Cantonese-English dictionary

[L-F-J]

Hi everyone! I've just signed up after reading around a bit. This site seems great!

I learned some Mandarin and have maybe an intermediate level with it. I'm now trying to learn a bit of Cantonese. I learned basic things so far but I'd like to catch it up with my Mandarin.

I've been searching online for a good Cantonese-English dictionary. All I ever find are sites that show Mandarin and Cantonese together and if I type in "to be" in English it will come up with "shi" in Mandarin and "si" in Cantonese. But as I have learned Cantonese only uses this is written language. The spoken Cantonese word would be "hai". So, I'm looking for a dictionary that gives correct spoken Cantonese words. Any help?

[amego]

Hmmm sorry but i only have this site, which lists the spoken (colloquial) Cantonese words. Hope it will be of help to you.

P.S. Take note that the "j-" sounds are actually "y-".

[wai ming]

It's a work in progress, but CantoDict http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/scripts/wordlist.htm

emphasises spoken Cantonese, as well as including Mandarin equivalents and words used in written Chinese. New entries are constantly being added.

As with the site amego mentioned, "j" is pronounced as "y" since Jyutping is used as the romanisation standard.

Hope that helps!

[rose~]

I also need a paper dictionary, English-Chinese or Chinese-English as long as it gives the Cantonese pronunciation in a recognized system like Yale romanization. I did buy the [pop=Lang Wen/Longman]郎文[/pop][pop=junior/chūjí]初級[/pop][pop=Chinese/zhōngwén]中文[/pop][pop=dictionary/cídiǎn]詞典[/pop] but it only uses the international phonetic alphabet and gives the romanization for the single chracter only not the word.

[skylee]

I recommended this Longman dictionary 2 years ago and I still think that it is good. (I have two for myself, one at home and one at office, and have bought one for my niece.) It is a Chinese-Chinese dictionary, though, but with with Cantonese pronunciations.

[rose~]

Thanks Skylee. Oh, it's a shame I didn't buy the 高級版.

May I ask, what kind of romanization does that version have?

[skylee]

For mandarin, there are both hanyu pinyin and bopomofo. For Cantonese, 黃錫淩式音標 is used. There is hanyu pinyin for each compound word/chengyu listed, but bopomofo and cantonese romanisation are only listed for the headwords. Oh and the dictionary is in traditional characters.

[~dan~]

ok um basically does anybody know where i can learn cantonese for free and it is done simply. so basically if i looked for the word "hello" isntead of coming up in symbols it coming up as it does in some dictionaries where its like: beautiful(byu-ti-ful)

that sort of thing