Just found a good link for Mandarin speakers to learn Cantonese:
轻松学粤语 http://hemanhong.inetradio.cn/program/3361.aspx
11 FREE LESSONS!
You may find some good comparison between Mandarin and Cantonese too, but you need to know how to read Mandarin first. Enjoy!
Earlier on this web site, I just chose a phonetic Cantonese romanization system at will. After some good research, I found that we need to adopt the most popular system called Jyutping, which has a lot of good features.
More on that soon.
(Special Thanks to Mike, who just reminded us to improve as soon as possible. We agree. We need to remove any confusion from our site. Mike, please contact us with your real email)
The following differences between Jyutping and the Yale romanization should be noted:
Jyutping and the Yale romanization system represent Cantonese pronunciations with the same letters in:
* The initials: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw, w.
* The vowel: aa (except when using alone), a, e, i, o, u,yu.
* The nasal consonant: m, ng.
* The coda: i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k.
But they have difference with the following exceptions:
* The vowels eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping, while the eu represents both vowels in Yale.
* The initial j represents /j/ in Jyutping while y is used instead in Yale.
* The initial z represents /ts/ in Jyutping while j is used instead in Yale.
* The initial c represents /tsʰ/ in Jyutping while ch is used instead in Yale.
* In Jyutping, if no consonant precedes the vowel yu, then the initial j is appended before the vowel. In Yale, the corresponding initial y is never appended before yu under any circumstances.
* Jyutping defines three finals not in Yale: eu /ɛːu/, em /ɛːm/, and ep /ɛːp/. These three finals are used in colloquial Cantonese words, such as deu6 (掉), lem2 (舐), and gep6 (夾).
* To represent tones, only tone numbers are used in Jyutping while Yale originally uses tone marks together with the letter h (though tone numbers can be used in Yale as well).
For further information on both systems, please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyutping
Want to learn the exact words for 1 to 10 in Cantonese? Come Here
You can actually come “Here to learn more of the basic useful Cantonese.
Cantonese learners often wonder what are the differences between Cantonese and the official Chinese language — Mandarin.
Actually, there are a lot of differences which we need to understand and often find interesting. Here I can only list a few of them.
1. Of course, the pronunciation is different. So different that Cantonese speakingand Mandarin speaking people cannot understand each other. Some learners under estimate the differences and take the similarity for granted so that lots of misunderstanding is caused.
e.g. The number 2 in Cantonese sound like “yi”, very similar to the number 1 in Mandarin “yi” (1st tone). The word for water melon in Mandarin “xi gua” sounds like ?? si1gua1(Luffa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luffa)
2. When Cantonese write formal articles, they tend to use formal Chinese Mandarin words expressions. The major differences between the two dialects are mainly in their oral forms.
3. There are many words and expressions are directly “borrowed” from English, so sometimes it is very difficult to translate them from Cantonese into Mandarin.
(tobe updated)
