163: Learning Cantonese after Mandarin

Chris asks: "How should I start learning Cantonese, given that I already speak Mandarin?"

Episode Summary: Cantonese is to Mandarin what Cockney is to English It's a highly developed, unique language that is considered a spoken language When Cantonese speakers write things down, they normally use standard Chinese

So what does this mean for a Mandarin speaker who wants to learn Cantonese?

At the risk of oversimplifying, your major task is to learn a large amount of Cantonese-specific vocabulary, including the different pronunciation and more tones While there is more to it than that (different grammar structures, sentence particles etc), the two languages are close enough that your existing knowledge of Mandarin will transfer very well, help you notice any differences and slowly adjust You won't have many new linguistic concepts to learn, it's more a question of getting use to the specific ways Cantonese speakers express themselves It's not the same task as learning a Chinese dialect from scratch as a foreigner

What about the practical considerations?

Because you're going to get so much "for free", you should start by doing a lot of listening and let time do the work Use resources where the audio comes with written Cantonese, so you can start associate the characters you already know with new sounds I've been told the best Cantonese resources are written in Mandarin, so if you can cope, go with those! Given your experience, I would spend a few months simply working through textbook dialogues and noticing as much as possible To master the language, you'll need to arrange your life in a way that allows you to speak regularly (see episode 153) - your progress is going to depend on your ability to make those lifestyle changes Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

https://youtu.be/3QRVpNbNzK8

Start speaking today:

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