Cantonese Learn It Fast - (4th Edition)

Author: Zhang Bingkun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: This textbook was compiled by the author based on years of experience in Cantonese teaching, specifically designed for vocational high school students to learn Cantonese spoken language and read written texts in Cantonese. The main content includes:
(1) Common spoken language. This section serves as the basic material for learning and practicing Cantonese spoken language. It is organized from simple to complex, with four units containing 18 lessons and 100 dialogue sentence groups. Each dialogue group includes phonetic notation and written text for comparison. After each unit, there are review and self-assessment test questions covering approximately 60 minutes of content, for review or self-testing.
(2) A comparison of common Cantonese vocabulary in both spoken and written forms. This section includes over 300 commonly used pronouns, adjectives, verbs, nouns, etc., with Cantonese phonetic notation provided for each.
(3) Phonetic annotations for commonly used characters. Mastering the pronunciation of a certain number of characters is the foundation for reading written texts. This section selects and compiles over 2,000 commonly used characters, categorizing them by vowel sounds (rhymes) and providing phonetic annotations. The annotations help in correct self-study and reading aloud. The textbook adopts a combination of Chinese Pinyin and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) for phonetic notation, aligning with internationally recognized symbols. Students can quickly learn Cantonese pronunciation and tones by mimicking the teacher’s (audio recording) pronunciation. Particularly for learners who have mastered Chinese Pinyin and IPA, this book allows them to learn Cantonese effectively even without a Cantonese-speaking environment, achieving self-taught proficiency. This is a notable feature of the phonetic annotation method used in the book.