Top products from r/Cantonese
We found 16 product mentions on r/Cantonese. We ranked the 11 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
1. Complete Cantonese Beginner to Intermediate Course: Learn to read, write, speak and understand a new language (Teach Yourself Complete)
Sentiment score: 3
Number of reviews: 3
Teach Yourself
2. Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar (Routledge Comprehensive Grammars)
Sentiment score: 2
Number of reviews: 2
3. Teach Yourself Cantonese Complete Course Audiopack
Sentiment score: 0
Number of reviews: 1
4. Complete Cantonese: A Teach Yourself Guide (Teach Yourself Language)
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
5. Complete Cantonese Book/CD Pack (Teach Yourself) (Teach Yourself Complete Courses)
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
6. Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar: A Practical Guide (Modern Grammars)
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
Routledge
7. Reading & Writing Chinese: Traditional Character Edition, A Comprehensive Guide to the Chinese Writing System
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
Traditional character in writing system
8. Written Standard Chinese, Volume One: A Beginning Reading Text for Modern Chinese (Far Eastern Publications Series)
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
Used Book in Good Condition
9. Colloquial Cantonese (Colloquial Series)
Sentiment score: 1
Number of reviews: 1
I'm a native speaker of Cantonese who had lost fluency in the language due to many years of disuse, but have been able to achieve proficiency (take it as you will) in the language recently. I'll outline my approach:
As for learning resources, I recommend Pleco as a dictionary. It has pronunciations for both Mandarin and Cantonese. I don't believe there is a better Chinese dictionary out there. As for Cantonese-oriented dictionaries, I would suggest CC-Canto (the one I use most often on my computer), cantoneseclass101.com (less comprehensive than the previous dictionary, but has audio pronunciations), and MDBG (no Cantonese pronunciations, but is a good replacement for Pleco if you don't want to buy it).
I would visit RTHK Radio for listening practice. RTHK in general provides a plethora of learning materials, including TV programs (live broadcasts), recorded broadcasts, and text news. ONTV is a YouTube broadcast of a news stream that's on almost 24/7. Here is another channel (no live broadcast, but very frequently uploads videos) for news.
How does one learn how to read and write Chinese? At the early stages, as you learn each character, write it out (preferably on some practice sheet with grids). Eventually it becomes tedious to write out everything, but by then you learn that you don’t actually have to know how to write a character to read it. Nonetheless, you should still write out characters until you’ve familiarized yourself with proper stroke order and the common radicals.
*A website to watch CCTV 13 without a VPN (CCTV 13 blocked outside of China)
I would include resources to learn the pronunciation system, pinyin, and tones, but such resources are so common that you can probably figure it out yourself.
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Sorry if this is much more than what you asked for, but by the time I realized I was getting carried away, it was too late. Good luck on your journey to fluency!
I found the same problem too trying to learn Canto from NZ. Most of the resources are in Mandarin and you have to accept the fact that no one guide will fulfill all your needs. The two books that I have found most helpful are these:
https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Writing-Chinese-Traditional-Comprehensive/dp/0804832064
This is a pretty extensive list of traditional characters with stroke diagrams to help you learn to write. I've found it invaluable as a resource however the pronunciation is given in Mandarin.
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Cantonese-Teach-Yourself-Language/dp/0071750606
This is the best spoken Cantonese guide I have found and will help you with grammar integrated with everyday conversation.
Of course pronunciation is something that you can't get with a book. Pleco is a really helpful dictionary style app that includes Canto and Mandarin audio files. You can search for words by English, jyutping or stroke (assuming you know how to write.)
Final thing I would recommend is Cantonese 101 podcasts https://www.cantoneseclass101.com
It's well worth signing up to this (there's a free trial period) as the lessons are comprehensive and go up to an advanced level. The tutors are Hong Kongers so you will pick up a bit of the culture - and of course plenty to do with business, money and shopping.
Hope this helps and best of luck!
PM'd you. I'm gonna make a post on this sub when I finish the cards but till then I can get you the work in progress. They're for this book which is a pretty good introduction.
My partner is from HK and I learned more spending three weeks there with her this summer than I did over several months of self-study, so even after books and flashcards for the basics, the best thing is to speak as much as you can. Why did you decide to learn Cantonese? It would probably be best to tailor your learning approach around that reason.
I agree with the other comment. Learn how to speak and listen pretty well first before you move on to reading and writing.
Here is a great resource to get you started. From what I've seen, it has a slow and steady pace: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Cantonese-Beginner-Intermediate-Course/dp/1473600820/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=teach+yourself+cantonese&qid=1549931605&s=gateway&sr=8-1
Find a tutor on iTalki. Watch movies and Youtube channels--you can find a lot of suggestions searching this subreddit.
Add oil!
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It's a Textbook. It's good, but most of the value comes through the dialogues, which are also hosted on lingq.com (paid resource).
Are you Taiwanese? I'm just curious how someone would be able to write traditional characters so well and not already speak Cantonese.
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> We have some folks in Australia saying that after watching that, they knew they would spend their life fighting for justice. To think some people base their value systems on fallacies and lies.....
>
Yeah. And this is also a mind-blower (for me in the U.S.) → www.amazon.com/Black-Slaveowners-Masters-Carolina-1790-1860-ebook/dp/B0030EFYIQ/
I didn't major in history, but I studied it for fun. Imagine my face when I found out about that ↑
> What's the best way to learn conversational cantonese without learning the characters?
If you are buying textbooks, many of them (1, 2) use some sort of romanization, be it the Yale system or Jyutping. The books may also come with audio files too, so you can listen and recite.
Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar
I like this book a lot.
Hi! I'm also learning Cantonese so that I can communicate with my SO's parents. These are the resources I'm using:
Teach Yourself book:
Get Started in Cantonese Absolute Beginner Course: The essential introduction to reading, writing, speaking and understanding a new language (Teach Yo https://www.amazon.com/dp/1444174991/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apip_wsXojef7SxFh4
They also have beginner to intermediate on Amazon.
The great thing about the Teach Yourself series is that it comes with an audio file so you can practice listening and understanding. It also has practice problems and reviews to make sure you understand the materials.
Chineseclass101.com
Memrise for vocabulary - it's a website but they also have an app
Anki for flashcards
YouTube videos for listening
This is what I've basically concluded from the comments here and perusing the other resources online. For example, I found this great series of books for learning SWC,
Written Standard Chinese, Volume One: A Beginning Reading Text for Modern Chinese: Beginning Reading Text for Modern Chinese v. 1
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Written-Standard-Chinese-One-Beginning/dp/0887101291/
but of course it refers to Mandarin exclusively. Despite searching high and low, I cannot find an equivalent course with Cantonese pronunciation.
That's pretty annoying because I've just bought this book on Cantonese, but it's probably better to find it out sooner rather than later.
Are you referring to this? If not, may I ask what you are referring to?