I have learned Cantonese for over a year to be able to communicate with my girlfriend's family. As a native spanish speaker, this was task that seemed insurmountable at first given how little learning materials exist out there. The Internet is flooded with Mandarin learning materials, courses, books, and content yet Cantonese learners are far fewer. Went from not knowing how to say a simple greeting like 你好 (neih5 hou2) to knowing 2500 characters, speaking conversationally with her mom, and being able to write 500 word short stories. Here's what helped me get over the hurdle of lack of learning materials:
1. 1h lesson every Sunday with a professional Cantonese teacher from italki.com (native speaker from Hong Kong)
2. Focus on pattern recognition of character radicals, write with pen and paper 30 new vocab words per week. Starting on Monday, I would prepare the words of the week, focusing on utility. Then, I would write each word every morning 10-15 times. Thankfully, my memory would never forget a character after doing this approach.
3. Focus on listening and reading advanced content with an OCR translator handy, even if it was very uncomfortable, difficult, I would not stop until I 100% understood a paragraph down to its nuances
4. Keep a handy grammar book or resource cheat sheet, covering particular grammar edge cases
5. Conversation practice every day with my girlfriend, with the goal of pushing myself into uncomfortable territory by trying to express complex ideas and not just talk about the weather
6. Native speaking intonation practice every Saturday, focusing on all the different phonemes and listening to various native speakers pronounce sounds I had a hard time enunciating, such as the `ng` sound or `j` vs. `ch` in Cantonese. Cantonese has 6 tones in HK and 9 tones in the regional variants in Guangdong, so it's important to master them and understand all the nuances of their pitch differences.
7. Write, write, write. Attempt to gather thoughts first in my native tongue, then try my best to translate a paragraph using my Cantonese vocab so far and learn new words in the process.
It's worth noting this takes up the majority of my free time, essentially being my major "hobby" as I have a goal of fluency within the next few years.
It's a tough world out there for anyone learning a Chinese language that isn't Mandarin. Overall, I learned there _are_ indeed resources and people are more than willing to help. If anyone is learning Cantonese, please DM me and I'd be happy to share more information.
1. 1h lesson every Sunday with a professional Cantonese teacher from italki.com (native speaker from Hong Kong) 2. Focus on pattern recognition of character radicals, write with pen and paper 30 new vocab words per week. Starting on Monday, I would prepare the words of the week, focusing on utility. Then, I would write each word every morning 10-15 times. Thankfully, my memory would never forget a character after doing this approach. 3. Focus on listening and reading advanced content with an OCR translator handy, even if it was very uncomfortable, difficult, I would not stop until I 100% understood a paragraph down to its nuances 4. Keep a handy grammar book or resource cheat sheet, covering particular grammar edge cases 5. Conversation practice every day with my girlfriend, with the goal of pushing myself into uncomfortable territory by trying to express complex ideas and not just talk about the weather 6. Native speaking intonation practice every Saturday, focusing on all the different phonemes and listening to various native speakers pronounce sounds I had a hard time enunciating, such as the `ng` sound or `j` vs. `ch` in Cantonese. Cantonese has 6 tones in HK and 9 tones in the regional variants in Guangdong, so it's important to master them and understand all the nuances of their pitch differences. 7. Write, write, write. Attempt to gather thoughts first in my native tongue, then try my best to translate a paragraph using my Cantonese vocab so far and learn new words in the process.
It's worth noting this takes up the majority of my free time, essentially being my major "hobby" as I have a goal of fluency within the next few years.
It's a tough world out there for anyone learning a Chinese language that isn't Mandarin. Overall, I learned there _are_ indeed resources and people are more than willing to help. If anyone is learning Cantonese, please DM me and I'd be happy to share more information.