Can you learn Cantonese from a book? I would say no, not least because of the crazy spelling that bear little or no resemblance to the sound of the words.
Can you indeed learn any language from a book? Again, I’d say no. I think it slows down rather than speed up the process. The best way to learn anything is to do. So yes, if you want to learn to speak Cantonese, the best way is to speak Cantonese.
Having said that, reading books; good literature, biographies, history books is of utmost importance to keep your brain and sense of adventure and curiosity in shape. It’s like athletes. If they want to succeed, they train not only kicking the ball (or whatever) but the whole body. Some football players, I have it on good authority, even do – dance! I’m 100% sure that if I hadn’t read up to 30 books a month as a child, I would never have thought it was possible to go and live abroad and become the only Norwegian Cantonese teacher in the village.
In Pui O where I live, a teacher has transformed the English department by starting a reading programme where the students can choose what they want to read! That’s right, instead of having Shakespeare and Chaucer stuffed down their throats, killing their love of reading and words forever, they read what they think it’s interesting. If they don’t like a book – they just leave it and pick another one!!!
Sean Earl has the right idea, and the tiny Pui O School with its 50-something pupils is now doing better in the reading and writing of English than its international school counterparts. Wooo hoooo!
Listen to my interview with Sean here on Radio Lantau. (As usual, scroll down until you see the archived post.)
睇書 – Tai syu (read book)
我好鍾意睇書 – O hou jungyi tai syu （I love reading)
貝澳小學 – Bui O Siu Hok (Pui O primary school)
You know you want to learn Cantonese without really trying! Well, this Saturday, in only 3 short hours you can learn everything you need to kick-start your Canto career. I’ll give you all the tricks →
Wei! I’ve discovered a new tea! Don’t know how it could have escaped me for so long, as often as I go to yam cha, but there you are. Maybe I’ve become too stick in →
WEI! Everybody everywhere! I’m off to the motherland for a long but not long enough weekend, to make programmes about … oh, I can’t talk about it. OK, Mandarin. Anyway, when I get back next →
Here is the view from my roof on a good day. But even on a not so good day it’s worth visiting, because guess what: My PERSONAL SICHUAN ROOFTOP RESTAURANT has now been enhanced with →
Oh! NOW I’m disappointed. Chow Seng Chi (周星馳）was my big Canto love for years and years. Because: 1. Extremely handsome 2. Funny I used his films as teaching and learning tools of Canto, and when →
Warning: Contains Mandarin!
I’ve got a couple of beginners ready to take a three hour crash course in the noble art of “Ordering Stuff in a Restaurant or Bar in Excellent Cantonese.” I know that most people visiting →
Here is my victim ah-Dak holding forth for a captive audience in a backstreet in Guangzhou. It moved my FUNdaMENTAList heart, I can tell you that. I was especially chuffed to hear him say (about →
Is being a Luddite with a Mac an oxymoron? But sometimes I think that’s what I am. Here I am, trying to make Cantonese a world language – in Hong Kong! the very stronghold of →
Cantonese is a war and we’re going to win it. We’ll put the fun AND the mental back into “fundamentalists”! Anyway I have a new and eager recruit here by the name of Ah- … →
I spent last weekend in Zhongshan, birthplace of Sun Yat-sen and the original bastion of Cantonese. Not sure about the numbers but an incredible amount of immigrants to the various gold and hard-work slave-conditions hellholes →
A couple of weekends ago I had the privilege of going to Guangzhou with three fun people: F, J and AW. The following debacle ensued. (See article below) What didn’t make it into the piece →
I just thought I’d get in some product placement before lunchtime! To which you’d probably respond: 你有冇攪錯呀！(Lei yau mou gaau cho ah – you must be joking!) That’s right, there is no ‘have’ or ‘not →
In yesterday’s article I talked about how expressions containing the word ‘have’ in English hardly ever contain 有 (yau – have) in Cantonese, such as have some Mons (飲雪花 yam Suet Fa – Drink Snow →
I love English but sometimes its over-reliance on certain words to describe wildly different things irks me. Take the word have. While it’s nowhere near the top word, as in the word with the most →
Dedicated to Alan, Frank and Jo Here is an article from a time of deep depression but also joy and light. It’s long but, I hope, edifying. You’ll find words – English words this time →
I don’t have time to write anything today! I’ve been overcome by a strange Protestant work ethic and have spent the day tidying up 執嘢 (jap yeh – collect/tidy things) and throwing things away. The →
Finally, after almost a year of writing and researching (the research consisted mostly of doing the dishes) I have finished my new book CHILLies! Sichuan Food Made Easy. It looked so alluring with the iBook →
While writing about 墨西哥 (Mak Sai Go – Mexico) the other day, I started thinking about other countries I absolutely must go to. The first one on my list is, naturally, North Korea 北韓 (Bak →
People in Hong Kong have short memories. Last week it rained a bit. I think it started Monday. By Tuesday it was all “oh, I’m so SICK of this RAIN! Will it EVER stop?” Interestingly, →
酒！ Jau! Wine! As they call it. It’s actually a deadly spirit so vile that it should only be used for paint stripping and permanently disfiguring your enemies. Strangely, the (mainland) Chinese drink it with →
