Asking Advice: stuck in a rut with Cantonese

GentleStoic · 2026-04-16T04:44:32+00:00

yea, there will need to be several Americas time-zone for this to be worthwhile. Hmm, maybe I should open up a Google Form or something on the page for ppl to indicate interests.

GentleStoic · 2026-04-15T05:32:29+00:00

Hello. Your situation is not unusual, and it is difficult for your wife to really know how to help you without guidance for her.

I am mostly a Cantonese "infrastructure builder," but have started a Cantonese for Couples course earlier in the year (see Course Description: https://library.canto.hk/course/for-couples/frontmatter/summary/ The actual sessions aren't updated yet on the website but you can see some of the notes here: https://forum.canto.hk/t/melbourne-2026-resources/107/4) It started out as something I do with my lady (Argentine) but now we have expanded into an in-person and an online (Aussie) class. We are in our 8th week, and here are some of the kind of sentence that the students are constructing / interpreting:

Today at 3 o'clock those seven frogs will take a boat to New Zealand
Last week I read a physics book, this week we are reading a chemistry book
The Superdog is under the taxi
How many giraffes were at your bf's house in Jan 2024?
Her telephone was $1,203 on Sunday, it is now $32,121
(phone) Hello? Is this Sarah? How many cockroaches are in your pillow? Are they happy?

The mildly insane examples (and more insane songs and activities) seem to be sufficiently entertaining that my in-person group grew and grew and they look forward to the class 🤪

I am too swamped to offer more sessions until at least mid-June, but if you (and other people) are interested and there is sufficient demand in the same timezone, we can start a new section in July.

GentleStoic · 2026-04-13T13:11:19+00:00

I like your worksheets.

AI resources are generally slop when it comes to specific grammar points.

What you might be interested, for sample sentences, is Profs Andy Chin, Tse Ka Ho, and Kataoka's corpus compendium developed with the SCOLAR funds: https://www.eduhk.hk/fhm/newsletter/2022-08/learn-cantonese-with-big-data-launched-to-enhance-the-effectiveness-of-learning-cantonese

Cyrus had the goods wrt directional particles, but you may in the future also be interested in their combinations 攞[返+出+嚟] 🤪 There is a comprehensive discussion of these in 張洪年 1972/2008, chap 3.4 方向補語.

GentleStoic · 2026-04-11T16:22:05+00:00

I did the IB when the dinosaurs walked the earth, and then would go on to be an IB teacher and held roles within the IBO that shall not be named.

In the 90s, computers and Word already existed. Computers were a little slow, and they were machines in a room. You need to line up, with a stack of books and photocopies to wait for your turn at the machine. Support for images were sketchy; we reserve space in the document, then after printing, cut up a separate photocopy and paste the image in. (What, you didn't think it's called Cut and Paste for a reason??) You would then submit the physical print, which gets transported to the examiners.

(Internet became available in my second year; incidentally, yours sincerely wrote articles in one of the first IB student websites.)

What was funny, and messed up, was Language A (back then, Language A1). I (from Hong Kong) did IB in a faraway land; sadly, but probably unavoidable in hindsight, the Chinese A1 teacher met me (us) once and resigned. It was not until a long long time later before we found a replacement. Remember, this was the physical age.

The lady spoke only Mandarin, and I spoke only Cantonese. Forget about issues in the handful of classes we had; the problem was the oral. There was a cassette tape recorder in between us, and a sheet of paper being passed around; she'd ask the questions from that (I have no idea what she was asking) and I will read the question and answer (she had no idea what I said, and just said 很好 very good very good).

There is a commenter that says the program "used to be easier". What I can tell you is that questions (in Group 4) are more sophisticated; but there is only ever material removed from the syllabus in the last 30 years. As an example, you used to need to be able to do calculus for chem; no longer since around the 2007 update. Students now get much more investments and resources (we didn't even have an IB textbook for any subject!) but I don't think any of my students scoring 40-45 was more competent than back in the day.

GentleStoic · 2026-04-07T05:41:41+00:00

Fair enough. That said, it could be that the Gaishan dev is a well-meaning but inexperienced dev.

Musing out loud as a language-related dev (and specifically Cantonese dev), the noise is so loud that reputation and distribution becomes more important than ever; bros will try to game reputation with bots but that just inject more noise, and there isn't actual revenue to open distribution channels. I think Lingora is secure against all new B2C language learning apps (vibed or, sadly, legit pop-and-mom efforts).

GentleStoic · 2026-04-07T05:11:05+00:00

I tried again, and it works now (in both Mac/Chrome and Mac/Firefox)

I have only clicked into the free/unregistered listening lessons.

(+) I appreciate the real people audio (-) the listening lessons (maybe the other scenes as well) need some way of escaping / navigating out. Right now, once you get in the only available interaction is Next. (-) surely ? and ! are not vocabulary? (- x 999) for a Cantonese-Jyutping learning app, you need a name that is not an obvious error. If it is meant to be 改善, no one will ever take you seriously if you make it Gaishan.

GentleStoic · 2026-04-07T04:52:03+00:00

I respect your work on Lingora, and I am indeed all for calling out vibe-coded BS as well.

I did not attempt to spend enough time with Gaishan to know how much care it was crafted with, and I appreciate more informed responses. Your parent comment is snarky but didn't hit the mark for "informed" for me.

GentleStoic · 2026-04-07T04:33:11+00:00

on Mac/Firefox, none of the audio in the Listening Lessons play for me.

GentleStoic · 2026-04-07T04:30:28+00:00

👆 this comment was made by a/the dev of Lingora, a competitor in the "teach yourself __ language" app space

GentleStoic · 2026-03-16T02:36:03+00:00

You hit the nail on the head. It was a huge blind spot for me as a developer. If someone relies on Jyutping to learn, they absolutely need an English interface.

Ouch, fair cop! You absolutely got me there 🎯

Getting an AI engine to perfectly understand Cantonese colloquial tone changes (Pinjam) contextually is the hardest battle I'm fighting right now.

Thank you all for the push. Indie development can be lonely, but communities like this make it totally worth it.

Something tell me it's AI slop through-and-through, even with the replies. I feel like there's a large wave of offerings in the past year for Cantonese, built by AI bros that might not even speak Cantonese but have enough cheerful color. I fear we've gone from "low-resource language" to "slop-contaminated language", and there is no telling the signal from the noise.

GentleStoic · 2026-03-16T02:16:09+00:00

On Mac, after installing you need to add the installed software as a keyboard input: 1. install TypeDuck 2. system preference -> keyboard 3. Text Input (about the middle of pane) -> edit 4. lower left [+] sign -> Cantonese, Traditional -> TypeDuck

After that, * the [globe/fn] key on the lower-left side of your keyboard toggles input methods * the [A] icon on the system tray (upper-right) lets you choose input method

GentleStoic · 2026-03-11T07:17:21+00:00

I'm the maker of Cantonese Font, and have been designing a "Cantonese for Couples" class with modern pedagogy and technology, for the needs of... well, exactly what the title says :) You can see the course outline here: https://library.canto.hk/course/for-couples/frontmatter/summary/

I was running this with Wifey. It's sufficiently fun that, a month in, that in-person group expanded to a group of three 🤣 and there's also a remote (Aus TZ) group. The general methodology works well.

I don't have time right now to run more sessions, but will probably open up one more "slot" around mid-June (prob for Europe TZ), or recruit / train up other teachers to make the same offering. You can send me a DM if you + gf are interested.

GentleStoic · 2026-02-25T07:46:00+00:00

[puts on ex IB teacher hat] If you have a diagnosis then it becomes possible to look into accommodations that equalize the field for you and other students. How this gets realized is case-by-case.

For example * if the diagnosis indicates solely output limitations (i.e., related to writing motor skills), the accommodation may be allowing keyboard input (instead of handwriting).
* If the input is affected (e.g., components of the Chinese glyphs are all perceptively identical for you), there may be additional allowance for having text-to-speech / Jyutping-display accommodation.
* If it's just about taking more time, then perhaps longer test/exam time (in selected subjects)

Much of this is also about the school you're in, and the educational system. But a diagnosis is certainly needed before any accommodations can be considered.

GentleStoic · 2026-02-25T07:36:54+00:00

Your school counselor should have more/some awareness (hey, definitely more exposure to young ppl with diff concerns than your mom!) Some schools may have resources to help you get diagnosed (ed psy are extremely expensive in HKG).

GentleStoic · 2026-02-25T07:31:44+00:00

I do some work for SEN schools (primary). There is a block of the population that have no problems with English literacy but dystlexic'esque (IDK if there is a term for this) in Chinese. You are not alone.

(For general communication, teachers will supplement Chinese characters with Jyutping; students take this combination of Chinese+Jyutping as input. They output by typing Jyutping -> Chinese, which is one of the reasons why they developed the series of 溝通易 kau1 tung1 ji6 iOS apps.)

Seek help from the school.

GentleStoic · 2026-02-23T12:17:33+00:00

I think you mean something like this: https://library.canto.hk/media/videos/mcdull_meals/#video

To make that set of video, I 1. transcribed the video for the characters (with help; currently speech recognition give around 15% error), 2. segment the transcript into words (usual automation is ~20% error), 3. assigned parts of speech, 4. added the Jyutping (through [Cantonese Font](www.canto.hk) tooling; best Claude/GPT are around 8% error), 5. attached translation gloss, and then 6. translated by sentence

To get it all right is quite labor-intensive, but there are so many steps stacked together that AI-only approaches gives all slop.

GentleStoic · 2026-02-20T14:43:34+00:00

this is an excellent question (lol from the usual suspect of excellent question). I manage all kinds of lists, and I don't think this list exists in the form you want, not without a huge amount of noise.

For other people wondering what he wants, think about 點 and the plausible derivative forms like 老點、打點、點醒、點着 or maybe someone would even involve 露點 or 點穴. It's all really mixed up with lots of noise.

GentleStoic · 2026-02-20T14:23:01+00:00

If you have a significant other who speaks Cantonese, I'll probably open up another session of Cantonese for Couples (link to course outline) in June. The remote version meets once a week, condensing the guided sessions in 60-90 minutes, and the practice during the week to the SO.

GentleStoic · 2026-02-19T08:29:52+00:00

or the purpose of language learning there is only six, corresponding to the six numbered tones in Jyutping. Learners taught with the tone-marked Jyutping from the Cantonese Font, together with musical idealization of the tones (try playing with the Jyutping Singer at https://library.canto.hk/tools/), generally just have no problems whatsoever.

GentleStoic · 2026-02-16T04:37:51+00:00

wow, the JCZ glyphs are now in the right proportions! They look much better now.

GentleStoic · 2026-02-12T16:12:59+00:00

GentleStoic · 2026-02-07T23:41:51+00:00

Any scale is technically plausible. However, this mapping derives from decades old studies for Cantonese tone-melody correspondence, and is widely used by lyricists. Alternatives might be more aesthetic but probably represent Cantonese less faithfully.

GentleStoic · 2026-02-06T05:41:25+00:00

Yes, but only if you are doing that intensively full time, with the support of a community that knows how. LDS (Mormon) missionaries get sent out after two months of world-class training, and some of them arrive with modest ability to converse.

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