Buying books for Cantonese?

[Mcanton]

I have Spoken Cantonese from GreenWood Press.

Has anyone here any experience with any of these books;

Cantonese for English Speakers Book 1-2

Wedding Bells: Cantonese Reading Material for Intermediate and Advanced Learners

Fun with Cantonese - Verb

Learning Cantonese Through Stories: The Story of Minami (Book & Audio CD)

A Cantonese Book (3rd Edition)

Was thinking of getting some of these books. What do you think about these books? A Cantonese Book (3rd Edition) seems very interesting, and so does Cantonese for English Speakers Book 1-2. I think books like Wedding Bells: Cantonese Reading Material for Intermediate and Advanced Learners would also be of good fun.

What do you guys think?

[chiuyan]

I think all of the books from the Greenwood press are great, but there does seem to be a lot of overlap in them. I probably would not buy "A Cantonese Book" if you plan on buying individual level books like "Living Cantonese - For Intermediate Learners" or "Advanced Level Current Cantonese Colloquialisms", as you will get the same info (and more) in the more targeted books.

I really like the "Fun with Cantonese sounds and tones" book, as pronunciation is obviously one of the more difficult areas of learning Cantonese. It's pretty thin, but it has quite a few examples and drills, and it's pretty cheap too.

Also, for reading pratice with colloquial materials I would also recommend some colloquial magazines if you have access to them (especially if you also have access to a Cantonese friend to help when you need some explanations), as they are super cheap. Magazines like 新Monday (New Monday) and 忽然一週 (Sudden Weekly) are very colloquial and good materials for praticing (although they focus a lot on entertainment gossip, so you may want to kill yourself after reading too much :-P)

[wushijiao]

I've written about this before but here's a quick star review of the ones that I've done:

-Wedding Bells: Cantonese Reading Material for Intermediate and Advanced Learners (10 out of 10 stars). Very interesting story, useful vocab, very well designed.

-Fun with Cantonese - Verbs (6 out of 10 stars) not a bad book, probably worth getting...but a bit boring. The book does focus on many of the key verbs, and the example sentences are all fairly useful though.

- Learning Cantonese Through Stories: The Story of Minami (Book & Audio CD) (8 out of 10 stars) I didn't quite like the story as much as Wedding Bells or Feng Shui Master, but still very interesting and well designed.

The other book that I'd also give a 10 out of 10 rating for is A Feng Shui Master, also by Greenwood Press.

"Advanced Level Current Cantonese Colloquialisms" is also good, although sometimes the dialogues feel a bit forced (I'd still give it 8 or 9 out of 10 though).

These books are great if you believe in the Krashen-like learning philosophy of having interesting content, new vocab, and lots of audio practice. Ideally, it'd be great if there were dozens of books along the lines of Minami and Feng Shui Master (presumably there could be given a larger learners market).

Since there aren't too many resources for Cantonese, I'd recommend all of the above.

[LA Guy]

Just a comment, which of the books have audio CD or mp3 to supplement ?

I believe that the audio with proper pronunciation is key.

Thanks, LA Guy

[wushijiao]

All of the books i mentioned come with audio (CD's).