Any books or software to learn writing/reading cantonese?

Question

Hi there, I am a Hong Kong/Canadian Citizen. I can speak fluent Cantonese but my reading and writing is quite basic. Do you have any books and cds or work book that I can improve writing and reading?

Answer 1

I'd actually really like to know this, too.

I haven't seen any, but you may have luck asking on an Asian board; there may be software that is readily available in that part of the world, but isn't really marketed much in America/Canada.

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

If you learn Mandarin, you should be able to communicate in many places in China, since Mandarin is used as the language of government and in the media. Mandarin and Cantonese are completely different languages, as different as English and German, let's say. You would not be able to understand somebody speaking Cantonese if you knew Mandarin. However, many Cantonese speakers will be able to understand and speak Mandarin also. I am not familiar with language-learning software, but don't choose any software that does the following: 1. Asks you to translate sentences back and forth between Chinese and English. Translation has very little use as a language-learning exercise. Choose instead a software that requires you to get meaning by understanding Chinese. 2. Spends most of its time on memorizing characters. If you are traveling to China, you need spoken Chinese, not written Chinese. 3. Asks you to repeat the same or similar sentences and/or dialogues over and over. This is a methodology that we don't use anymore because it doesn't work.

Answer 4

Do you mean reading in Cantonese? Everyone in China uses the same writing system so you should be able to find it anywhere. Once you've grasped the relationship between Mandarin and Cantonese it should be no problem to alternate between the two.