Cantonese

Cantonese is one of two main spoken dialects of Chinese that exist. The other dialect, Mandarin, is the more widely used dialect and covers most people in mainland China, Singapore, and Taiwan. While Cantonese is limited to several cities in the Guangdong province and the special administrative regions Macau and Hong Kong, there are still many reasons to learn Cantonese.

Cantonese is more preferred in the places already mentioned previously, which are the more westernized places in China that are popular for sight-seeing, jobs, or even potential relocation. Cantonese is also usually the operating language for business in southeastern China. Additionally, Cantonese is very commonly spoken in many Chinese communities outside of China. Namely, large Cantonese communities have formed in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities in the United States, as well as in Toronto and Vancouver in Canada. Cantonese communities also number various places in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Now that you may be convinced to learn Cantonese Chinese, you may be wondering if there are any good resources available since the dialect seems so limited to specific niches of the world. The good news is that reading and writing in Cantonese is the same as reading and writing in Mandarin, and since Mandarin is the number one most widely spoken language in the world, there are undoubtedly tons of resources for learning to read and write Chinese for free. Many of these resources are covered in other articles about Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese. A good place to start learning to read and write would be Mandarin Tools (http://www.mandarintools.com/shufa.html).

On the other hand, learning to listen to and speak Cantonese will be different from listening to and speaking Mandarin, since Cantonese tones and pronunciation is different from Mandarin tones. In brief, Cantonese has 6 (some people say 9) tones compared to Mandarin’s 4 tones. In both Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, mastering the tones is important because if the wrong tone is used, you are probably saying a completely different word than what you really meant to say. Cantonese tones are not set at specific pitches but rather at relative pitches indicated by whether your voice is falling, rising, staying level or any combination of those.

This site has wonderful audio resources for learning the Cantonese tones and the Yale Romanization of many Cantonese words. http://www.chinese-lessons.com/cantonese/soundsIndex.htm Once you become familiar with the sounds of the words and have a preliminary understanding of the different tones, this site contains a chart that helps you remember how to distinguish among the tones. http://wenfang.wordpress.com/2007/08/16/cantonese-tones-and-how-to-remember-them/

Seven of the tones are distinguished by a difference in pitch, while two are distinguished by a difference in length.

Another resource for Cantonese tones can be found at http://cantonese.ca/tones.php. A resource for learning basic Cantonese sentences and phrases can be found here http://chinesebay.com/cantonese/basic.asp. The expressions are accompanied by Romanization and audio files to help you with your pronunciation.

You can find Cantonese help sheets and other resources at this site http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/ as well.