Love it love it love it!!! Next time when I visit Karen's parents I can try my Cantonese. Hooray!!!

What do you call the feeling that when your translator goes to toilet for a minute and leaves you alone to a nice friend with a big smile on his face but doesn't speak your language? That miniute feels like forever!

Fine... :( :P

People got to see the opportunities in southern China. And for a lot of Manderine speakers, it's a bonus to be able to speak Cantonese. Also, the majority of overseas Chinese are Cantonese.

How about Taiwanese podcasts? Wasn't it once the official language of Southern China? Also there are a significantly larger number of speakers of Taiwanese than Cantonese. Not to mention we could all start rapping along with Machi Didi. Oh wait that last one is probably a reason not to.

How about Karen?

It'd be nice to know a few phrases in Cantonese.

By Taiwanese you guys mean like hokkien/闽南话? Or like the effeminate southern accents they use? :P

@Roxane,

We'll try our best if we do 泡泡粤语(Popup Cantonese) :). Although myself is freaked out by the nine tones of it.

Can you share your experience in studing Cantonese with us here? Some friends of mine said they learned Cantonese by listening to the pop music...

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

Cantonese podcasts would be great and tremendously useful to many people learnong the language.

Popup Cantonese sounds like an awesome idea! Its sounds like a great way to learn Cantonese the easy way, learning intermediate is too much text not enough listening in my point of view.

@Ayan - we're interested and are looking at a few options. will keep you guys abreast of developments. our best way of doing this is really to support people who are already in other parts of China rather than setting up the recording facilities ourselves. If anyone knows of people who are already out there and interested in doing this sort of thing, please encourage them to get in touch.

Would love to see cantonese podcasts! Seem to be a real lack of material for upper intermediate > lower advanced levels.

Indeed! I lived in Guangdong for 11 months, and while my Mandarin improved (became useful), whenever anyone didn't want for me to understand the conversation, they would switch to Cantonese. Which I can sometimes decode, but more often not. I would like to hear the Cantonese lessons in Mandarin, personally, maybe with a sprinkling of English . . .

cool that you speak Cantonese. I really wish I did... :(

We're moving closer to something, although there are still issues with costs versus income. It looks as if we won't be able to set up a team in Hong Kong in the short term , but we may be able to do something from here in Beijing.

Cantonese Podcast - GREAT IDEA, saw an ad for a Cantonese app on Itunes, was disappointed it was only for the Iphone & not my Ipod. Im a beginning Cantonese learner interested in Cantonese lessons in English

@jason - we're still looking. give Echo a call if you're in Beijing and interested: 13581709309.

我很想学粤语， 但是听说粤语有九个声调， 我很担心---

Cantonese Podcast is a great idea - Im living in Hong Kong and trying to learn more Cantonese, but there is not a lot of material out there at the moment. Is it looking like you will go ahead with a Cantonese podcast?

I would be very interested in intermediate to advanced level Cantonese. Instructions with a mix of English and Mandarin would help reinforce Mandarin.

@pevinsghost,

really? Cantonese has 9 different tones. but it's really not so hard to learn.

personally, i can understand cantonese, just because i have watched very long korean TV series in cantonese. it's like magic! can you imagine, once you arrive in guangdong, you can understand them precisely?

if you can speak chinese, cantonese is not so hard. grammar is similar, words are the same, and tones have a rule to follow.

anyway, it's a chinese dialect.

加油！

@trevelyan,

哈哈哈，you don't know a lot more...

我也覺得泡泡中文應該開粵語版。粵語在美國、香港和加拿大是很常用的。現在沒有任何像泡泡中文這麼高質量的粵語播客，所以這對泡泡中文來說是個很好的機會。

再說，有些人覺得粵語有點難學，但是我想跟大家分享一些學習粵語的經驗。我一開始學習粵語也這麼覺得，但是開始學了才發現粵語並沒有我想像得那麼難學。所謂的“9”個聲調，實際上只有6個，因為第7、第8、第9聲跟第1、第3、第6聲發音一模一樣。另外，如果你會說普通話，廣東話真是學起來很容易。很多字或是發音一樣，或是有很容易學到的規律。粵語也有一個比較標準的寫法，而且很多漫畫、雜誌、網站（看過粵語的維基百科嗎？）都用這些粵語字。最後，粵語文化很豐富；有許多粵語電影、電視劇和歌曲，總可以幫你學習學習。

I also think that Popup Chinese should start a Cantonese version. Cantonese is very prevalent in America, Canada and Hong Kong, and because theres currently no high-quality podcast for Cantonese, this is quite an opportunity for Popup Chinese.

Also, some people think that Cantonese is very hard to learn but Id like to dispel some of those myths by sharing my own experiences in studying Cantonese. When I started studying Cantonese, I too thought that it would be extremely difficult, but I realized, almost as soon as I started learning the language, that this was not the case. First of all, regarding the fabled 9 tones of Cantonese, in actually therere only 6. Tones 7, 8, 9 are the same as 1, 3, 6, and you only get the 9 tones if you use the Classical Chinese counting system which distinguishes more than just tone. Also, if you know Mandarin, learning Cantonese is even easier. A lot of the words either sound exactly the same or have some simple rules that take you from the Mandarin sounds to the Cantonese ones. Cantonese (unlike Shanghaihua or Hangzhouhua) also has a very standardized and well-developed writing system and many comic books, magazines and websites all use these characters (have you checked out the Wikipedia in Cantonese?). Finally, Cantonese culture is extremely rich, and there are tonnes of Cantonese movies, TV shows and songs to help you learn.

Glad to see hands up for Cantonese podcasts. I'm sure the they're on the way.

喺边度啊~ Hai bin do ah... "Where (are they)...?"

One of my Cantonese speaking friends once joked that even if you are having a normal Cantonese conversation with a good friend, to an outsider it sounds like an argument. Would you concur Lanzi? :-)

I picked up a little Cantonese from a friend from Hong Kong many years ago. I'd be interested in seeing how PUC tackles teaching Cantonese.

@蓝大卫

I think to the untrained ear, regular mandarin can sound like a screaming match between two people. But I will agree with you that Cantonese is spoken at a very high decibel level. My girlfriend has parents and family from Shantou, Guangdong, and I always enjoy hearing stories about the raucous phone conversations between her Dad in the states, and Grandpa back in the homeland. But then again Shantouhua is a whole other beast in itself from what I hear.

Before I began learning Chinese, I was exposed to this culturally ignorant gem from SouthPark

The Chinese Mafia

@paglino9

Shantouhua(汕头话), aka Chaoshanhua（潮汕话）,and Kejiahua (客家话) both sound like Hokkien(闽南话) to me. They're fun to listen to. It's like hearing Cantonese with accents. That reminds me of the Brad Pitt character in The Inglorious Bastards. Do Tennessee people really speak like that?

The South Park impression on Chinglish is so not true. We do NOT say "shitty beef" or "shitty shrimp". I ‘sink' we say the ‘s’sound just fine!