When a language teacher is to no avail, the next best thing is to try to teach yourself. Many people do it, but many of them fail. They get distracted, unmotivated, or simply just go about it the wrong way. So how do you ensure that your self-taught language lessons actually help you progress in the language you want to learn? You use time tested and true self-teaching materials, namely anything from the Teach Yourself series by McGraw-Hill. So when you want to start learning Cantonese by yourself, then there’s no other way to go then with Teach Yourself Cantonese.
"The book uses some Chinese characters, but in general it focuses on using Romanized Cantonese. If you do happen to learn a few characters in the process of learning how to speak and understand Cantonese, then good for you, but you shouldn’t count on it."
You have the option of buying an audio CD to accompany the book and this is something you really need to do if you’re going to teach yourself how to speak Cantonese. Without the audio CD, it’s almost impossible to ensure you understand and can mimic the sounds. With the audio CD, you’ll have a better chance of getting the sounds right. At the beginning of the book, there is a section on pronunciation and Romanization of Cantonese; you’d be wise to spend an ample amount of time studying this section.
Don’t be foolish and skip it just because it’s part of the “introduction;” spend a week or even ten days just learning pronunciation before you move on to the other chapters and you will set yourself up with a solid foundation on which to build your Cantonese skills. There are twenty-six lessons in the book; twenty-two of these cover useful topics and four of these are revision sections. The topical lessons cover very generic thing such as “eating out,” “travelling,” “driving,” and “family and friends.” Some of the more interesting topics that you won’t typically find in a beginner language book include “blowing hot and cold,” “education for life,” “speculation,” “law and order,” and “the office.” Each of the lessons are about 8-10 pages long and provide enough content to keep a student busy for a few days, possibly even a week if you like to repeat the work to help you retain the information. Each of the chapters includes two dialogues which are written out in the book and recorded on the audio CD.
At the end of the dialogue, the book has a dialogue/phrase list to help you learn the words that were presented. After that, there are a few comprehension questions; the answers are at the end of the book. Each chapter also includes relevant grammatical lessons to help you learn the ins and outs of Cantonese grammar. The book uses some Chinese characters, but in general it focuses on using Romanized Cantonese. If you do happen to learn a few characters in the process of learning how to speak and understand Cantonese, then good for you, but you shouldn’t count on it. This purpose of this book is to learn to speak and understand the language, and it does a great job at helping students do that without a teacher. If you want to focus on reading and writing, then you will most definitely need another book.
