How do I learn Cantonese?
By using ideas, methods, and tools outlined on Khatzumoto’s website: All Japanese All The Time, and Steve Kaufmann’s website: The Linguist. All that means is a lot of listening to comprehensible input over and over and over. Trying to notice things in the language that you didn’t notice the first time around, and most importantly, having fun while doing it!
I use a bunch of books and study materials but started with: Teach Yourself Cantonese by Hugh Baker, Remembering Tradtitional Hanzi by James W. Heisig, and A Practical Cantonese-English Dictionary by Sidney Lau. I have other books and dictionaries, but those are the ones that I use most often.
I also use Anki for flashcards, Learning with Text for reading, Wenlin (文林) for looking up words and stroke order, Canto Fish for reading websites, New Tong Wen Tang (新同文堂) for converting the Chinese Communist Party’s Chinese Characters back into real Chinese, and CantoInput for writing Cantonese characters like “嗰系喺佢哋嘅” using the Yale IME (also supports Jyutping) because I’m a bit of a purist and dislike seeing sentences like “我D朋友” or “距” being used in place of “佢.”
Wow, that’s the largest amount of links I’ve seen in one place! Hopefully that helped someone.
Why don’t I learn Mandarin?
Many reasons, but basically because I don’t like it. I don’t like the sound of it, I don’t like the movies that are made using it, I don’t like speaking/hearing it spoken, and I ESPECIALLY HATE BEING TOLD WHAT LANGUAGE I SHOULD LEARN by brainwashed people who know nothing about the world.
Man, I like your last paragraph haha. Rock on.
Thanks! I will. 好嘢！
Interesting to find someone who is learning Cantonese, and blogging about it and living in Guangzhou! I live in Guangzhou too, but study Mandarin as my major. I would love to learn Cantonese too and will take a course in it if they have them this Autumn.
I’m not sure if I’ll stay in China after graduation, but if I do, I will most likely stay in Guangzhou. I think that’s a good reason to study Cantonese. Even though most people here can speak Mandarin, I want to also be able to understand what people are speaking around me.
Not just understanding, but also making the effort to speaks it makes a big difference too. Locals open up to you and help you. I had a taxi driver that wouldn’t take my friend and I on a long trip when he asked in Mandarin, but when I urged him in Cantonese he did.
Hallo, let me just say one thing here: There is another way to learn Cantonese and that’s through Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau’s two Cantonese DVDs: Cantonese – The Movie (for total beginners) and Going Native (for not total beginners). http://youtu.be/b3ZZsG1GxrU
Warning: Contain nudity and swearing! One episode is called In A Whorehouse. Yes we cater for every need. There is also instruction about how to write Chinese characters and how to look them up in the dictionary.
For more information go to http://www.happyjellyfish.com
Learn Cantonese the Natural Way – From a Norwegian!
The swearing segment alone was worth it