Archive for January, 2010
Lesson One: Hello!
(Just click on the Chinese characters for the sound of Cantonese)
Lesson Two: He has money! I don’t have time! How do you say these in Cantonese?
Lesson Three: Holiday Greetings! How do you say Happy Birthday in Cantonese?
Posted in 
Tags: Where or how can you learn Cantonese in Singapore?
I must thank all ChineseBay visitors from Singapore who encourage us to open a special section here at ChineseBay.com for more people in Singapore to learn Cantonese online.
ChineseBay is now based in Silicon Valley, Northern California, USA, but we got lots of visitors all over the world and a look at our alexa ranking ( refer to http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/chinesebay.com ) Today, our ranking is Singapore is 77,731 while US ranking is 118,445 among millions of web sites globally. Encouraging numbers but we still need to work harder to offer you all, whether in Singapore or not, better Cantonese learning materials for you to master Cantonese with ease and fun.
Where To Learn Cantonese in Singapore?
Answer: Two places you can learn or pick up some basic or practical Cantonese:
1) The local Meetup http://cantonese.meetup.com/90/ The Singapore Cantonese Language Meetup Group organized by the nice and lovely girl Hasumi.
They now have 269 Cantonese Speakers and growing. Come and meet other local Cantonese Speakers to practice the language. They will have “34th Cantonese Meetup Happy Lunar New Year in 2 weeks”.
2) Want to learn some basic Cantonese first before you join them? You can learn online at these web sites:
A) ChineseBay.com : Basic Cantonese (more free lessons are coming!) | Cantonese Phrasebook With Sound
B) CantonesePod.com: Cantonese Podcasts and MP3 Download with short lessons.
C) MyCantonese.net : three free Cantonese lessons with sound in Flash.
D) www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk: Written chinese character help sheets with cantonese pronunciation
It is the Chinese calendar for January, 2010 on the right.
On the top:
日 (ri4) means Sunday
一：Monday
二: Tuesday
三: Wednesday
四: Thursday
五: Friday
六: Saturday
1 to 31 are the days of Gregorian calendar, which is also official calendar in China (all social schedules for air lines, TV shows, radio, train schedules are using Gregorian calendar.) That is why we Chinese call it 公历(公曆) gong1 li4, meaning “Public Calendar”. The Chinese call lunar calendar 农历（農曆）nong2 li4, meaning “agricultural calendar”.
From this calendar, you can see “十七”( shi2 qi1 = 17) under January 1, which was Friday ( it is under 五 of the top line). It means the 17th day of 11th months of the lunar calendar (nong2 li4). How do I know it is the 11th months? Because I see “十二月” (shi2 er2 yue4= 12th month) under January 15, which is also Friday.
Because we know that there are 30 days in every lunar month, we guess that the 12th lunar month will end in Feb. 
Ah, yes! Looking the calendar of Feb. 2010, we know that the lunar 12th month, the last month of the year ends on 13th of February, 2010, which a a big day for Chinese: 大年三十 (literately “big year 30″, that is the New Year’s Eve for Chinese! ) and midnight means the beginning of the lunar New Year – the Year of Tiger when the Year of Ox ends.)
送牛迎虎 song4 niu2 ying2 hu3 (sending away the Ox and receiving the Tiger.)
Let’s continue looking at Jan, 2010: on the 5th of January, we see “小寒”(xiao3 han2 = little or small or minor cold) under it. Xiaohan ( refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaohan ) is the 23rd of the 24 solar terms within a year ). It usually begins around January 5 and ends around January 20. On January 20th, 2010, we can see “大寒” (da4 han2 = big or major cold ) under it. It usually begins around January 20 and ends around February 4. It does remind me it is the coldest day of the year in China without considering special change in the climate.
On 14th February, we see “正月” (zheng1 yue4 = first month of the year . “正” here with the 1st tone is very special because in the old old days, dated back to China’s first Emperor 嬴政 ying1 zheng4, when people had to avoid mentioning the name of the Emperor so they pronounced the “正” in first tone instead of the 4th tone. ). Anyway, it is the first day of the lunar year, we now call it “正月初一”.
We call the 1st to 10th day of the month “初” （chu1 = initial）一、 二、三 、 … all the way to 初十 ， then we continue to count as 十一( eleventh)、十二、 all the way to 三十 （ thirtieth ）. Because we have to mark the beginning of the month with the name of the month such as “十二月” or “正月”, so we omit “初一”(chu1 yi1) for the space.
Does this short article get you interested in Chinese lunar calendar? Here’s the Chinese lunar calendar for 2010:
2010 Chinese Calendar (1089)(times have been downloaded.)
