Category Archives: learn Cantonese

The Sociolinguistics and Ideology of Learning Cantonese in Hong Kong

This is a continuation of my earlier piece on Learning Cantonese in Hong Kong. I wrote Part 1 (So yuh wanna learn Cantonese, eh?) in a semi-playful and tongue-in-cheek manner. On the surface, it was a rant about the problems “foreigners” sometimes face learning the Cantonese language in Hong Kong. It listed several common beliefs, presented [...]
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Learning Cantonese for NooBs: Communication Strategies

You’re a Cantonese NooB. You find yourself in a situation where you don’t know the Cantonese word you need. What do you do? a. keep your mouth shut b. use a circumlocution (e.g. “smelly” + “fruit” for ‘durian’)
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Learn Cantonese in Hong Kong

Cantonese courses in Hong Kong are surprisingly few, despite it being the main language of daily communication in Hong Kong and spoken by over 90% of inhabitants. Fortunately, a number of new schools/companies are appearing that offer Cantonese courses
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So yuh wanna learn Cantonese, eh? (Part 1)

You do? Think again! Unless you take the time to understand the politics and ideologies surrounding speaking and learning Cantonese, you may find the difficulties of actually using the language far outweigh
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Learn Cantonese videos

I haven’t got around to posting much here lately. I’ve been putting most of the Cantonese stuff into the free online Moodle course at http://cantonesecourse.com . I love WordPress – but it wasn’t designed for learning. Eventually I’ll have all the 50+ dialogues from the 15 lessons of Cantonese FSI Volume 1 made into YouTube videos. [...]
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Learn Cantonese Dialogues Lesson 1

Dialogue 1 [display_podcast] Dialogue 2 [display_podcast] Dialogue 3 [display_podcast] Dialogue 4 [display_podcast] Dialogue 5 [display_podcast] Dialogue 6 [display_podcast] Dialogue 7 [display_podcast]
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Learn Cantonese Book 1

Learn Cantonese Book 1, published by Hanyu Press, is now available as a free .pdf. Learn Cantonese Book 1 contains transcripts in traditional Chinese characters, Yale Romanization and English translation for all the approximately 60 dialogues in lessons 1-15 (originally from the FSI’s Cantonese: Basic Course, Volume 1). It also contains vocabulary lists and a Cantonese [...]
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Learn Cantonese 1: Mistaken identity

This is the first in a series of Cantonese learning videos with simple everyday dialogues. Sound files were extracted and recycled from the US Foreign Service Institute’s (FSI) Basic Cantonese 1. Photos of Sham Shui Po are distributed under a Creative Commons licence and/or GNU. Everything else is public domain. Two acquaintances on their way to [...]
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