When I first started to learn Cantonese and even up to a few days ago, I thought that reading and writing Chinese would be a total waste of my time. Speaking Cantonese fluently is all that I needed and I would be happy. Besides street signs are written in both English and Chinese.

I was only kidding myself as I continually found it difficult to build my vocabulary to the advanced level without characters and relying 100% on Cantodict Parser to translate everything to Jyutping. I still wanted to build my spoken fluency first, then maybe tackle characters next year or the year after.

Yesterday, I found a school very close to my workplace, Hong Kong Language Learning Centre. I walked in and spoke in English, “I want to learn some Cantonese”. She asked if I was interested in their Beginner Level 1 Spoken class. Being modest, I replied that maybe Intermediate classes would suit me since I already knew a little. After a short conversation she pointed out a few things about my Cantonese:

- Pronunciation needs a little more work which gets worse when I speak fast
- I speak quite fluently but difficult at times because I speak too fast
- In general my tones are good but fall apart when speaking too fast

So simply speaking, I speak too fast and need to slow down. When I finally slowed down, I sounded quite good and she had no problems in communicating with me.

She suggested that I am better than some of their Advanced - Level 2 students and probably even Level 3. I took a look at their course materials for these levels and I found that I knew more than 80% or 90% of the new vocabulary. I’m quite paranoid of non-native foreign accents and bad habits affecting my Cantonese, that I decided to choose the Reading and Writing Beginner Level 1 class instead. She explained that the students could already speak fluently.

Luckily the term commenced last night, I signed up and started the class that day - quite cheap $2300HKD for 10 lessons (2 hours each). There were 2 other students in the class, surprisingly they were both native Hong Kong Cantonese speakers and victims of parents who thought English was superior to Chinese. These students grew up and studied half their life in Hong Kong (International school) before moving to Canada during primary school. Worried I might drown in the constant flow of advanced spoken Cantonese, I amazed myself and could understand 95% of what the teacher was saying.

I have never intentionally learnt to read, but I have accumulated a few hundred characters through daily exposure of street signs, sub-titles, and Cantodict. Our first lesson was quite interesting as I learnt the Cantonese names of the 12 strokes and learnt the stroke orders, character rules and some meanings for some characters.

We practiced to write following characters: 一二三四五六七八九十口月日水王玉山木田魚火明女子好人中不年有我你您他她們是美個高國

I’ve decided to learn how to read as fast as possible! I know Steve Kaufmann learnt to read a newspaper fluently in 6 months, so I’m sure its not as impossible as I once was lead to believe.

So I spent the last 6 days in Mainland China for a holiday. It wasn’t the complete culture shock being that road rules seem to not exist or sales assistants follow you everywhere you go that made me feel uncomfortable, it was that the so-called local language seemed to not exist.

廣州 - gwong2 zau1 - Guangzhou (the Capital of Cantonese) left me rather disappointed. It seemed that the majority are non-Cantonese people and simply refused to learn. You speak Cantonese, and you get replied back in Mandarin or extremely accented Cantonese. Not like Hong Kong where people know Cantonese but want to practice English, when I speak Cantonese they simply cannot speak it and continue in Mandarin until I stop them and they grab another person to help me in Cantonese. I get replies like “How is it possible that you know Cantonese and not Mandarin?”

When I actually found a local (seemed like 1 in 10 people), I was immediately elevated to “GOD” status. They loved me speaking Cantonese and treated me like a native Cantonese speaker.

On the other hand, 潮汕 - ciu4 saan3 - Chao Shan, being (潮州 - ciu4 zau1 - Chaozhou) and (汕頭 - saan3 tau4 - Shantou), two major Guangdong cities were both very limited in Cantonese. Some would reply in super broken Cantonese or Mandarin. Most people can understand Cantonese but can’t speak it well. If I spoke in Cantonese, then I couldn’t understand their Mandarin. Though shops would normally have a sales person who could speak Cantonese quite well and were happy to use Cantonese but with a heavier accent than mine.

In Guangdong, there is a vast amount of Cantonese resources. All Hong Kong television stations are available, and the Mainland even have many Cantonese TV and radio channels of their own. Though in Guangzhou, it still confuses me how people could learn to understand the language perfectly but couldn’t be bothered to open their mouths to speak Cantonese after 20 years of living there. I even saw many situations where one person spoke Cantonese and the other replied back in Mandarin. Seemed to be very popular in Guangzhou for people to speak their native language and receive replies in another.

This has not deterred me from learning Cantonese, or distracted me to take up Mandarin. On my return to Hong Kong and sharing my experience, my colleagues insisted that I should start learning Mandarin to be able to communicate with Mainland Chinese. However, many of them couldn’t speak Mandarin themselves, showing simply a double standards point-of-view on Chinese language.

I’m so sick of the learn Mandarin talk that I’ve listed why I shouldn’t learn it (pardon any ignorance):

1) No environment - Everyone including my family only speak Cantonese all the time.
2) I’m not interested in going to Shenzhen every weekend to practice Mandarin.
3) I’m not interested to learn Mandarin for short trips to China every year.
4) I’m not really interested in doing business in China (which it seems to be many people’s motivation).
5) Actually only 53% of Chinese people in China can speak Mandarin (source). So the exaggerated myth that 1.3 billion speakers cannot be as valued as wide spread languages like Spanish or French.

I managed to get on the RTHK English Channel regarding the pleasures and pains of learning Cantonese. The program name is “Same Same But Different Between English and Cantonese”, and specifically “Learning Cantonese”.

I admit I was super nervous and neither my English nor Cantonese was at its best, and sounded quite broken to my ears for both my native and target language.

I was also quite pressured to instantly think of something to say and subconsciously know that many people would hear my mistakes. I think I speak better when I’m calm and relaxed, as this time my heart was beating super fast like at a job interview.

I found an old recording that I made 1.5 years ago. Let’s see how much I’ve improved -

March 2006 (3 months study)

Today

It appears my accent has not improved, but I think I sound a little bit better in comparison to the first recording. I hope I won’t plateau as time goes on.

After 1 year and 8 months of study, this is how my Cantonese sounds like in an impromptu speech. This was not scripted and the words just came freely from my brain without translations. So its all automatic so I’m bound to make some obvious mistakes.

For example, I said 不嬲 bat1 lau1, but should have said (經常 ging1 soeng4 / 成日 seng4 jat6). Also I used 觀點與角度 gun1 dim2 jyu5 gok3 dou6 incorrectly, but I knew these simple mistakes would definitely show when nervously recording.

When I first started learning, I only had to say a few words and get “praised”. Now I get criticised for bad accent and tone mistakes.

I really hope you can understand what I am saying, any comments?

Download - 00:58min

I used to think that if I spoke quickly I would sound more fluent. As shocked as I was, I recorded my voice and couldn’t understand 1 word I said. As soon as I slowed down making clear sounds for each character I sounded much better, but still sounded like a “gwai lou”.

When I speak English, I tend to join words together so that 3 or so words are slurred into 1 word. I wasn’t even aware I did the same thing in Cantonese until I listened to myself.

When I’m speaking, it sounds awesome. From my own ears my Cantonese sounds like a native and I felt quite happy with my accent, intonations and fluency.

After listening to myself via the computer, I simply sounded like an Australian English speaker talking gibberish. My accent was so foreign from Hong Kong people’s and I spoke at 5 or so different speeds in the 1 single sentence.

It amazes me that I can converse with people for hours and they manage to understand 99% of what I’m saying, though I can’t understand myself when I listen to it. I was going to upload myself speaking some Cantonese but now feel totally ashamed.

Completely depressed.

Download - 10:21min

Read Transcript

From my experience, its quite acceptable that Asians speak English or other European languages with each other, however, to the typical Chinese it would seem quite funny or even ridiculous that that 2 Caucasians speak to each other using only Cantonese in social or day-to-day contexts.

I hope that one day it will be considered normal when 2 white guys speak Chinese to each other in Hong Kong, just like its normal that 2 Asians speak English to each other in Australia.

One or both could easily be non-English speaking, but from my observations the following is likely to happen if such a situation actually took place in Hong Kong:

1) the average person would look twice;
2) point and/or stare;
3) make comments such as “why don’t you speak English? You are both gweilos”