This is a mostly unordered list of websites and resources for learning Cantonese.
Books
- After looking on Google for a bit the best reference book out there on Cantonese grammar is Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar by Virginia Yip & Stephen Matthews, but it seems like it’s not using the jyutping romanisation scheme which is all the rage at the moment.
- Another one I’ve used, especially for its section on Cantonese phonetics is the text book Cantonese for Everyone by Chow Bun Ching.
Bear in mind both books I’ve listed don’t use Jyutping as their romanisation scheme - presumably this is because the books predate the Jyutping scheme?
Websites
- I haven’t tried CantoneseClass101’s course at all but there are quite a few phrase lists that are accessible even without signing up for their course thing.
- Something that I have been using quite often whilst writing up the notes is the Cantonese to Jyutping converter from CantoneseTools.org. There are other tools available on the site but I haven’t tried any of those yet.
- This Learn Cantonese site has some brief notes on various grammatical aspects of Cantonese; unfortunately it’s last updated in 2013.
- I’ve found this Learn101 site off Google. Looks quite good but I’ve found many instances where the audio example that goes with the written example sentence isn’t 100% saying what is written down.
- There’s also The Art of Hong Kongese by a Dummy which has a series of blog posts on Cantonese grammar amongst other HK-related stuff by a HKer living in Canada.
- Cantolounge also has a bunch of blog posts on Cantonese grammar but the last blog post was back in 2018 - but as of 2023 it looks like the website has expired and it is now only returning 404 errors instead, RIP - so I’ve linked to its previous snapshot from the Internet Archive instead.
- Whilst checking something for someone at work who’s learning Cantonese I’ve rediscovered the Learn Cantonese! site. It has not only a dictionary and a big collection of useful words grouped by theme, but also a massive collection of a bunch of other useful tools, and a forum as well?!
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