Cantonese?

[Shelly in the Country]

I've been able to find some programs for Mandarin Chinese, but have been coming up empty on Cantonese. Anyone know of any good resources for teaching Cantonese? Or should I give up and just go with Mandarin? DD is interested in starting Chinese soon. TIA

[Bug's Mom]

I found this link:

http://khuang.com/chinese/dif.htm

 

My daughter is working on Mandarin right now.

[Laura Corin]

Why are you interested in Cantonese? Is it a family language? It's quite unusual to decide on it, as it is a minority tongue.

 

I haven't seen any courses myself.

 

Laura

[Devotional Soul]

I don't have any suggestions, but I will be watching this thread because I'm half Cantonese and would like to learn it later when my kids are older.

 

My grandmother spoke it fluently, but she encouraged my dad to learn English without an accent so that he could be more successful in America, so he doesn't know very much.

[Shelly in the Country]

My mother's native language is Cantonese. She didn't teach me very much of it and I'd like my children to learn it if possible. She lives too far from us to help in teaching them. She is also unable to read any Chinese (long story). If I understand what I read in other places correctly, written Chinese is the same for Mandarin and Cantonese, it is just the spoken language which is different? Is that right?

[Laura Corin]

That's a harder question than it sounds. Broadly speaking, there is complex/full form Chinese and simplified Chinese. Before the revolution of 1949, all Chinese people used the full form. The mainland government then instituted language reform, to make the language easier to write. This reformed script ('simplified') was taken up in mainland China and Singapore. Hong Kong and Taiwan stuck with the complex form, as did most overseas Chinese communities. Many characters are the same in both versions, but others are quite different and it's not always possible to guess your way between them. I learned both at different times.

 

An extra difficulty is that (I was told) Cantonese does have a few words that are not used in Mandarin, or are used very little in Mandarin, so there are some extra characters for that.

 

Clear as mud? Most overseas Cantonese speakers originate in Hong Kong or come from families that left China before or shortly after the revolution and therefore use complex characters. Currently, however, Cantonese speakers in mainland China use simplified characters.

 

Best wishes

 

Laura

[skaterbabs]

I have looked for Cantonese without significant success for several years now. Barnes & Noble did at one time have a (very) few resources, you might check their website.

[cylau]

It will be very hard to learn Cantonese without being in the area that speaks Cantonese. Cantonese has some "nonsense" word that cannot be written and you need to add to the right place in the sentence to make sense. You cannot really write Cantonese, but people had invented words to "write" it on paper that it won't make sense to anybody except Cantonese speaking people, and it is not a formal way of writing. In general, students write formal Chinese in school, but speak Cantonese. Perhaps hiring a tutor is the way to go.