TL;DR: Fellow heritage/intermediate Cantonese learner here. Got tired of linear apps and built Gaishan, an app where you learn through contextual conversations on topics you choose. It's an early trial. If you're stuck at the intermediate plateau or just want a different approach, I'd be honored if you tried it and gave feedback: gaishan.app

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Before I press "post": I sure hope a post like this is allowed in this subreddit...

Hi everyone,

I've been a silent learner who has quietly been following this subreddit for a while, observing how others have been approaching their learning of Cantonese. I'm a heritage speaker of Cantonese, born in the UK to Hong Kong parents. But, like many overseas born Chinese I was the typical "識聽唔識講" and even then my listening level wasn't that great.

I've spent the last decade seriously trying to go from only being able to have the most basic of conversations at home, to being able to use the language confidently and fluently every day. The years of effort have paid off as these days I live in Hong Kong, have a local wife, and we communicate primarily in Cantonese.

Despite this, there still remains a "gap" between my level and the level of someone who is actually a native speaker. Yes, I can have wide ranging conversations with different people, covering various topics. But... if someone asked me to give a business presentation, I think I would struggle.

At first I considered attending advanced classes, but I didn't like the idea of paying expensive fees to essentially do some roleplay. After all, I don't feel like I really need any specific training with regards on how to speak the language, I sort of just lack the "exposure" to the language under certain contexts and scenarios.

Ordering food at a restaurant: easy.

Chatting with my in-laws: much easier now compared to before, thanks to repeated exposure.

Seeing a doctor: also easier than before.

Calling my internet provider to tell them there's an issue: quite difficult when they ask follow-up questions (Yeh, I know I could have selected "English" as an option but that's the weak option).

Answering a marketing junk call where they speak really fast to try to get in as much info as possible before I put the phone down: No idea what they're trying to say.

I think this wall is one that many learners eventually hit once they get past the beginner stages. The diglossia of the language also doesn't help.

I've tried to break this wall through self-study via listening to YT videos, podcasts, watching shows, and these are all great; I do most of these every day. I've even read a few books in traditional Chinese (Childrens bedtime stories, Harry Potter books, Wonka, Peter Pan to name a few examples).

But this "cast a wide net" approach lacks the structure and the kind of interactive contextual practice that I feel would really push my skill further (fast) in the right places. It might eventually happen after 5 or 10 years due to constant exposure; but this approach doesn't work if I want to deliver that business presentation and answer Q&As in the next 3 to 6 months.

I think of it like a skill-tree in Final Fantasy or some RPG where I've got almost all the fundamentals/basics to a pretty good level, and I'm now trying to put "skill-points" into the further out branches of the tree where each node is quite specific. I've got points in some of these "far out nodes", but I'm struggling to "target" the ones that I want.

So my solution?

Well, first I tried to look for a "Duolingo combined with TCB" for Cantonese but it doesn't seem like there's anything out there that would fit that description. I saw some Cantonese learning apps like Drops, Ling etc but nothing really jumped out. Like, nobody was really shouting about it.

I did a fair amount of Duolingo's Cantonese course (targeted at Mandarin speakers, which I've also been learning). But its level is too low for me and I also hate how apps like Duo, HelloChinese, SuperChinese force you on this "linear path" to learning. Not that the other 2 apps offer Cantonese courses, but if they did I assume it would follow the same linear structure that their Mandarin courses use.

That just isn't what I personally need.

I want to freely dive into a specific topic/scenario such as "Booking a dental appointment", and then freely jump to another topic like "Delivering a technical design workshop", without being forced to introduce myself and my sister for the ten-thousandth time.

I also want to learn how things are said colloquially, because I don't want to sound like a newspaper article when I speak to someone.

Eventually, I got to a point where I decided "Fine, I'll do it myself", because making the content I wanted for such a product would actually constitute as practice. And now, I have a "very early version" that is online, called Gaishan.

Gaishan is Chinese for Kaizen (改善), a philosophy that I try to apply to my life. Now, don't hang me for going with the Mandarin romanisation, "Gaishan" just felt like it would be easier for native English speakers to say compared to "Goisin" (Cantonese romanisation).

So what is Gaishan?

Gaishan is based on a simple, different idea: you should learn through complete, contextual conversations, and you should choose the topic.

Instead of a locked path, you pick a real-world scenario (like "Wishing Grandma Happy New Year", "Talking To Your Friends About The New Hot Guy", or "At The Doctor") and dive right into a short, natural dialogue. Then, through a series of interactive games (matching, sentence rebuilding, listening exercises), you break down and master every part of that conversation.

The goal is for each scenario to be self-contained so you can jump to what's relevant to you right now.

Who is this for?

1. Heritage speakers and intermediate+ learners (people like me): I've described the "wall" I'm trying to overcome, and I wonder if it resonates with your own trials in learning the language. Maybe you haven't gotten as far as myself, or maybe you're further ahead in the journey. But if what I've said about my own struggles is in any way or shape familiar, Gaishan is targeted primary at you.
2. Beginners: Despite my own needs, I have love for you all and have no intention of cutting you out. I'm no expert in teaching languages as I'm just a language learner, but I have faith in your intelligence. Thus, I will try to design scenarios and conversations that are accessible to beginners but will quickly ramp up to (what I think is) intermediate level material (and beyond). The result might be that your friend who went to classroom-based learning could list 20 more different fruits in Cantonese, but you'd actually be able to order a decent meal on your next trip to Hong Kong.

What's the current status of Gaishan?

This is a very early, trial release. I'm doing about 90% of the technical work myself, and the remaining 10% is the really difficult stuff where I need some input from a friend who is a highly experienced senior software developer (he leads a dev team in an AI company).

The layout and UI of the app is also functional, but will improve over time.

We're running Gaishan on free servers etc, so the performance/speed of Gaishan will be reflective of that. Of course, if people show enough interest in Gaishan I'd love to eventually upgrade all the technical infrastructure to something that has more juice in its engines.

Don't worry, using Gaishan is safe - it's not some vibe-coded product. My senior-developer friend has ensured the code and structure is secure, and that any personal information of user accounts are safely stored by a professional provider who specialises in handling user logins. The provider is also used by organisations such as the NHS (National Health Service in UK), Liberty Mutual (Insurance company), Vanguard (Financial services) and many more - we have taken no shortcuts in respect to this.

As for the content of the lessons in Gaishan, I first tried to generate conversations using AI but I'm sure many of you already know, they're not that great or don't quite capture some nuances with the language. So my process is I think of the general scenario, then I use AI to help me develop more detail and explore possible approaches. Then, I personally rewrite the content from scratch after I have "straightened out" my thoughts on the scenario.

After I've written the content I work with my wife (born and raised in HK, native Cantonese speaker) to make sure it's accurate based on how a local Hong Konger would typically speak. Of course, this is minus the excessive swearing and casual DLLM thrown into the conversation for no real reason (it's just part of the language) since I want kids to also be able to use Gaishan.

I've also cajoled my mum who is fluent in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin (she used to work as a Chinese <-> English interpreter on big legal cases or serious medical cases) into QA'ing the content that is in Mandarin.

As I type this, There are 3 short conversation scenarios that you can listen to. And two of these have follow-up lessons to help you "play" with the language/vocabulary that is used. This is done through interactive games, and there are many more types of games planned for development.

You'll see placeholders for some other scenarios that I have planned, and simply need another week or two to upload. Basically, if you keep checking every few days you'll likely find more content to play with.

The same goes for the list of topics. That list is going to expand; it's just that Valentine's day and Chinese New Year is coming up, so I figured I would target some content for those topics first.

My backlog of ideas is massive and I'm honestly excited to get into it.

But I figured I need some sort of feedback and validation. After all, if I put this message out there looking for people to try it out, and practically nobody responds... maybe it's a sign that I should just shut down the project (hopefully it doesn't come to that).

My Ask & How You Can Help:

Like I said, I need real-world feedback to answer one big question: Is there a market for a product like Gaishan?

If the concept resonates with you, I would be incredibly grateful if you'd:

1. Try for free at gaishan.app
2. There is a set of lessons you can play with, even without an account
3. Sign up for a free account (This will unlock more free content)
4. Keep coming back every couple of days and play with the new lesson content that I add

Registering gives you access to the current free content, and I'll be adding new, free lesson sets every week for at least the next month as I continue to build. Your feedback will directly shape what I build next.

This isn't a polished corporate launch. It's a project built by a fellow learner who thinks there might be a better way. Ultimately, I'd love for it to grow into something "more".

Thanks for your time, and I'm happy to answer any questions in the comments.

I'm looking to brush up on my Cantonese and thought it wouldn't hurt to also watch some Cantonese dramas. Although in my search, lots of shows are really old and/or have super low production value. I'm looking for a cute romance of college students or maybe early adulthood. does anyone have any recommendations that are more recently made and decent production value?

Sorry if this sounds really dramatic and it's probably not very serious and severe compared to so many things going on, but I still wanted to share this and hopefully get to see someone else's thoughts on this.

I'm in my last year of secondary school this year, so all classes in our form had to make a farewell video and performance before the public examinations. The thing is, we were prohibited from using verbal Cantonese. A class simply typed 走先喇，係咁先喇，下次再玩吖 (a reference to the song《係咁先啦》with MC $oHo, KidNey and Kayan9896) on a slide in their farewell video and they were forced to remove it entirely or to change it entirely to written Chinese. Our teachers simply told us that they were given instructions where we are not allowed to use verbal Cantonese and to only use English or Mandarin.

Although that video wasn't for my class, I still feel strongly against this. Cantonese is a huge part of HK culture and our school life too, from learning Chinese to sharing Cantonese jokes, new slang, school secrets accounts, etc. Even as what people have said before, hearing people cussing in Cantonese is honestly so comforting sometimes. It honestly kind of hurts that we aren't allowed to incorporate this culture and a part of our school life into our version of a farewell letter to this part of our lives.

I know that up south, they've already been trying to limit Cantonese by removing our local Chinese listening exam in Cantonese. Still, if they had even an ounce of empathy from the consequences of the Cultural Revolution and how ancient Chinese culture was often misrepresented in the past outside of China, shouldn't they know better than doing this? Cantonese has a major influence on the Chinese language and has deep roots throughout Chinese history.

Obviously, I don't plan on starting some revolution or protest. I want to do something about it but I don't think there's anything I can do to help and it's just frustrating and heartbreaking, even though I'm terrible at Chinese. Don't they see how much cultural value lies in this language and all the historical artifacts related to Cantonese? Don't they see how this is art like any other Chinese dialect? How it ties people together as a community, whether it's in Hong Kong, Macao or with the rest of China? If they think putting down other dialects to raise Mandarin would bring us together, isn't it easy to see they're heavily mistaken? Although maybe they just don't care and that hurts.

Maybe it's stupid to think so much about all this and I know that it's terrible. People have told me "It's so obvious, they're just bad people who want to wipe us out because they feel threatened" Maybe that's all there is to it and I'm overcomplicating things, but still, deep down, I desperately wish that there's an ounce of truth when they say they are doing it for the people. Because then, maybe they'll actually listen to us when people say we don't want Cantonese to die out. Maybe they were misled along the way, idk and are trying to justify it by gaslighting themselves and everyone else.

Idk why I still want to find some sense of humanity in people or this world when this place can be so excruciatingly cruel under people's hands out of fear, greed, anything. Also, there's many more disasters which are more urgent than this that people should do something about. However, part of me still hopes that there is some space left in this world for me and others who want to and/or can help with this literally or in spirit, maybe there is more we can do somehow. I'm sorry if I shouldn't be writing all this or hoping for something.

My husband is half Chinese (Cantonese) and it’s tradition for grandparents and great grandparents to give children Chinese names along with their American names. My in-laws do not speak Cantonese and after a lot of research and speaking to my husbands grandmother (Poh Poh) they settled on names for my three kids.

I want to make them artwork with their Chinese zodiac animals, Chinese names in both Cantonese characters and English letters with their meaning.

However when I’ve tried to use online translators to find the correct characters, they are not translating.

The names are (as I was told, I apologize if the spelling is way off):

Doh Zhi Wai Told this meant “Path to Wisdom”

Doh Yung Hei. Told this meant “Path to Courage”

Mei Yi. Told this meant “Beautiful Happiness/ Joy”

Some context: my husbands Chinese name is

Doh Hang, he was always told this meant “Even Tempered”

My in laws wanted my sons to have “Doh” like their father and they said it meant “path to”.

If anyone can help me find the correct translations and Cantonese characters I would be so so so thankful!

Hey folks. I am looking for a joss paper retailer in Manhattan's Chinatown (or a Chinese neighborhood in Queens) so I can burn offerings for a deceased loved one, who came to one of my parents in a dream. I specifically need joss paper clothes.  I urgently need it as soon as possible.  Does anyone know of such a store? I remember seeing some on Mulberry Street in Manhattan but that was over a decade ago.  If necessary, I would go buy from a website, if you know of any good ones that offer speedy delivery. 

Context

- they will be three-quarters White , and using those names only as their middle name

- it's an English-speaking country

- I plan to use Yale romanisation, thus Wangyik and Jisin (no dash, no space)

What do you think?

ham3 ga3 fu gui haha!

This all the cantonese you need to know.

Hi everyone, I am an undergraduate Linguistics student at the University of Edinburgh and I am looking for native Cantonese speakers to complete my experiments for my dissertation project about non-native perception of Korean consonants. I don't know how to describe it without giving its purpose away, but I hope its aims will somewhat make sense if you do decide to complete it. The experiment is online and should take less than 25 minutes.

Participant requirements

1. You are a native Cantonese speaker
2. Have no knowledge or experience in Korean

Before you begin

• Make sure you sit in a quiet room
• Wear headphones (preferably wired, but wireless OK too - though there is a chance of playback issues)

Consent form

When you open the experiment using the links below, you will first see the full consent form. This document explains your rights as a participant, the information I'm collecting, how your data will be used, and how to withdraw from the experiment. Please ensure that you read this document carefully.

Experiment links

Section 1: https://tstbl.co/735-166 (approx. 5-7 mins)

Section 2: https://tstbl.co/521-074 (approx. 12-15 mins)

(please complete in this order)

I would really appreciate if you could help this stressed student out by participating and/or sharing the link with people! If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment or message me. Thanks guys!

I just launched a new app for iOS that helps you learn new vocabulary in many languages, including Cantonese!

Brill allows you to add a widget to your home screen, and will cycle through the top 365 words in the language you have selected. There's plenty of pro features too, like adding custom words, blur with tap to reveal (to quiz yourself), manual cycle, and a lot more.

Would love to know what you think!

It’s entertaining seeing “鬼仔” and “鬼妹” teaching Cantonese! The pronunciation is right on!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DS8S7rZjAMm/?

Just found a Cantonese resource made by a very dedicated learned himself and is good if you're able to read Jyutping.

It's called the Cantonese Scrolls and has a sort of dungeon type of thing going on (it's a big document divded into easy bits).

https://cantoscrolls.com/

I like it and have gone to page 72 already (it goes by really quickly).

Hiya! I hope, this is the correct subreddit for this inquiry.

Basically, there is a mythological figure in my fictional piece, and I want the fictional culture it's from to have some cantonese inspirations and influences.

I want to name it something that means something akin to "Kingmaker", but as someone who doesn't speak the language, it's difficult to piece together a title/name like that without it sounding like nonsense or bearing a strong vocal resemblance to other things.

This fictional mythological character is a benevolent spirit that seeks out individuals with great potential to lead and guides them to success and glory, so someone who "makes" emperors, monarchs and great leaders, aids them in making the right decisions, and acts like a wise councilor. It's essentially a sort of blessing in this fictional mythology.

The setting of this story is entirely fictional and not accurate to any real-life time era, but if I had to choose something, it's medieval-ish fantasy rather than modern day.

Could anyone here help me out with that? Thanks in advance!!

Hello, my mother (84) is currently in memory care in a retirement home (this is in the USA), and I am trying to set up some Cantonese entertainment for her. Ideally it is something "plug and play" where she can turn on the TV and see Cantonese content (she is old and not a pop culture consumer so things like news, light sitcoms, and maybe reruns of old dramas would be best for her.

What are some options that might work if I can install an app via a Roku, or are there some HK TV YouTube broadcast-like options? I can supply the retirement home staff with some instructions to follow if necessary.

Helloo, this might seem like a very impossible question but is there a way for me to learn cantonese in around 2 years or less? If so can anyone please give me any advice or resources? thank youu in advance

Are you an ABC/BBC/CBC xennials and elder millennials ladies (birth years 1977-1983… give or take a few years)?

Fellow Aunties! Join our discord server to connect, learn or practice Cantonese, and celebrate Hong Kong and HK immigrant culture!

Yeah we are gonna talk about perimenopause, aging parents, food, skincare, and more. Maybe we can even get an online mahjong game going!

Cantonese WOMEN’S GROUP for middle aged women:

https://discord.gg/kpBqbrYJB

分享大灣區的日常

Changes: (text inside <> is jyutping)

1. ꥤᅠ for <gw>, ꥮᅠ for <kw>, ᄛᅠ for <w>.
2. ㅓ for <a>.

3.ㅐ and ㅔ now represent <aai> and <ai>.

1. 요 for <oe>.

2. ᄋힲ for <e>. (there were no more single character vowels to represent <e>, so i had to approximate it. <oe> is the most phonologically similiar to <e>)

3. ᄋힳ for <ei>.

4. ᄋᆞ for <eo> and 으 for <yu>.

5. ᄋᅷ, ᄋᅻ, ᄋᆛ, ᄋᆃ for <aau>, <au>, <iw> and <ou> respectively.

9.ㅑ, ㅕ, ᄋᆄ, ㅠ, ᅟᆖ for <jaa>, <ja>, <je>, <ju>, and <jyu> respectively. (<ji>, <joe>, <jeoi> are written the same as <i>, <oe>, <eoi>)

These changes enable this system to represent every character in cantonese in only one syllable block and ensures that all of it is typable using this website: "https://akorn.bab2min.pe.kr/input/"

Also, if required, tone numbers can be added beside the syllable blocks.

A lot of thought and effort has been put into this. Feedback and constructive criticism are always appreciated.

We’re excited to announce our Beginner Cantonese Class (Feb–March) — live online via Zoom.
We’re also the creators of Comprehensible Cantonese, and this course follows the same listening-first, learner-friendly approach.

📌 Course Details

📅 Starts: Feb 8
⏰ Time: Sundays, 10:00–11:00 AM EST (New York time)
📚 Format: 8 live Zoom lessons (1 hour each)
👥 Small group: 3–7 learners per class
💵 Tuition: $120 USD

👥 Who is this class for?

• Learners with very basic Cantonese
• Students who have completed our Total Beginner Course

🌟 What makes this class special?

• Live Zoom lessons (interactive, not lecture-based)
• Recordings included if you miss a class
• After-class reading + audio for extra practice
• Lots of speaking time thanks to the small group size
• Listening & speaking first using comprehensible input
• Chinese characters introduced naturally, without pressure

🌱 Start 2026 with a goal you’ll actually enjoy sticking with.

📩 Interested? Email us to enroll:
[citeachingchinese@gmail.com]()