Everybody’s Cantonese, Fourth Edition

Excellent Cantonese primer. Extremely colloquial without excessive slanginess; Chinese characters provided for all sentences and vocabulary. The romanization is perhaps not as good as other systems developed more recently, but for someone who regularly hears Cantonese and wishes to learn how to use it, this is an outstanding book.

The author clearly has a deep understanding of the structure of his native tongue and of what distinctions need to be explained to English speakers -- something sorely lacking in (for example) Duolingo. Not everyone who writes a language text is a competent scholar of linguistics, and Chan Yeung Kwong is more than competent. I wish there was a small biography or note on his education because the more I look at show more the book, the more I'm interested to know about the author.

On a completely bizarre note, the bookseller's comment when I brought it up to the cash was "No they're not." show less