Teach Yourself Cantonese Pronounciation Part 1

[MrBigEnchilada]

lol...3 of the tones sound the same....

high level - yes

high falling - yes

mid rising - yes

mid level - yes

low falling - uh

low rising - uh

low level - uh

[sexxibabi4u]

cantonese has total 9 tones but basically 6 tones simply follow these sound air waves system from being confused by what you are hearing --> tone 1( --) tone 2 ( / ) tone 3 (o)(stop) tone 4 ( \ ) tone 5 ( \/ ) tone 6 ( '-- ) also tone 7( /x ) tone 8 (ox) tone 9( \x ) zero hassle solve the puzzle have fun :) btw ty for uploading this bcuz i used borrow this book b4 nd now i think i need to read it again :p

[pinyinAID]

For Cantonese pronunciation see the Instruction at

 mrpinyin.webs.com/cantonese.ht­m

[alancwwong]

i can speak 9 tones and tell you the differences

[XxBoonLiong77xX]

ma de? 

[TayaMango]

I've been teaching a friend of mine canto but he can only get some tones right it's ok as long as it's understandable :) He tends to get the hang of pronunciations of Mandarin better compared to Canto. Well, it depends on what phrase/word it is really. But look at Gregory Rivers! He's famous even though his tones aren't right. I know there are other foreigners who speak perfect Canto -but they tend to have lived there for all their lives - I speak perfect Eng - I was born in the UK :)

[AyuSumire]

I am a HongKonger, and I've found no non-native speaker of my language can manage the tone correctly, even if he is a Chinese (Mandarin speaker)

I think only the native speaker can manage to speak it...

and we Hong Kong people ourselves cannot explain the tones, I have no idea of what the hell "high rising"...-.-"

[Allawahguy]

have you searched for videos of a lady called Sharon Balcombe? she's a caucasian lady who speaks PERFECT cantonese...and I mean PERFECT.

[icouldcareless50]

I grew up in America and can speak Mandarin and Cantonese.

If you know Mandarin, learning Cantonese is very very fast as long as you live with Cantonese people (Chinese restaurants).

Learning Mandarin if you know Cantonese is easier than the other way. There are four tones in Mandarin, 3 less than Cantonese.

[444inlove444]

who cares about tone, i mean from my own point of view, as long as we understand each other...then everything will be fine i suppose.

I know cantonese. And i speak with my friends from Hong Kong and they understand what im saying.

[Gladddy]

uuuhh... hard language =S

it's impossible learn cantonese as second language

[FluorineYT]

This is the Audio accompaniment to a Book : Teach Yourself Cantonese, and this Audio file only supplements thie book in question. Anyone who doesn't understand the material can be said to not have the original refence material in hand, and therefore, this video is not primarily directed at them.

There are several methods to learn Cantonese; this is a singular accompaniment to be used with the text Teach Yourself Cantonese, and based on those standards. PART 1 OF 2.

[FluorineYT]

If you disagree with the tenements proposed within, chances are you neither: possess the original Text which it is based upon to make sense of it; or

have no idea which Romanization/Tonal adaption that they are using in their text to relate to what you hear.

[FluorineYT]

PART 3/3 > Obviously, this video is of very limited value, unless one possesses a copy of the text in question.However, this post offsets the rarirty in some markets of also aquiring the Audio medium that makes this text's Yale system of pronunciation coherent. Without the Audio , the text is very nearly worthless, without a native Cantonese speaker to provide tones.

[infinera06]

That's exactly my point. If I speak the language, and can't figure out what "High Rising, Middle falling, etc." are, how in the world can someone with no knowledge of the language understand? It's like telling a music student to sing the C note , when the student has never heard of the note itself.

[seoulhangungmal]

This "High Rising, Middle falling, etc." is only there to help you to get the tones correct. It is not some kind of universal system you need to know to speak Cantonese. Once you get the tones correct you can naturally forget about the "High Rising, Middle falling, etc."

[crazyhanyu]

If you are a native speaker then obviously your experience of learning (or "acquiring") the language will be totally different. Interesting, there are studies which show Cantonese native speakers have no clue about the tones. But, for second language learners - especially if they don't speak a tonal language - they need this stuff to be made explicit.

[infinera06]

How ridiculous labeling the tones with this sort of description. I speak Cantonese, and I can't for the life of me figure what "Mid Rising, High falling, etc. " mean. Just go and listen and learn. Don't bother with this non-sense. BTW, why is a Brit teaching Cantonese!?

[chinaboi41]

because he's learned the language well and has probably studied it intensely. It was Yale that produced a romanization system for it. I watched the video and he's taught me things I haven't thought about, such as "ji" being a classifier for stick like objects. In addition, the labels for the tones let people know what tone you're talking about, and are also a brief description of the tone of the voice when saying the word.

[happy3nding]

thats because you learned how to speak cantonese since very little whereas english speakers have no experience w/ this language until later in their years

[crazyhanyu]

Have you heard him speak Cantonese? The guy is really fantastic.

Anyway, just being a native speaker of a language (whether Cantonese, English or whatever) is not a qualification for being a good teacher of that language. L2 speakers who went through the learning experience themselves usually have more awareness of which aspects are difficult.

[gariadara]

they speak in toisanwa last time I checked...but that was in 1997, so...I suppose things might have changed. However the overwhelming number of young immmigrants from Canton (non Guangzhou/Hong Kong Canton) that I meet here in the US cannot speak Standard Cantonese in any intelligible manner, but they may be from less affluent populations so that may explain it.

[gariadara]

technically Guangdonghua only exists in Guangzhou, hong Kong and Macau and Shenzhen. Standard Cantonese being Hong Kong Cantonese (or Guangzhou, people have been debating this for ages, they are a bit different both grammatically and phonetically). As one moves more into general Guangdong province, the dialects get more diverse and unintelligible from Cantonese. There's Toisan, Seiyap, Hakka, etc. Languages that a person from Hong Kong would not understand.

[crazyhanyu]

BTW, Hakka is not a dialect of Cantonese...

[gathyman]

i think its definitely "Dew lai pokkai"

[SillyMooSam]

ROFL!

sorrry just had t rofl at tht, i havnt heard of any one say tht for ages! XD

[silviaelena]

学不会吧！ 我觉得不用学一声二声等等 应该学每个单词的发音 这样最好

但我没有学过 :)

[seoulhangungmal]

你觉得如何学习呢？因为人们觉得粤语声调是很难使用，所以他们将­要使用这个教训.

[silviaelena]

明白了

每个人有自己的学习风格

你的呢？你会说很多的语言吧 你觉得最好的学习风格是什么？

[seoulhangungmal]

我？我觉得用这样的书籍来学习语言。但现在我真的不太多的时间来­继续学习，所以我不是特别精通任何语言，我只知道一点.

[pwnagefoo]

hey hey can anyone tell me how to say 'sorry' in cantonese?

haha my mom wont tell me.

for some reason she doesnt want to teach me..even though im half chinese.

/:

[Lixin2008Du]

I think is "dui mu ju" or " mou yi si".

[seoulhangungmal]

It's 'deui-mh-jyu' according to the book itself.

[filthdollsynod]

haha maybe ur mum forgot

[pwnagefoo]

nay.

she just doesnt like to teach me.

/:

[gariadara]

DØÜ M JÜ

The Umlauts are how they'd be pronounced in German.

Or a romanization based on Finnish might be more accurate (the j still pronounced close to an English j though):

DÖY M JYY

[gigiginny845]

it is incorrect it is mainly spoken in guangzhou which is actually canton (i think sry) i prefer guanzhounese because in chinese it is not cantonese it is gungzhounese

[yumyumshisha]

no actually it is called guangdongnese

[lalalalyds]

GuangDong=canton

GuangDongHua=cantonese

[lalalalyds]

guangdong is canton

guangzhou is in guangdong

guangdonghua means cantonese

haha i hope that kinda clears it up

i was confused when my mom was explaining it to me at first

[yumyumshisha]

LMAO!! i'm a cantonese native and this sounds hilarious!

[superr0cker]

I'm only seeing this video bcos i wanna know what shawn yue's singing in all his mvs ! Does anyone know a better way?!

[pf91rodman]

This is probleley the most confusing thing in cantonese

pronounciation for buy and sell is "mai"

sell= mai(low)

buy= mai(high)

[anglomania86]

I speak cantonese...it must be so hard learning it! I know it is meant to be much harder than mandarin to learn from scratch.

[PokePunch]

is it "mh sai" or "moh sai"

[rosymew]

there are 9 tones in Cantonese LOL

[JKT84]

I would say there's more like 7 tones where one on words like "teem" (also) and "seen" (first) is used infrequently. I know that's not correct ping yam but most people here won't know yale romanization i'd figure.

If you're learning try to think of the way americans say a drawn out "really?" and that's similar to a mid-rising tone. For us it's for adding inflection, but for cantonese speakers it defines the word. It becomes very natural after you practice mimicking them for a while.

[Chungchile]

if this doesn't change your mind about learning cantonese nothing will. lol.

[sillyicegoose]

hhaa.. just speak. dun realli need to know all these i guess. I learnt cantonese by watching loads of drama serials!

[aerobicastrophile]

i speak canto and i dont know this...

[noobmanultra]

Speaking and knowing this isn't really synonymous with each other. Kinda like Kung Fu, you don't think, just do.

[ManaStar]

noobmanultra- I feel that way about English! haha. I guess that's just how it is with your native language really.

[noobmanultra]

Yes it is really. Although I want to expand on your comment that its with your native language, to simply any language you use daily. :o I say it because I feel that way about both English and Chinese - while Chinese is indeed my native language I use English in my daily American life so hurrah!

[ManaStar]

I sort of feel that way too and then again I don't. For example, I don't really remember all the technical terminology for English grammar and such, but when I learn a foreign language, I have to learn those things, so I feel like I have a deeper understanding than of my own native language. Do you know what I mean?

[noobmanultra]

Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. For your native language, it just comes naturally, but for a new learned language, you have to know the concepts and actually learn it from the basics on up instead of intuitively.

[blindjustice08]

there are 9 tones with tone 7 8 9 being shorter in sound, but now because they are the same as tone 1 3 and 6 they are no longer taught although some older books still use the 7th tone. don't worry just master tones 1 to 6 and you'll be fine

[twisterkyiu]

i didn't know there are 7 tones!! WOW.. i speaks cantonese too.. LOL!!!

[ChicagoRosePianist]

"Tones are really the most difficult aspect of Cantonese at the outset. For all practical purposes, there are 7 tones in Cantonese (and only 6 of them really need to be mastered). Each word or phrase must be spoken at the right pitch or it is wrong and probably will be misunderstood. An easy way of thinking of it is as musical notes (like putting a little "soul" in a song.) Among the tones, there are three main starting levels: High, Middle and Low."

[AiDavProductions]

My wife is Chinese (Hong Kong) and she doesn't even know how many tones there are!

[zhenminliu]

I think this video should be taken off, if you wish to promote the learning of Cantonese. It's way too unsystematic. BTW, I have heard of 6 tones for Cantonese (or 9 tones), but never 7 tones. Do Cantonese learners a favor, remove this. Good intention can lead to bad results. This is an example.

[seoulhangungmal]

How about commenting that to the Teach Yourself company? I'm not the one who made the book or voiced the CD. I'm only sharing it on Youtube. It's not my fault if any of the info is wrong. By the way according to readers this is the BEST Cantonese coursebook and CD around, so that is why I trust their material.

[DrewJ16]

I've always heard 7 tones.