So far, this is the course everybody should buy when first being introduced to Cantonese. It is, indeed, a complete Cantonese course that will teach you how to read, understand, and speak Cantonese Chinese up to an intermediate level, although not write but writing the characters correctly is something else entirely that can quickly be learned another time. I came to this book with an intermediate level of Mandarin so it made this course much easier to me, although still challenging to me in how the content progresses later on throughout each lesson. It comes with two audio CDs that will read you the dialogues with native-Cantonese speakers of the language.
Strong points of this course
-Audio with dialogue in characters and Yale, really helps you to learn Cantonese
-Audio is clear
-True written Cantonese, what I mean by this is the fact that the book uses characters in the way colloquial Cantonese is spoken as opposed to standard Chinese which is the Putonghua (Mandarin) Chinese standard.
-Lots of content and the book does a good job of knowing what kind of questions you are going to have.
There are just a few problems I had with this course in which I will point out.
-Not enough audio and not much repeating the dialogues; To me, it is very helpful if I hear words and phrases constantly repeated like the Pimsleur courses.
- Too fast; I feel it advances too fast for me with all the vocabulary being thrown at you by the second part of the first lesson. So it is important to truly master each lesson before even thinking of moving on to the next where more vocabulary and grammar will be thrown at you.
-No English translation on dialogues on later lessons; I don't mind this although just a head-up for everyone who really feel they need a translation of the dialogues.
This course overall, is very good and I like it! I recommend it to everyone starting to learn Gwongdongwaa :) One of the best courses out there for learning this beautiful language.
- Series: TY: Language Guides
- Paperback: 464 pages
- Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 2 edition (February 8, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0071750592
- ISBN-13: 978-0071750592
- Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.6 x 9.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
- Customer Reviews: 12 customer reviews
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,295,077 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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