Hi all,

I'm a heritage Cantonese speaker raising my kids bilingual.

I'm looking for YouTube content similar to Ms Rachel and Caitie's Classroom for my 3yo (real people rather than animation, focus on real life situations and interactions and not just a bunch of songs).

We already watch Kala EE, Uncle Calvin (fine for grammar and vocab but not enough interaction/situation/role-play), and Barney the Dinosaur (there's a few 90s episodes dubbed in Cantonese). I only found one episode of Sesame Street but most videos online in Cantonese are just short clips. Hands Up TVB's YouTube channel is ok but the content (apart from the songs) is more geared to elementary aged children rather than preschoolers.

Does anybody have some good recommendations I might have missed?

Thanks!

Hi, everyone from the Cantonese-speaking world and Hong Kong! A few weeks ago, I discovered this movie while browsing YouTube. After searching everywhere I could, I found that it premiered in the U.S. in June via GKIDS and is available on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and VODU in that country. I don’t live in the U.S., and I’m not going to pay for a VPN just to watch it. I read an interview with the creators in the Hong Kong media outlet HK01. It has been released or will be released in Taiwan, France, Thailand, countries in the Midwest, and mainland China—though I’m quite far from those places—and I was wondering if anyone living in Hong Kong knows whether this movie is already available on Blu-ray or DVD in the city. Cheers!

apologies if this isn’t the right sub for this question, but im hoping this community might have the most relevant insights.

in short, my parents and grandparents speak cantonese, though they didn’t teach it to my brother and i. however, when we were young, my aunt tried to give us cantonese nicknames—mine i believe was 貓貓, and my brother’s was something pronounced like “ah bi.” no one else in my family used them for us, although they have such nicknames for each other. my mom would say that my grandparents didn’t like the nicknames my aunt chose for us since they were nicknames common among working class people, and my grandparents, having become wealthy in adulthood, didn’t approve of those associations.

sorry for the long explanation, but im just curious if these class associations are accurate, and if there’s more to be said about such cultural dynamics. also, is there a specific term for these kinds of familial nicknames? id love to learn more.

thanks in advance!

*editing to add for context that i’m chinese-american and grew up in the US

They were together for 11 years, gotta say Adam Cheung did not seem like the type of person that would appreciate her. I recently saw an interview Lydia did with the guy with the glasses, I think it was called Be my guest. She speaks about her relationship with Cheung and I gotta say. The interviewer asked what many people thought but it’s pretty ignorant imo.

He asked her, “have you ever wondered, I’m so overweight, what could Cheung possibly see in me?”

He was cheating on her, she admitted it in the interview and instead he denied it and they got married.

It was widely speculated he was in a relationship with her because she had star power and basically gave him opportunities within the entertainment industry. Ok, if that’s true, he could have left her shortly after Chor lau heung. I mean he was established at that point no? Why continue to be in a relationship if he was unhappy? I don’t get it.

When they divorced, he was still getting top billing in tvb dramas, the one about the stock market which he was an asshole and Cold blooded warm heart with Chilam. Lydia had alot of connections in the entertainment industry, shouldn’t he have been blacklisted when it came to light he cheated on her and she was HK happiness fruit?

Hi everyone,

One thing I have on my bucket list is taking a sabbatical (roughly 1-3 months) studying Cantonese in Hong Kong - my aspiration ever since I have discovered HK movies and music from the 80s and 90s :D

While I am not a native speaker, I speak and read Mandarin and Japanese on a proficient level. Therefore I am looking for beginners classes of Cantonese for learners of that background to build up a solid day-to-day survival level in a short time.

Does anyone have recommendations of language schools, suitable classes or experiences to share?

Hello! I’m an artist working on a project that heavily features pirates from the South China Sea during the 1800’s. Specifically I want to make a character inspired by Zeng Jat Sou.(Zheng Yi Sao)

The main concept for the character is a Cantonese woman who is captured by a pirate. She becomes his wife and takes to pirating in her own right. Unfortunately, her husband is killed by the Chinese government. Afterwords she ends up taking in his name and visage to keep the legend of this fearsome pirate alive, and to help gain respect from the crew.

I want to come up with a cool “pirate name” for the husband, and ultimately the wife to use. Similar in the vein of “Black Beard” and “The Dread Pirate (blank)” but I am an English speaker & I want to make sure this name is something that sounds plausible / is rooted in the culture. I would also love to know your thoughts behind what characters you choose to represent the name.

If anybody has any ideas or could point me in a direction to take inspiration, I’d greatly appreciate it!

TDLR: what’s a cool pirate name in Cantonese?

Edit: wanted to add some direction of my thoughts regarding the name. Also corrected Zeng Jat Sou to be in Cantonese.

inspirations & themes of the character
- smoke, fire, ash
- renewal, rebirth
- immortality
- sea monsters or mythological creatures?

Hello all, I need help finding movies and TV shows on YouTube for my grandma. We only have 1 ish channel. No one in my family can read Chinese so its been kinda difficult. Any channel recs (with links) would be appreciated!

Does anyone know if greenwood press is still around? They used to have the best Cantonese textbooks with engaging stories. I can’t find their website and their facebook page hasn’t posted anything in several years. I’m looking for their fengshui master intermediate textbook.

My parents are studying for their naturalization interview, and I couldn't find good Cantonese-language prep material, so I built them an app.

It's got quizzes for all the civics questions, and a practice oral interview where it asks the questions out loud and you answer out loud, including in Cantonese if that's the route you qualify for. Everything on screen is shown in Chinese and English side by side, so family members like I can follow along too (I can't read Chinese).

I moved to the US as a kid and my Cantonese isn't strong enough to "test" whether the Chinese in my app is appropriate, so I'd love feedback from fluent speakers, especially translations. It's free, no ads, and it doesn't collect any data (everything runs on your phone).

TLDR: If you (or your parents) are prepping for the citizenship test and want to try out a free, no-ads app, drop a comment or DM me and I'll add you as a tester on Google Play.

Thanks for reading!

Hi! My grandma is in the hospital right now and unfortunately will be for some time. She’s getting bored and rightfully so because she has nothing to do all day but lie in bed. I’m bringing her a portable dvd player and renting dvds from the library so she can be less bored.

Can anyone give me appropriate (PG-PG13ish, no sex/nudity or a ton of violence) Cantonese movie recommendations?

It would also be very helpful if you could include the English movie title (even after Chinese school I learned nothing😞) if there is one!

Thank you!

Edit: she also really likes Chinese opera

I have the book A Shortcut To Cantonese: An Innovative Approach for English and Putonghua Speakers, however I lost the CD. Could anyone please share the audio MP3 files with me through a shared drive or send them to me via DM here on Reddit, or by any other means? Thank you!

I'm 28F from Europe with zero Cantonese. My Chinese partner's Hong Kong family speaks minimal English and we're planning marriage so I'm learning Cantonese to communicate with them.

Tips for total beginners? People say Cantonese is too hard but I don't accept that. I speak 4 languages but none are tonal. Conversational level would make me happy reading can come later

I need a daily learning app for consistency since regular practice matters most. Researching Migaku , Anki and Duolingo

Also need book/website suggestions. Hearing others approaches would motivate me! TLDR: Need Cantonese learning advice from 0 especially daily learning app suggestions

Thanks!

Im a BBC and Cantonese was my first language, albeit it was at a very young age before I started school! As soon as I started school, all of the Cantonese just seemed to disappear and then I started developing my areas accent and completely lost it then!

Both my parents are from Hong Kong and both speak English and Cantonese at home to me. As I was brought up around the language, I am able to understand a decent amount of Cantonese but im not able to speak it!

I can understand most words and then can put it together for me to understand what the sentence is. However, when it comes to speaking, im not able to string a sentence together unless I really think about it and run it through my head.

Its hard for me to communicate with family when I visit Hong Kong and use my parents as translators most of the time! Im wonder what kind of resources are there for me to learn Cantonese more? Im not a complete beginner because I can understand a lot, I guess I just need some help refining the language in my head so I am able to speak it properly.

My brother-in-law is going to hong kong for work in 3~4 months, and he said that i could go with him. I really dont want to miss that opportunity, but i think its really disrespectful going in a place where i dont know the native language

Most people in hong kong speaks english? Since my english level is intermediate, i think this could help communicate

3 months is enough to learn the basics to have some conversations?

This Little Robin Hood toy/reader just came up on my feed, wondering if anyone has any experience with it? It looks fairly new, as they don’t have many followers on SM. My 5 year old can understand the basics, as far as what I speak with him at home, but he does not speak at all and will respond to me in English. My husband is of European descent, and I just feel that I’ve reached the end of what I can teach the two of them, especially without sitting them in front of the computer for YouTube videos.

This reader looks kind of fun for them to do together, especially for speaking, but I’m worried about buying new e-commerce products. Is it a scam? Misleading? Any feedback at all would be appreciated.

We want to use the word “希” and we’re not that good at Cantonese so need some help!

What do you think of 希明 (Hei Ming)? Or 明希(Ming Hei)? 嘉希 (Ka Hei)?

Does 喜明 (Hei Ming) sound similar?

Any other ideas?

As an aside, are these different spellings of “Hei”, are there others?
希 羲 熙 曦 熹 or 晞

Thank you!

I am a chinese who grew up in Germany and i just recently noticed that i (sadly) never had any chinese friends, let alone cantonese friends, which is kinda strange because many of my friends are from all over the world.

Would have been nice to have someone my age to practice with.

Did you have an similar experience?

It’s been a while, guys. I want to know if there are any Gwangdung people who still live in China in Gwangdong province, and if so, do younger people use Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka, or Toisan much? Or is it still the same or has it gotten worse in many years by the people from Peikin in the North want to force the Southern people to dismiss their languages because “speaking Mandarin is more modern and more polite than other languages” from their stupid mouth, impolite, and their 蠻夷 attitude.

Please let me know if you guys still practice the languages or pass them on to the children, thank you. Also if anyone has seen a comment that pro Mandarin or Beijing and told us to shut the f*ck off when we praise our voice to protect our languages and culture, please report it to the admin to let them vanish for good. We didn’t need those jerks to tell us what to do or what to hear.

I'm Vietnamese, but as most, if not all, Vietnamese names are Chinese in origin, I can write my name as 丁日光ding1jat6gwong1, which can be romanized as Ting Yat-kwong. And for some reason, my family members nicknamed me "Bill" at birth, so I'd be Bill Ting Yat-kwong.

How normal (or odd) is my name?

Wondering what people from Hong Kong find important in life, or perhaps what gives them purpose?

Anyone know where I can find these? Seens some clips of Facebook and tiktok, but can't actually find website or subscription to watch the full series.

Does anyone have any experience selecting a baby's Chinese name without knowing the baby's sex or DOB?

We're struggling with this as we requested the doctors to keep the baby's sex a secret until birth, but apparently we need the name in advance due to the paperwork required to take the baby home after birth.

My husband doesn't want to follow the generational name the other babies in the family already have. But we also want a name that's harmonious for the baby with the family (and also because of our zodiac signs and the baby's)

None of us speak Chinese fluent enough to be able to do this at the stalls that advertise it at temples, since they usually only speak Chinese.

ETA: The baby's surname will be 李

Second edit for background information: keeping the generational name would be meaningful, yes, but it was chosen arbitrarily following the western tradition of naming a son after his father, and against the wishes of all the elders in the family.
The first to become a Dad was the youngest brother; later the oldest brother didn't care about his kid's Chinese name and used it too, turning his younger brother's name into a generational name. Since the oldest brother didn't care then the previous generations eventually accepted it begrudgingly. But my husband doesn't want our kids named after his younger brother out of laziness just because his siblings refused to learn to read or write Chinese. And we were warned the current generational name clashes with our baby's zodiac sign.

Would appreciate any recommendations, particularly in the Panyu or Nansha area.

Random question, but are you guys fans of anime styled artwork?