantonese) - in just under two years of study, she already has an excellent B2 level of

ability with a wide range of vocabulary and expressions that she could take very easily to

a C* level.

*Please note that I don’t include students’ names in this guide in order to protect their

privacy.

Question 2: To what level do you want to learn Cantonese?

Generally, there are about three “tiers” I divide language learning goals into:

Tier 1: The Traveller’s Proficiency (~A1 - B1)

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This is where you can pretty much get around town without too much trouble

understanding or communicating. You can go to restaurants and order menu items,

you can shop around, you can understand metro announcements just like how a

traveller might want to.

Tier 2: The Generalist’s Proficiency (~B2)

This is where you have an excellent grasp of the language and you can pretty much talk

about anything you want (save for professional topics), including topics of interest to

you, current affairs in society. You can communicate your thoughts clearly and without

much struggling for words, much like a “generalist”.

Tier 3: The Maestro’s Proficiency (~C1 - C2)

This is where you’ve pretty much studied in the language, or have listened to or read

extensively in the language. You can understand long texts or audio clips and can

understand the nuances of the content (including cultural references), and you can

pretty much follow along without any visible strain.

Your vocabulary approaches that of an educated native speaker, and you have no

problem dancing around words and doing all sorts of mental acrobatics when it comes

to expressing yourself, including changing your register according to the social context,

adopting local accents and using slang, idioms, metaphors accurately and intuitively.

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Which of these categories do you fit under?

Knowing this can help you figure out what amount of learning is appropriate, and

when it’s okay to stop and move on from “expansion” to “maintenance”. After all, while

language learning is a lifelong task (even for native speakers), if you have a clear idea of

the level you want to get to, you simply need to learn up to that level - anything else

should be counted as bonuses.

Question 3: What do you plan to do with Cantonese?

Closely related to the previous two questions is - what do you intend to do with

Cantonese?

Do you want to go to Hong Kong or Macau for travel?

Do you want to visit a friend in Guangzhou and pick up a few phrases?

Do you have a loved one or extended family that speaks Cantonese?

Are you going to permanently relocate to Hong Kong and want to better connect with

locals?

Whatever your purpose, it’s going to directly affect how you learn Cantonese. As I’ll

mention below, one of the reasons language learning is so different for everyone is

because people use it for different things. For instance, a graphics designer is very likely

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to have a different vocabulary than a teacher. In the same way, the things you learn will

be directly tied to what you intend to do with the language.

Question 4: Do you have enough time to devote to learning

Cantonese?

This is where the second question is important. Depending on the level you want to

learn Cantonese to, the time you need to spend on learning is different. It goes without

saying that the higher your desired level, the greater the time commitment. But this has

a few nuances that I want to briefly mention:

1. The total time you need to spend learning increases the higher the level you

want;

2. The higher the level, the greater the average study time per day;

3. The higher the level, the greater the importance of consistent study.

So for example, if you’re in a fairly busy profession, and one that has nothing to do with

languages, maybe you’re an English speaker working as a circuit engineer, and you

already have to devote a lot of time learning about new technologies and attending

training classes, it would be difficult to devote a large amount of time to learning a

language that’s so different from your native language - Cantonese.

To top that off, you need to consider that because of time restraints, it will be more

difficult to get your level of Cantonese to a higher level just because you’re strapped for

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time. And it will take longer to complete a learning phase where it might have been

easier for someone who has more time and flexibility on his hands.

As I’ll also mention below, I don’t believe it’s necessary to devote hours of learning every

day when it comes to learning a foreign language.

However, consistency is important, especially when you’re above an intermediate stage,

and if you’re involved in a stressful job where it’s very likely your work will interfere

with that consistency (or language learning will interfere with your work), then it

might be wise to consider either taking your expectations down a notch, or I

recommend being honest with yourself when it comes to having enough patience to see

this journey through, or not.

Question 5: Is Cantonese going to be the only foreign language you

learn, or is it one in many?

This is also related to the previous question. Depending on your profession, it could be

quite daunting to learn Cantonese as a language. And if Cantonese is simply a “pitstop”

among a long list of languages you intend to “stop by” on top of having to juggle with

your work responsibilities, I’d recommend setting more reasonable expectations in

terms of linguistic level simply because of the sheer time involved in getting your

language level to a respectable level.

However, if it’s going to be your only language of study, or your language set isn’t so

diverse in terms of language families (compare someone who’s aspiring to learn

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Cantonese, Icelandic, Russian, Arabic, Korean and Ojibwe to someone who’s aspiring

to learn Cantonese, Mandarin and Japanese), then it becomes much more realistic to

aim for a very high level.

To top that off, knowing two to three languages really well, maybe even to a near native

level, is much more achievable than knowing six, seven or more languages equally well

to a near native level.

If you have the opportunity to use Cantonese or written Chinese in your studies or

work, it is likely that you’ll also have the opportunity to take your Cantonese to a higher

level. If, on the other hand, Cantonese is a language you won’t get to use in a

professional or academic capacity, trying to get to a level where you have the ability to

eloquently word your thoughts can take more time.

Question 6: Do you speak any Asian languages to a good level of

fluency?

I’ll be more specific here: if you speak Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese - it will

be much faster for you to pick up Cantonese. Not only is there common vocabulary (or

the exact same characters if you already know Mandarin or Japanese), even the

pronunciation is similar to a certain extent (Japanese, Korean, and I’ve heard

Vietnamese is as well). This means that if you know how equivalent words are

pronounced, you will be able to learn cognates very quickly.

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This also means that your time spent learning will be considerably shortened compared

to learners who do not speak one of these languages. I personally don’t like taking a

language’s difficulty into consideration (difficulty is relative anyway) when learning,

but don’t underestimate the power of having thousands of cognates in the target

language and the languages you already know, and how that affects your 語感 (jyu5

gam2, or feel of a language).

Consider this - imagine someone who’s going to be learning Cantonese as a language

that she will rarely use, is very distant to her native culture (as a Spaniard), has no

cognates with Spanish, her native language, and has significant cultural differences with

her native culture.

It’s not too difficult to imagine that she would require double (if not more) the amount

of effort needed to learn Cantonese as opposed to another Romance language such as

French.

So if you have an Asian language under your belt, it can be considerably easier to learn

Cantonese.

Question 7: Are you musical?

I say this because Cantonese is a tonal language. Unlike most other languages in the

world, every word that you learn in Cantonese will consist of four parts: (1) the

characters; (2) the romanization; (3) the tones; (4) the meaning. And getting the tones

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wrong can sometimes prevent other people from being able to understand you

correctly.

As you’ll see below, characters are not as difficult to learn as some might think;

romanization is fairly easy for speakers of most languages; but tones can be challenging

if one can’t distinguish between the six tones, because if one can’t hear them, then one

simply can’t reproduce these when speaking.

That said, this represents an extreme minority of learners. Everyone, to a certain extent,

has musical ability, and the stronger your musical affinity, the better you will fare with

tonal languages. So if you’re a musician, you’ll have an advantage here.

So these are the seven questions I recommend you consider before taking on the

commitment to learn Cantonese.

As a final note in this section, I’d like to say this: please don’t take these as delimiting

beliefs or restraints I’m trying to impose on you. If you feel that you are capable of doing

more, then by all means, please do so!

As a teacher of mine used to say, “passion trumps all.” If you love the Cantonese

language and culture (include the cuisine!), then any of the above difficulties I

mentioned will just feel like a blip along the way.

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Just understand that my intentions are to give you a realistic picture of what the journey

looks like in the long term, based on my learning and teaching experiences, with the

hopes that this guide will serve as a realistic roadmap for you.

Related posts from polyglots

I’ve also curated a few articles written by polyglots broaching the subject, which I

believe is one of the most important ones to talk about when learning a new language.

https://www.italki.com/article/673/picking-a-language-for-success

http://www.lindsaydoeslanguages.com/essential-questions-before-learning-a-langua

ge/

https://www.rypeapp.com/blog/8-questions-ask-learning-new-language/

https://www.fluentin3months.com/why-learn-another-language/

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https://www.fluentin3months.com/why-learn-another-language/http://www.lindsaydoeslanguages.com/essential-questions-before-learning-a-language/http://www.lindsaydoeslanguages.com/essential-questions-before-learning-a-language/https://www.rypeapp.com/blog/8-questions-ask-learning-new-language/https://www.italki.com/article/673/picking-a-language-for-success


Part 1: How To Sound Like A Native Speaker -

Romanization, Jyutping and Tones

The starting point: pronunciation

My personal belief is that the first thing (technical wise) we need to do when learning a

new language is pronunciation. If we don’t understand how the sound system works,

our speaking and listening abilities are hindered, and it becomes difficult to

communicate.

There are two parts in Cantonese when it comes to pronunciation: romanization and

tones.

Fortunately, for English speakers (and possibly for speakers of many other languages),

Cantonese is fairly easy to pronounce, because most of the sounds in Cantonese that can

be produced already exist in English.

(In contrast, it’s harder for native Cantonese speakers to learn English or other

Romance languages like French or Spanish in terms of the pronunciation.)

Tones, however, can be a bit tricky. I won’t talk too much about it here, because I’ll

embed a few videos where I take you through tones from zero to understanding what

tones are fully in a very short timeframe. With a bit of time, though, I’m confident that

any learner can master tones well - after all, there are only six of them!

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The importance of pronunciation

Here, I’d also like to talk briefly about the importance of pronunciation.

One question that language learners ask, when it comes to pronunciation, is, “how

important is pronunciation?”

Different people have different answers.

For example, in university, I considered switching majors to a language major, and the

admissions officer who was in charge of administration told me that “the language

department will have to test you before admitting you to the program - after all, if you

can’t replicate these sounds, you can’t speak the language.”

The undertones of what the person said was, “if you’re incapable of uttering the

language like a native speaker, don’t even think about getting into the department.” As

it’s academia, I can understand the standards observed there.

However, I disagree.

My principle when it comes to pronunciation is simple: “learn it to the extent you can

make yourself understood.” If you can communicate, it’s good enough. Any work you

add on top of that will be a huge bonus that native speakers will surely come to

appreciate.

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What this means is that, if one’s speaks with an accent so thick, or one’s pronunciation

is so inaccurate to the extent that native speakers, even particularly patient ones, have

trouble with understanding, then the learner might need to put in more effort in

pronunciation.

Based on the fact that Cantonese is a fairly pronounceable language, I would hazard a

guess that very few learners would find themselves there.

That said, we shouldn’t underestimate the power of good pronunciation.

The initial stage of learning a language is communication. And that’s one of the most

important functions of languages - to communicate.

But once we’ve gone past that stage, we want to delve deeper, and be more precise with

our word usage, grammar, and so forth. And it only stands to reason that our accent

should accurately reflect the increased depth in our knowledge.

At the higher levels of language learning, I feel having a decent accent becomes more

important. Even if someone were to be very eloquent, a strong accent can give the false

impression that the person is not as accomplished in that language, which is a shame.

In the case of Cantonese, as we have here, the significance is twofold: firstly, that every

single syllable be uttered correctly and secondly, that each word’s tone be on pitch.

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So while we shouldn’t put too much stock in the belief that “pronunciation can make or

break a person’s language abilities”, we shouldn’t underestimate it either, particularly at

the higher levels.

Shadowing your way to pronunciation level fluency

In my personal opinion, I believe that pronunciation isn’t a one off learning project - i.e.

it isn’t a “you get it right once, and you’ll get it right forever” kind of thing. I believe that

pronunciation practice comes in stages:

Stage I: Pronunciation of individual sounds

Stage II: Pronunciation of words and short phrases

Stage III: Intonation and stress of entire sentences

Stage IV: Changing registers

However, as you can imagine, we don’t move through each stage in a straight line - we

have to keep on revisiting pronunciation at each stage.

To top that off, the higher stages aren’t possible without a sufficient vocabulary and a

certain degree of fluency.

One method that’s commonly talked about in the world of pronunciation is shadowing.

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In a nutshell, shadowing is a fancy way of saying “copying how native speakers speak”.

And it means that in a very literal sense - you literally copy word after word, or at a

higher level, phrase after phrase after the native speaker. As you can imagine, you’ll

need a relatively large body of audio or video material to work with.

Here’s an example of how shadowing would work in Cantonese:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsN0B9-pYGA&list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6hIWxcG

2t1r7FFvziH7Z_R5

Jyutping chart

Another thing that makes pronunciation in Cantonese a breeze for foreigners is that the

way that Cantonese sounds are constructed makes it possible to map all (that’s right, you

heard right), all the possible combinations of sounds in a chart.

And as it so happens, I’ve created one here at Cantolounge that you can visit here:

https://cantolounge.com/jyutping-chart/

https://youtu.be/BkjXYgRSxwg

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsN0B9-pYGA&list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6hIWxcG2t1r7FFvziH7Z_R5https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsN0B9-pYGA&list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6hIWxcG2t1r7FFvziH7Z_R5https://cantolounge.com/jyutping-chart/https://youtu.be/BkjXYgRSxwg


(Please note that this chart isn’t optimized for mobile viewing (there’s a slight bug that

affects how the chart displays on iOS devices). I apologize for the inconvenience, but in

the meanwhile, please consider visiting this chart with a desktop browser.)

I’ve also detailed how you can use this guide over here, so you can reference it and get

some ideas as to how it’s made, when it could be useful to revisit this chart, and how to

use it.

https://cantolounge.com/jyutping-chart-guide-notes/

Jyutping vs. Yale - Cantonese romanization systems

As you learn Cantonese, one peculiarity you’ll discover is that unlike its close cousin,

Mandarin, it has no official romanization system.

The most popular romanization systems include Jyutping, Yale and the Sidney Lau

systems, however, some authors decide to make up their own systems, and the Hong

Kong government uses yet another variation of romanization (this system anglicizes

Cantonese words so they’re easier to pronounce for foreigners during the British

colonial times).

As an example let’s compare how the place name “灣仔” (a place name in Hong Kong)

would be written in these systems.

Jyutping: waan1 zai2

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https://cantolounge.com/jyutping-chart-guide-notes/


Yale: wāan jái

Sidney Lau: waan1 jai2

HK government: wan chai

Regardless of which system is used (the HK government system doesn’t really count,

because it’s not a representation, but an anglicized approximation of the actual sound),

it’s important to remember one thing: it’s only a representation of the actual sound.

While many of these romanizations are so close to English sounds you can treat them as

strange looking English words, some of them are simply approximations - I highly

encourage you to refer to the Jyutping chart I’ve linked to earlier to reference how these

sounds are pronounced by native speakers (1500+ recordings).

Nowadays, the most popular systems in use are Jyutping and Yale. While you might

find many older textbooks using Yale, more publications are adopting Jyutping as the de

facto romanization system.

Unfortunately, this means that you’ll have to get used to both systems - the Cantonese

learning materials that you will come across will likely use either. The good news is that

the switch is fairly easy and intuitive, so it’s very little effort on your part.

By the way, at Cantolounge, we use Jyutping exclusively.

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An introduction to Cantonese tones and romanization

I’ve embedded 8 videos I’ve created to introduce you to tones. Hopefully, this will serve

as a gentle, but comprehensive introduction to romanization and how Cantonese tones

work.

Introduction to Cantonese pronunication

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF5MYtRFkrg&list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6g9g-v5cw

8Ng5Co8gJBbS9u

Useful resources

九聲六調: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo5lJlBnzAg

Language is music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFpzeGoP-Kg

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF5MYtRFkrg&list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6g9g-v5cw8Ng5Co8gJBbS9uhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFpzeGoP-Kghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF5MYtRFkrg&list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6g9g-v5cw8Ng5Co8gJBbS9uhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo5lJlBnzAg


Part 2: Learn To Speak Cantonese Correctly through

Structures

Structures vs. Grammar

Some people love grammar, some people can’t stand grammar. When it comes to

language learning, I think the common view is that grammar is one of the most boring

and tedious things to wade through in the process.

If you’ve studied French, Spanish or German, you might remember going through

conjugation tables in class so often until you’re sick of them.

Or maybe you’ve learnt Japanese or Korean before, where there are virtually an

unlimited ways you can attach endings to a sentence, and each carries a very, very

specific nuance. Conjugating irregular verbs in Korean can be difficult on the spot too,

because they’re, well, irregular.

The good news is that the notions of “conjugation” or “declension” don’t exist in

Cantonese. That means that you can rejoice in the fact that you can say goodbye to

conjugation tables, gender agreements (at least while learning Cantonese).

That doesn’t mean that Cantonese is a random language. It does have certain rules, but

these rules are simpler and fewer when compared to other languages.

27


“Grammar” is often a word I like to avoid using when talking about Cantonese, because

Cantonese grammar is made up of a lot of “structures” - things that you add on to words

in order to indicate a particular function.

This is very unique to Chinese languages because a word does not differentiate between

a “root form” and its conjugated and declined forms - there’s pretty much the form

written in the dictionary, and all other changes simply involve sticking an extra word

before, after, or in other positions to indicate various things.

So I’ll refer to “grammar” as “structures” (or use them interchangeably) when speaking

of Cantonese “grammar” (structures), because it represents such a large change in

thinking about the language compared to other languages.

Why learn structures at all

This is a question that a lot of people then ask - “how do you go about tackling grammar

(structures)?” This is a fair question, and I’ll try to answer it.

Following on from the previous part, after you’re done with pronunciation (or at least

the basics), where do you go from here? For me, I recommend gaining a basic

understanding of grammar.

In relation to “how do you go about tackling structures”, I think it might be interesting

to first answer, “why learn structures at all”.

28


I understand some people are opposed to studying grammar. It’s impractical, and it’s

possible to just “pick it up” with enough exposure. There’s also a school of thought that

says we should learn grammar on the fly - after all, when it comes up, if you study it

then, you’re good to go.

My views are a bit more conservative. In learning a language, I feel that it’s important to

start by understanding the basic rules of grammar. To be clear, I’m also opposed to

doing a comprehensive study of grammar, but without the basics, it can be difficult to

decompose the language into coherent parts.

The reason for doing so is because these “basic elements” are things that you’ll literally

see and experience in every sentence you see or produce from that point onwards. An

incorrect understanding of those basic rules mean that sentences degrade to a collection

29


of words, and we as learners are prone to making the same basic mistakes over and over

again.

Then some might ask questions like, “to what extent should I study grammar?” or “what

are these ‘basic elements’ that you talked about?”.

Unfortunately, it’s very hard to give an exact area. However, at this moment, I’ve

planned out about 100+ lessons on Cantolounge that talk about structures, but I

estimate that the most important ones are the first 20 (maybe up to 30) lessons or so.

I reckon that to read through 20 - 30 explanations on different structures, it should take

about 2 months if you read at a fairly leisurely pace (and get a bit of practice). In other

words, by spending two month (or less) familiarizing yourself with the basics, you’ll

have a much easier time moving forward.

How To Learn Structures

It seems like I went on a longer tangent than I thought. I’ll now circle back to the

original question, “how should I go about tackling grammar?”.

First of all, it’s important to have a really good text or resource to work with. I’ll link to

two resources that’ll cover all your bases, but if you decide to choose something else,

make sure that the resource conforms to these principles:

1. It’s not overly technical (in the sense that it has a lot of grammar jargon and

writes in an overly complicated way);

30


2. It has explanations that are easy to understand and also discuss the scope of

different structures (there are restrictions to how certain structures are used, and

it’s important to know them);

3. It has enough sample sentences to reference (so you can see how they’re used,

typical use cases and contexts).

So, with a grammar resource, I recommend tackling structures the following way:

1. Read the chapter title, then pick a sample sentence to read over to gain an

intuition of what they’re talking about.

2. Then read the explanation once.

3. Go back and connect with the sample sentence and see if it makes sense.

4. Based on that sentence, try to mimic it and write a similar sentence.

5. Then try to write a sentence without these restrictions - any sentence that pops

to mind that fits this structure. If possible, have it checked by a native speaker.

I believe this is the best way to consolidate grammar points in Cantonese.

Cantonese grammar decomposition

An important ability that I’d like to share with you here is the ability to distinguish what

parts of the sentence are grammar, and what parts of the sentence aren’t. Once you’ve

done that, even though it sounds obvious, it’s so much easier to understand and produce

sentences than if you take entire sentences and phrases as a whole.

This is also best shown in video, so I’ve created one to demonstrate what I mean.

31


https://youtu.be/pbLOToCFQ7Q

As you can see, “grammar” is really just a fancy word to describe the rules that make up a

language. Once you identify and isolate them, it’s really just a matter of understanding

enough words to get the gist of a text, and then to hone in on the details.

This is why learning common Cantonese structures is extremely important - once you

can separate the characters that have structural functions from the ones that carry

meaning (especially nouns and verbs), you’ll be able to understand Cantonese more

intuitively.

Learn a structure once, maybe revise once or twice, and you’re good forever.

Isn’t that a good deal?

Cantonese grammar resources

Most of the grammar you’ll need is surprisingly not a lot, so I’ll draw your attention to

only two resources to do with Cantonese grammar. (After all, less is more, right?)

Cantolounge grammar series

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https://youtu.be/pbLOToCFQ7Q


Actually, the main bulk of the content here at Cantolounge is devoted to breaking down

Cantonese structures and providing examples to supplement them. You can read over

them to determine if the style of presentation here is suited to your needs.

https://cantolounge.com/cantonese-grammar-series/

Cantonese grammar book (Basic Cantonese)

https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Cantonese-Grammar-Workbook-Workbooks/dp/

0415815592/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495524314&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+gram

mar+cantonese

If you’re really intent on getting a reference book, I have to recommend the classical

basic Cantonese grammar text by Virginia Yip and Steven Matthews. The only

drawback is they don’t use characters and they use Yale in the book, which I found

33

https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Cantonese-Grammar-Workbook-Workbooks/dp/0415815592/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495524314&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+grammar+cantonesehttps://www.amazon.com/Basic-Cantonese-Grammar-Workbook-Workbooks/dp/0415815592/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495524314&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+grammar+cantonesehttps://cantolounge.com/cantonese-grammar-series/https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Cantonese-Grammar-Workbook-Workbooks/dp/0415815592/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495524314&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+grammar+cantonesehttps://www.amazon.com/Basic-Cantonese-Grammar-Workbook-Workbooks/dp/0415815592/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495524314&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+grammar+cantonesehttps://cantolounge.com/cantonese-grammar-series/


frustrating to read, but it’s an excellent text that goes through some of the basic elements

of Cantonese.

34


Part 3: How To Be More Precise In Cantonese -

Learning Words

After going through basic Cantonese structures, it’s time to expand your vocabulary.

Here, I’d like to repeat what I said in this Cantonese guide. This is a guide for learning

Cantonese designed to take a learner to an intermediate level, somewhere around a

B1~B2 level.

I’m mentioning this because learning vocabulary up to that level, and beyond that level

can be two very different experiences. For the purposes of this guide, however, I’d like

to talk about learning vocabulary up to that B1~B2 level.

New Words Via Direct Translation

In the beginning stages of learning, as a general rule, I feel that it’s okay to learn new

words through translation (looking up the equivalent word or phrase in the dictionary).

The main reason for that, and this is really important, is because words up till this stage are

very unlikely to diverge in meaning.

Learning things like “wash my face”, “eat breakfast”, “send a letter”, “go shopping” - if

you look these up in the dictionary, they will probably come up with a fairly accurate

translation. It’s just a matter of placing that new word in a sentence that you now know

is grammatically correct.

35


But consider words like “bright”, “wrap up”, “consume” - words that take on multiple

meanings according to context. These become harder to use translate directly using a

dictionary.

By “bright”, do you mean “the lights are bright”, “a bright student”, “a bright future” or

something else?

By “wrap up”, do you mean to “wrap up a present”, or to “wrap things up”?

By consume, do you mean “to imbibe”, or “to consume knowledge”?

These variations that often pop up during and after the intermediate stage of learning

are more difficult to look up in a traditional dictionary, so we can’t rely on direct

translations. But up to around that stage, most words that we learn are fairly

straightforward, so it’s okay to do so.

There’s also another reason we want to do direct translation - to translate our most

common thoughts into Cantonese. By being aware of what we think about, it’s possible

to build a portion of our language core - these are phrases that we can bring out

automatically and we’re the most familiar with, because we’re most likely to use them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxEabQruCEM&list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6iRlfsfsJ1w

73N2RBv0t3x_

36

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxEabQruCEM&list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6iRlfsfsJ1w73N2RBv0t3x_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxEabQruCEM&list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6iRlfsfsJ1w73N2RBv0t3x_


How to get to a strong B1~B2 level in Cantonese

Learning words is undoubtedly the most important element of language learning.

I remember hearing an example once to illustrate this, “if you’re asking a shop assistant

where the sugar is in the grocery store, and you know ‘where is the’ but not ‘sugar’, you’ll

fail to communicate your question. But if you just know ‘sugar’ but not how to form a

question, you’ll get by just fine.” A succinct way to sum up the importance of words.

Once we accept words are important, the question then becomes, “how do we know

when’s enough?”

In working with over 100 students in the past few years, the conclusion I’ve come to lies

in the word - scope. It sounds a bit silly, but you’ll know that you have enough words

when you have enough words. In other words, you have to determine the scope of what you

need.

At a B1~B2 level, you should expect to have a sizable vocabulary that falls under two

broad categories:

1. Situation dialogues (like going to the post office, shopping for groceries);

2. Talking about common topics in life (talking about friends, your aspirations,

where you’ve travelled to, societal affairs)

The idea behind this strategy is “to have sufficiently prepared answers so you’ll be ready

when someone asks you these questions in real life”.

37


Here are two excellent resources in English that you can use to translate back to

Cantonese and get started in preparing your answers.

ITESLJ (The Internet Teachers of English as a Second Language Journal)

http://iteslj.org/questions/

Situational dialogues

http://www.learnrealeng.com/p/situational-dialogues.html

For situational dialogues, I highly recommend the Teach Yourself Cantonese series to

learn. I’m currently using this with my students as a default text (as well as conversation

practice), and it’s wonderful as an introductory text to Cantonese.

38

http://www.learnrealeng.com/p/situational-dialogues.htmlhttp://iteslj.org/questions/


Once you’ve finished this, you’ll have a respectable vocabulary count (you’ll learn

somewhere around 1100 new words if you’re starting from zero), as well as another

chance to consolidate the structures you learnt.

When you’ve gone through most of the questions, you can be confident that you’ll have

enough relevant vocabulary to hold a basic conversation on these topics you’ve covered.

https://youtu.be/F9UQqnczlU0

39

https://youtu.be/F9UQqnczlU0


Grammar as templates

Once you have basic grammar points down, it’s time to test yourself out by translating

arbitrary texts. After a certain point in time, you’ll be done with the basics of Cantonese

grammar. There’s only so much to learn, after all. And it’s time to get your hands dirty

with structures.

Combining the structures you know and looking for new words to place in these

structures to express your thoughts in structurally correct sentences is what I like to

refer to as “language templating”. Rather than explaining to you what it is, I think it

might just be easier to show you with examples.

Instead of thinking of grammar, or even structures, for Cantonese, it might be helpful

to think of templates that you can use as scaffolds to place your words in. If I had to

visualize it, it looks something like fill in the word exercises that we used to do as kids:

40


Imagine this for a second...if for every sentence you’re trying to produce, an entire

template is already in your mind - all you have to do is to choose the correct word

among 3 - 4 words, isn’t that a lot easier than translating the entire thing?

41


This is the power of understanding some basic grammar, and what comprises a

structure, in helping you create interesting Cantonese sentences all on your own.

Because word order is the same as in English (mostly), and Cantonese structures aren’t

as rich as they are in Japanese and Korean, it feels like a “five dollar term for a ten cents

concept”.

Also, this is obviously a really simple example, but as you move on to create longer

sentences, you’ll find that having the concept of scaffolding in your mind really helps (it

did for me at least).

How To Use A Chinese Dictionary

In the below video, I’ll talk about some techniques you should be aware of when using a

Chinese dictionary, and common pitfalls to avoid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6jvkvgMc26c-8YLVigQvBsl&v

=c99S3faTFD0

Recommended Chinese dictionaries

Cambridge Dictionary

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/zht/%E8%A9%9E%E5%85%B8/%E8%8B%B1%E8%A

A%9E-%E6%BC%A2%E8%AA%9E-%E7%B9%81%E9%AB%94/

42

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6jvkvgMc26c-8YLVigQvBsl&v=c99S3faTFD0http://dictionary.cambridge.org/zht/%E8%A9%9E%E5%85%B8/%E8%8B%B1%E8%AA%9E-%E6%BC%A2%E8%AA%9E-%E7%B9%81%E9%AB%94/http://dictionary.cambridge.org/zht/%E8%A9%9E%E5%85%B8/%E8%8B%B1%E8%AA%9E-%E6%BC%A2%E8%AA%9E-%E7%B9%81%E9%AB%94/https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6jvkvgMc26c-8YLVigQvBsl&v=c99S3faTFD0


Iciba

http://www.iciba.com/

Ichacha

http://www.ichacha.net/

Linguee

http://cn.linguee.com/

*粵典 (my favourite)

http://words.hk/

Checking your translations

When you’re coming up with sentences, it’s not too unusual to have doubts about

whether those sentences are correct or not. Here are some places you can get

corrections.

Lang-8

http://lang-8.com/

Cantonese forum

http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/phorum/

43

http://cn.linguee.com/http://lang-8.com/http://www.iciba.com/http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/phorum/http://words.hk/http://www.ichacha.net/


Cantolounge Questions page

https://cantolounge.com/cantonese-questions/

44

https://cantolounge.com/cantonese-questions/


Part 4: Learning Chinese Characters - To Do Or Not To

Do?

In this section, I want to talk a little bit about Chinese characters. One of the most

common questions Cantonese learners ask when starting out is, “should I learn

characters or not?”, and I’ll try to share my thoughts on the topic.

The limits of Cantonese romanization

Try looking at this.

And then try looking at this.

45


And then try this out.

You probably see where I’m going with this.

When dealing with a foreign language, romanization can be a friendly way to learn the

syllabary and see how native speakers have tried to approximate those sounds using the

Latin script.

46


In the beginning, it’s okay to learn Cantonese through Jyutping, because words and

phrases are short. Besides, you’re just building up your vocabulary, and I think it’s

unreasonable to make the jump to do characters immediately.

The problem is, when you’ve graduated from words and phrases, and you start to work

with longer, more complicated sentences, and you start to produce or read paragraphs,

it becomes extremely difficult to read in Jyutping.

The reason is that written Chinese, unlike most other languages, does not have spaces.

And so as a learner, it can be difficult to know where a word starts and ends in a

sentence. As a matter of fact, this is also a very difficult computing problem to solve, and

there are no solutions that can perfectly split a sentence up into individual words.

If it’s already difficult to do so (split words up) with Chinese characters, imagine the

difficulty it would entail with Jyutping or another romanization system.

47


As I’ve mentioned before, there are only so many combinations of romanizations in

Jyutping. Even when you combine it with the number of tones, the entries that I have

found only total up to about 1,500 Jyutping + tone combinations.

What this means is that it’s very likely that you’ll find lots of repetitions in Jyutping if an

article were to be written in it, because multiple characters can have the same reading.

That’s one reason Jyutping doesn’t work as a writing system. And one of the reasons

that the notion of pinyin replacing Chinese characters was rejected in China.

In the same way that you wouldn’t want to read the Cyrillic script in romanized English,

or Japanese in its romanization, you probably also don’t want to read written Chinese in

Jyutping.

48


Chinese characters - to learn or not to learn?

So getting back to the original question, should you, or should you not learn Chinese

characters?

To answer that question, I’ll change the question slightly - is it necessary to learn Chinese

characters?

The idealistic answer is no, but the realistic answer is yes, with a slight twist.

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s very difficult to read in Jyutping, or another romanization

system, but not impossible. You could, potentially, wade through chunks of text in

Jyutping and learn Chinese.

But the fact of the matter is that when you’re approaching an intermediate level, most

learning materials you’ll come into contact with won’t be written in Jyutping. If you’re

lucky, you might find resources that have Jyutping romanization, but almost nothing

exclusively in Jyutping.

And further along that point when you’re ready to move on to more complex things like

articles or even fully fledged novels (which you’ll need to vastly expand your

vocabulary), it’s impossible to read without knowing characters.

49


However, as I’ve also said, this is a guide that’s written for someone who wants to get to

around a B1 level. And because the focus up till this point is on communication, you can

do so even with a limited vocabulary.

I would say up till that point, learning Chinese characters is not necessary. In fact, it

might be easier to get a feel for how Cantonese works without learning the characters

first - they just add to the burden of learning in the beginning.

So in a nutshell, learn Chinese characters after you’re fairly comfortable with forming

sentences in Cantonese and you have a respectable set of words to work with.

Two Caveats in Learning Characters

Some people are scared off by the notion of learning characters. As one of the few non

alphabet based languages, being able to write Chinese can seem like a daunting task...or

is it?

There are two thoughts I’d like to share with you that could help reduce potential

anxiety in learning Chinese characters that I’ve thought of when teaching students or

read on the Internet.

Reading Chinese vs. writing Chinese

50


The first very important thing you should understand is that it’s much more important to be

able to recognize characters than to be able to write them. This sounds obvious, but it’s vital that

you understand this.

I’ll admit - Chinese, especially Cantonese, isn’t the easiest language to write out.

Have you ever heard of a language where people forget how to spell out words? In

English, even for an unusual word like “crwth”, people might be able to spell it out

approximately. It might be wrong, but understandable.

Welcome to Chinese languages. It’s not too unusual for native speakers to actually

forget how to write characters (as well as other strange phenomena like not knowing

how to pronounce other people’s names).

For example, I myself, when I was growing up, always mixed up the characters 旅、

族、旋 - I always forgot the part on the right side of the character.

One of the biggest contributors to this phenomenon is the digitization of, well,

everything. Unlike in the old days, where we had to write everything out by hand, we

can simply type things out with a keyboard.

That’s unfortunate for remembering characters for native speakers, but very fortunate

for you as a learner. Because you only have to remember what a character looks like

when you see it - you don’t have to write it.

51


Recognizing characters is a much easier task than writing them. So if we changed the

original goal from “writing Chinese” to “reading Chinese”, the difficulty is considerably

reduced.

Spoken Cantonese vs. written Chinese

My second piece of advice is to learn written Chinese characters first, instead of

characters used in spoken Cantonese. Most texts you’ll see online or in books use

standard written Chinese, and that’s where you’ll learn a lot of new words.

For example, learning 的 (dik1) instead of 嘅 (ge3 - the ‘s in Cantonese).

And then in our mind, we equate 的 = (literal pronunciation) dik1; (spoken

pronunciation) ge3.

And once you’re comfortable with written Chinese characters, it’s not too difficult to

add on a basic set of spoken Cantonese characters. This is how we learnt as children, and

I recommend that Cantonese learners do the same.

21 Videos to Help You Get Started with Learning Chinese

Characters

Because so many people find it quite daunting to get started with it, I’ve created a series

of videos to help answer some common questions on Chinese characters, and how to

get started.

52


As they say, “eighty percent of life is showing up”. The most difficult bit is to get started

(that and getting over the “intermediate plateau”) - but once you do, you’ll find that

writing and reading characters could be enjoyable.

Traditional or simplified?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6jmvBBawd9_woe3rxuJFsL8&

v=KJ0Oz4Avd90

How were Chinese characters simplified?

http://pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/SimplifiedCharacters.html

Learning the basic radicals and what they mean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6j0HrrnmHFFRb65bLy0wf0F

&v=yvXXRKPlp_U

100 common radicals

http://www.hackingchinese.com/kickstart-your-character-learning-with-the-100-m

ost-common-radicals/

Understanding stroke order to make your handwriting more native

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6il-ovA43hGclJcROd2nQ_S&v

=tmNgrRIyfBw

53

http://www.hackingchinese.com/kickstart-your-character-learning-with-the-100-most-common-radicals/https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6j0HrrnmHFFRb65bLy0wf0F&v=yvXXRKPlp_Uhttp://pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/SimplifiedCharacters.htmlhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6jmvBBawd9_woe3rxuJFsL8&v=KJ0Oz4Avd90https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6il-ovA43hGclJcROd2nQ_S&v=tmNgrRIyfBwhttp://www.hackingchinese.com/kickstart-your-character-learning-with-the-100-most-common-radicals/https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6jmvBBawd9_woe3rxuJFsL8&v=KJ0Oz4Avd90https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6j0HrrnmHFFRb65bLy0wf0F&v=yvXXRKPlp_Uhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLkZ9VSSGnc6il-ovA43hGclJcROd2nQ_S&v=tmNgrRIyfBw


Copy the 楷體 font in order to neaten up your handwriting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQOVBneiR3M

Hanzicraft to understanding what character components are ( )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rngryJ42rUg

Learn the structural patterns of Chinese characters

http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2017/05/10/learn-the-structural-patterns-

of-chinese-characters

Recommended frequency lists

Some learners like working with frequency lists as a guide to learning new words and

characters. And it makes sense to start with the most commonly used words /

characters.

I recommend two resources for doing this.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ArxEFo46PTrDyDDhWyu3wB0epxqTyd8

WBaprnwTEPm4/edit#gid=1428902047

54

http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2017/05/10/learn-the-structural-patterns-of-chinese-charactershttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQOVBneiR3Mhttps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ArxEFo46PTrDyDDhWyu3wB0epxqTyd8WBaprnwTEPm4/edit#gid=1428902047https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rngryJ42rUghttps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ArxEFo46PTrDyDDhWyu3wB0epxqTyd8WBaprnwTEPm4/edit#gid=1428902047http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2017/05/10/learn-the-structural-patterns-of-chinese-characters


This is an incredible resource put together by this user

https://www.reddit.com/user/Sc07713 and a group of volunteers that has over 44,000

entries. This is an excellent place to start with to learn your top 2000 - 3000 words, and

determine which characters to learn.

http://hsk.academy/en/hsk_1

Even though Cantonese isn’t Mandarin, all Chinese languages share the same script. In

this case, the words required by the Mandarin exam for foreigners are a good starting

point to determine what written Chinese words you should add to your initial

vocabulary.

Tools to learn Chinese characters

While I’m aware of the fact that there are some wonderful tools available for learners to

study Chinese characters, because I’ve not used them personally, I can’t really say

whether they’re effective or not.

However, virtually everyone I’ve met swears by the effectiveness of Skritter, so I’ll link

to it here:

https://skritter.com/

55

http://hsk.academy/en/hsk_1https://www.reddit.com/user/Sc07713https://skritter.com/


How polyglots conquered Chinese characters

I’ve compiled a list of polyglots who have studied Cantonese, Mandarin or Japanese and

their thoughts on learning Chinese characters so you can see what their experiences

have been like.

Olly Richards

http://www.iwillteachyoualanguage.com/learn-write-traditional-chinese-characters/

Olle Linge

http://www.hackingchinese.com/how-to-learn-chinese-characters-as-a-beginner/

Luca Lampariello

http://www.thepolyglotdream.com/tips-on-learning-chinese-characters/

Chris Parker

http://www.fluentinmandarin.com/content/learn-chinese-characters/

Skritter

https://blog.skritter.com/

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http://www.iwillteachyoualanguage.com/learn-write-traditional-chinese-characters/http://www.fluentinmandarin.com/content/learn-chinese-characters/http://www.thepolyglotdream.com/tips-on-learning-chinese-characters/https://blog.skritter.com/http://www.hackingchinese.com/how-to-learn-chinese-characters-as-a-beginner/


Part 5: How To Find The Right Cantonese Teacher For

You

Okay, so you’ve studied grammar, have a sizable vocabulary, and you’ve learnt some

basic Chinese characters.

Then what?

This is where I must make it clear - this guide is divided into “parts”, but it doesn’t mean

that each part can only be done when the previous part is completed.

For example, you could just as easily have started with words before structures (though

I don’t recommend it), or do words and structures together, or start with Chinese

characters right from the beginning.

I divided this guide up into parts based on the rough order I think a learner should

follow based on my teaching experiences, but there is bound to be overlap, and you

should do what feels right to you.

I mention this because the fifth part of this guide is arguably the most contentious of the

entire guide - getting a teacher.

The burning question - “when should I get a teacher?”

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Unfortunately, I don’t have a standard response when it comes to this.

And unfortunately, the answer that I will give is simply, “it depends on the learner”. I’m

not saying this to avoid answering the question, but it really depends on how a learner

learns, how busy a learner is, and the learner’s experiences with learning languages.

For example, for someone has quite a bit of spare time to study, has studied an Asian

language before to a high level of fluency, I would recommend getting a teacher in the

beginning only to check her pronunciation, and conduct independent self study for the

first three months or so.

For someone whose native language is far off from Cantonese, who is extremely busy,

and perhaps Cantonese is his first foreign language, having a teacher who can guide you

could be much more helpful.

To cite one more example, myself, when I was studying Korean in the beginning, I did it

independently for a period of time before I felt the need to practice speaking with a

teacher, and that worked out fine for me.

So there really is no standard response I can give - you have to make that judgment by

yourself.

However, what I can do is to provide you with some guidelines to working with a

teacher. Some common questions people ask when it comes to working with a language

teacher is:

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1. Should I take traditional classes or work with an online teacher?

2. What should I do with a Cantonese teacher? (Or perhaps more importantly,

what shouldn’t I do with my teacher?)

3. Is self studying better than working with a teacher?

Since I’ve already answered all of these questions in a separate post, I’ll link directly to it,

so you can see what I think.

https://cantolounge.com/cantonese-teacher-online-vs-self-studying/

If you are thinking of looking for a Cantonese teacher, though, I would highly

recommend finding a teacher over at italki.com.

If you don’t already know, italki is one of the largest online platforms where you can

find teachers of virtually any language (including Cantonese, of course) to learn with.

Here’s a link to italki’s Cantonese teachers:

https://www.italki.com/teachers/chinese(cantonese)

Why I don’t recommend doing “language exchanges”

Another question that people often ask is, “should I get a language partner to practice

with?”

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https://www.italki.com/teachers/chinese(cantonese)https://cantolounge.com/cantonese-teacher-online-vs-self-studying/


In my opinion, I’m pretty much against having a language partner. As an extended

conclusion, I think that having a friend to exchange language with you is even worse.

(Don’t misunderstand me - I think it’s a wonderful thing to make friends in foreign

countries, but to expect these foreign friends to teach you language is not realistic.)

In theory, having a language partner is great because you can get that level of immersion

that you might not be able to get if you can’t travel, for instance, to Hong Kong.

In theory.

Unfortunately, finding the right partner to practice with doesn’t tend to work very well.

Let me try to explain why language partners aren’t so good, and why it’s worth paying

someone to work on Cantonese with you.

Let’s start by painting a picture of what an ideal exchange partner looks like:

1. S/he should be consistently available to do language exchanges with you (either

50:50 in one session, or maybe alternating languages in different sessions);

2. S/he should be sufficiently motivated to keep on�

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