Costing $295USD on Amazon, Pimsleur Cantonese comprises of 30 x 30min lessons teaching Cantonese solely through listening, repeating then anticipating responses.

The course claims upon completion of Pimsleur Comprehensive Level I Program (30 lessons), you will have achieved spoken-language communication skills at an Intermediate-Low Level including the ability to participate in simple, direct conversations, etc.

Here is an extract from lesson 17 (50seconds):

My Experience:

When I started to learn Cantonese, I listened to 30 lessons (each 3 times per day for a month - I could understand 100% of the course), I truly believed that I gained an Intermediate-Low level speaking ability which was exaggerated on nearly every website on the Internet.

The course is good in theory but in reality it caused my Cantonese confidence to be quickly crushed. Having learnt the 100 words that Pimsleur teached surely cannot classify my level as Intermediate-Low at that point of time.

Attempting to say something lead to abruptly stopping on every 2nd word with “What did you say? I don’t understand”. This rendered every native speaker to quickly switch to English. Even parroting one of the pre-defined sentences to a native speaker always caused me to panic when I heard a response that varied to one that was taught.

I now realise that having a conversation that won’t lead to “what does this mean?” in every response; requires thousands of words in your spoken vocabulary. There is nothing magical about a quick-fix course teaching 100 words over a 1 month period costing $3 per word.

I can honestly say don’t expect any miracles or have any functional ability from Pimsleur Cantonese.

For foreigners trying to learn Cantonese vocabulary and/or make an effort to read written Chinese in Cantonese; you will quickly discover that there is nearly always 2 forms for each word: The written version and the spoken version. It amazes me how Cantonese learners/Hong Kong students learn to write/read Chinese (based on Mandarin) and speak Cantonese. The words and grammar can be so different that you wonder how people manage to achieve any written fluency.

An example I’ll give is: What do you want to eat?

ORAL:
你想食乜嘢呀 ?
nei5 soeng2 sik6 mat1 je5 aa3?

WRITTEN:
你想吃什麼東西 ?
nei5 soeng2 hek3 sam6 mo1 dung1 sai1?

What I understand is that all newspapers and books are written in written Chinese (based on Mandarin), so to be read by all speakers of other dialects. In some cases; writing in Oral Cantonese is discouraged, though can be seen on Internet chats, forums and entertainment magazines.

Especially listening to Cantonese music (eg. Canto Pop), the lyrics are more often than not exclusive to Written Chinese in Cantonese pronunciation. I dream of the day when I can actually understand a song fully.

I found an interesting documentary regarding the influences and difficulties of learning traditional and simplified characters in society. I found it quite impressive that an American (Brian) goes to Australia for 4 years to work and learn to speak Cantonese; then went to Hong Kong 1 year ago to study Chinese characters. All in all, Brian’s Cantonese is quite excellent.

Video 1: 07:59min	Video 2: 07:59min	Video 3: 06:38min

I’m sure most foreigners trying to learn Cantonese has heard “Why learn Cantonese? Mandarin is more useful and easier” at least once in their life.

I’ll give an example; you are in Hong Kong and 99% of people around you are speaking Cantonese. Your wife, radio, television, and all people on the streets are talking away in Cantonese. The cable television has less than 10 Mandarin and English channels out of 100+ Cantonese. You then start talking Cantonese and become entertainment for the myriads of small minded locals who truely believe only Chinese are capable of speaking any form of Chinese. Then you start receiving the daily annoyance “Why are you learning Cantonese? Mandarin is more useful and easier to learn“. They continue to state,

• Mandarin is the future and in the future nearly everyone in Hong Kong will have the ability to speak Mandarin. Many Hong Kong people can already speak Mandarin.Speaking tomorrows language today sure doesn’t make a lot of sense when I’m trying to order local food without pointing and looking like a circus act today.
• You can already speak English, that’s good enough. This one makes me extremely angry; so I wasted the hundreds and hundreds of hours on this language for nothing?
• There are too many tones in Cantonese; Cantonese has 6 tones, where Mandarin has only 4 making it easier for you to pick up the language quickly. In addition, you will never speak Cantonese with the correct accent. I wonder if they are challenging my ability to learn Cantonese (calling me stupid), or trying to brainwash me to give up so I never understand what people around me are saying?
• Mandarin is a language; while Cantonese is a dialect. You should learn the official language of China and not a dialect. How does this make any difference to my situation (everyone around me speaks Cantonese; and I’m being told to learn Mandarin). It doesn’t matter what the official status of a dialect is to a nation, the fact of the matter is that if I don’t learn the language/dialect what people around me are speaking; I will always feel left out at dinners, conversations and never integrate into society.

How on God’s earth can Mandarin or English be more useful for me when 100% of what I’m hearing is in Cantonese?