Learn Cantonese

[trevelyan]

I haven't seen mention of this on Chinese-Forums yet, so thought I'd post a quick note to announce the launch of a new site to Learn Cantonese. CantoneseClass101 is an online learning program that teaches Cantonese with podcasts, audio blogs, videos and more. The heart of the site is a progressive course designed to teach people Cantonese through easily-digestable podcasts that focus on very high frequencty language. The site is a joint effort between those of us at Popup Chinese and the folks runningJapanesePod101.

As mentioned above, CantoneseClass101 just launched, but I'd encourage anyone interested in learning Cantonese to drop by and check it out. New lessons are being released daily, and while most of the lessons are focused on very basic Cantonese, more advanced Cantonese podcasts are in the pipeline for release later this year. Feedback is always welcome on the site, or by email at contactus@cantoneseclass101.com.

Best,

--david

[wai ming]

Looks like a good start, David

As I'm not too interested in beginner level lessons, I had a look at the Advanced Audio Blog. The audio was nice and clear and reasonably paced (not super fast but what you would expect in real life), and I thought the 'Cultural Insight' in English & standard written Chinese was a nice touch. I also like the idiomatic English translation of the audio.

If I could just make a few suggestions regarding the Chinese and Jyutping transcriptions:

- I noticed some inconsistencies in the Cantonese characters. While all of them can be found in colloquial Cantonese writing (particularly on the internet), it's probably better for learners if more 'accepted' characters were used consistently. Eg 係 for hai6 compared to 喺 (which usually represents hai2) and 嘅 for ge3 rather than 慨. Also I think there is some consensus that the correct character for bei2 is 畀 (rather than 俾) - and online resources such as CantoDict reflect this.

- It would be good if tone changes were clearly marked in the Jyutping transcription. For example, 買樓 should be maai5 lau4*2, whereas 樓價 is lau4 gaa3. I'm not sure if there are any 'rules' for Jyutping (as with Hanyu Pinyin), but it might also be useful to mark tone changes such as rising tones at the end of questions. For example, where she asks 呢間喺郊區嘅屋都要一千七一個月？ the jyut6 is heard as jyut with a rising tone.

Anyway, look forward to seeing more advanced content in the future ;)