[Young Post-SCMP] How a Hong Kong linguist promotes Cantonese education by creating online dictionary, storybooks, Wordle spin-off
Lau Chaak-ming, a linguistics professor at the Education University of Hong Kong, has been on a mission to improve resources for those wanting to learn Cantonese
Every week, Talking Points gives you a worksheet to practise your reading comprehension with questions and exercises about the story we’ve written
Gaa1 jau2!!! With this well thought-out, high quality product beginners will have great start learning Cantonese 🙂
Ireland (7 years-old)
We are a trilingual family with English, Cantonese and Italian spoken in the family. Once my daughter started going to school, I struggle a lot to help my daughter keep the Cantonese. Naturally, she mixes a lot of English in conversation with me. Not to mention about the reading and writing. I feel I’m losing the battle and the school is winning…! She can finish read a whole book in English but she can’t do so without me when the books are in Chinese. I enjoy the reading time with her but I can see that she doesn’t have much interest in learning reading Chinese much. She found it too difficult for her. Fortunately, there is this excellent graded Cantonese reader. I really appreciate how the Jyutping helps my daughter read INDEPENDENTLY. I did hesitate because I did try to avoid any English with her at home. But instead of fighting against it, I found out that using what she found easy (English alphabet) to build on her Chinese reading is a good approach. The most important thing is, this builds her independence in Chinese/ Cantonese stories reading. In turn, her confidence and interest in the language come back. I still remember the smile she had when she found herself able to read nearly the whole story herself.
I can’t praise this graded reader enough. And I highly recommend overseas Cantonese parents invest in buying the set.
We have just gone through the first five books and have been very impressed with the quality of the books and the reading experience. Rather than having to translate Chinese text to tell a story in Cantonese, the graphical Jyutping has enabled my little ones to read directly in Cantonese. I also like the variety of stories and appreciate how they promote diversity and inclusion. Thank you so much!
All three of my daughters really enjoy these Cantonese readers. We are from Australia and live in Japan with Hong Kong heritage background.
My daughters speak English from home, Japanese from school and Cantonese has ended up being a third language, even though I have been trying to speak as much to them as I can since they were born. Since my daughters don’t speak much Cantonese and my Chinese reading ability is low, it has been difficult to find books to read to them. These readers have become a catalyst in igniting my children’s interest in Cantonese. My 9 yo really enjoys being able to ‘read’ Chinese by reading the jyutping. Since I help her, she’s learning to read with the proper tones but using the jyutping as prompts. Reading out aloud also helps them familiarise themselves with Cantonese grammar structures that they’ve heard me speak but have not yet been made concrete in their minds. At the same time, she is also learning to recognise Chinese characters. The stories in each of the readers, though simple, are well crafted, and each of my daughters have a favourite. I also love how the stories relate to Hong Kong life and they are subconsciously being introduced to life in Hong Kong. Finally, the comparison chart between the spoken and written Chinese at the back gives the opportunity for an additional layer of study if desired. I’m so thankful for these readers! I finally can see a way forward in helping my kids learn Cantonese.
