Cantonese language online and offline resources

[Anatoli]

Hi all,

Sorry if these topics were discussed on this forum but I'd like to get more web resources for Cantonese learners. I had trouble finding good Cantonese learning sites, at least not as good as you could find for Putonghua or Japanese (if interested, send me a message, I'll share with you). If you have some links please post here.

I would greatly appreciate some links where can get written Cantonese text (preferably as TEXT, not Flash or image file), some pronunciation guide (in whatever romanization used - Jyutping, Yale, etc) and/or audio files you can download and listen off-line (wav, wmv, rm, etc). (Plenty of those for Putonghua and Japanese).

Is there a freeware/shareware word processor you can use to type in Cantonese characters phonetically on a Western PC? I've been using NJStar, it's pretty good but not 100% suitable for Cantonese, a lot of characters are missing, try for example pasting 哋 (DEIH) character into NJStar Chinese or CQuickTrans. With Microsoft IME, I couldn't get the Chinese (Hong Kong) IME to work at all - it always types in Latin only, using Chinese (PRC) to type in simplified characters and Chinese (Taiwan) in traditional. I forgot how to set it up to type in using hanyu pinyin! Very annoyed. My question is, what is the best way to type in Cantonese PHONETICALLY, if there is one? If you mastered the way Microsoft IME for Cantonese works or can use Chinese (Taiwan) for the same purpose, please explain, in brief, how it works.

Is there software on- or offline to convert Cantonese character text into a romanized text (something like NJStar Chinese does to Putonghua/Guoyu)? I am probably pushing my luck here but I'll ask any way.

If you have your own - offline stuff (e.g. MP3 files acompanyng Cantonese text or similar), offline Cantonese tutorials for English speakers, we could probably swap, let's talk about it.



In case you haven't saved these links in favorites, here are some Cantonese links I found:

Cantonese lessons (with sounds):
http://www.chinawestexchange.com/Cantonese/index.htm

Very basic romanized:
http://www.chinesebay.com/cantonese/basic.asp

Some fun lessons using Flash
http://livechat.no-ip.com:8080/chinese/index.cfm

A good one:
http://www.cantonese.ca/

Dictionaries (some are very good, please read instructions)
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-can/
http://www.chineselanguage.org/CCDICT/index.html

Software - gives various pronuncitions and meaning for characters, you can paste a whole Chinese text and get listing for all unique characters. Unregistered version doesn't allow to copy to another program, though.
CQuickTran (JQuickTrans for Japanese)
http://www.coolest.com/

And of course, NJStar word processors and a communicator.
http://www.njstar.com/

Jackie Chan fan site, download some songs - most are in Mandarin but plenty in Cantonese as well with lyrics (in image files, not text).
http://www.jackiechanmusic.com/dload/index.html

About myself: I am 38 years old, native Russian, live in Australia. Have been learning Japanese on and off for many years and dabbled in Mandarin - didn't approach it systematically, so haven't progressed much. Now I spend more time with both Mandarin and Japanese, bought great books, CD's and other learning material and very curious to learn Cantonese in parallel to Mandarin. Just got the "Teach Yourself Cantonese" textbook and Cantonese-English phrasebook, will look for the acompanying CD's or tapes.

I'm fluent in Russian, English and German. Passively functional in French and Polish (can read some newspaper materials). Can't boast about my Japanese, have mastered a few novels - but I know it on the high school level - teaching my daughter Japanese as well.

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Another question on top of the others I asked. Do you know of any Cantonese text-to-speech synthesizers?

For example, these are the first 2 dialogs from Teach Yourself Cantonese (Hugh Baker and Ho Pui-Kei). With a voice synthesizer, I would paste this text in a window or select the text and click a button to hear a voice reading it.

會面
早晨﹐王先生。
早晨﹐張小姐。你好嗎﹖
我好好。你呢﹖
好好。
你太太呢﹖
佢都好﹐有心。

噢﹐ 對唔住﹐貴姓呀﹖
我姓何﹐你係李小姐嗎﹖
唔係﹐我姓張。何先生﹐你係唔係美國人呀﹖
唔係﹐我係英國人﹐我賣美國車﹕美國車好靚﹐你要唔要呀﹖
唔要﹐唔要。美國車好貴﹕我要日本車。再見﹐何先生。
你唔要﹐李小姐要唔要呀﹖
李小姐都唔要。再見﹐再見。

Here's a link to Chinese Pen download page (stops working after 3 months of use).

http://www.simtel.net/product.download. ... p?id=78312

You can use this program (above) to draw simplified/traditional Chinese characters, read selected text aloud in Putonghua(in male or female voice). (You can set up both the speed of writing and reading). The quality of reading aloud may not be 100% but it's very close, if you struggle with tones.

Here's an online tool (Bell Labs Mandarin Text-to-Speech Synthesis)
http://www.bell-labs.com/project/tts/mandarin.html

I don't know any such tool for Cantonese or Japanese (there are probably some commercial expensive tools for Japanese) but such a tool for Cantonese probably doesn't exist.


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Actually, the tool exist, as I just found out but is not available to public(?). Some examples (3 sentences) of synthesized voice for Cantonese are in the middle of this page:

http://www.bell-labs.com/project/tts/archive.html

I am not impressed with the quality but it's a good start.

[Anatoli]

Can someone provide a working link to Ziguang Pinyin and some instructions on how to install it in English, please?

[jasicasth]

I know some site for the Cantonese.cantonese.ca This site offers information for learning colloquial Cantonese (Yue Chinese) as it is spoken by today's youth in Hong Kong and in overseas communities such as Canada, the United States and Australia.
World Connect

[Alando]

Can someone provide a working link to Ziguang Pinyin and some instructions on how to install it in English, please?

Hi
I have same question Can someone provide a working link to Ziguang Pinyin and some instructions on how to install it in English? need help.

[jonsl]

hey
this is a handy little tool for converting large slabs of chinese text to Jyutping (cantonese pinyin):
http://download.cnet.com/ChineseTransli ... ?tag=mncol

[jebee]

http://sites.google.com/site/cantonese8/


This site contains everything you need for Cantonese learning. It has Cantonese learning books, Cantonese-English dictionary, Cantonese pronunciation help and even resources for written Cantonese.
Enjoy!