A Shortcut to Cantonese

[studychinese]

http://www.green-woodpress.com/products_detail.php?id=113

 

Has anyone used this book -  A Shortcut to Cantonese (New Edition)?

 

My Mandarin ability has come along quite a bit, and I would like to learn Cantonese at a basic level. What this book appears to do is leverage one's Mandarin ability to quickly gain ability in Cantonese language.

Can anyone give a quick review?

[Flickserve]

Hehe. I think there are no shortcuts....given my own experience of not easily leveraging ability in Cantonese to learn Mandarin. 

 

In HK, there are textbooks for fluent Mandarin speakers to learn Cantonese. These are all written in Chinese.  

[edelweis]

47 minutes ago, Flickserve said:

In HK, there are textbooks for fluent Mandarin speakers to learn Cantonese. These are all written in Chinese.

 

What about the pronunciation, do they use the Latin alphabet or some other method?

[Hofmann]

In the same way that Germanic language speakers will learn other Germanic languages more quickly than those who don't speak any, Mandarin speakers will learn Cantonese faster than those who don't speak any Chinese languages. There is quite a bit of information to leverage, and it makes sense for textbook authors to take advantage of it.

[Flickserve]

20 hours ago, edelweis said:

What about the pronunciation, do they use the Latin alphabet or some other method?

 

I passed the bookshop today and took a few photos. This particular book also comes with a CD of MP3. 

[edelweis]

thanks! interestingly the Mandarin text is in traditional characters.

[lechuan]

Just browsing through the book, each chapter is a dialogue, grammar notes, supplemental vocabulary lists, and pronunciation/listening exercises. Unfortunately, I can't give much of a review as I haven't actually tried learning Cantonese (yet). The "shortcut" part seems to be that when introducing each grammar part, it points out when it is different from Mandarin. It also lists all vocabulary in Jyutping pronunciation with Traditional Characters, Pinyin with Simplified Characters, and English.

[Guest]

Quote

What about the pronunciation, do they use the Latin alphabet or some other method?

 

The English-language ones mostly use Yale or Jyutping. Some authors also derive their own systems (which is pointless since there are at least 12 established Romanization schemes for Cantonese).

 

Much better to see if the book has a CD or not, and if so, how much of the content of the book is recorded.

[studychinese]

An update on this. I purchased the new edition of this book and it is VERY good. Rather than reinvent the wheel, it takes what you know of Mandarin, and tells you what is the same, and what is different between Cantonese and Mandarin. I thoroughly recommend it for people that already learned Mandarin wanting to learn some Cantonese.