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The Journal of East Asian Language Educators July 2009 Book Review for Cantonese: a The book’s choices of examples (from films, Comprehensive Grammar by Stephen TV ads, sitcoms) highlight a crucial Matthews and Virginia Yip difference between this book and many other Cantonese language materials on the By Mark Bublitz market: it tells how Cantonese is spoken, not how it “should” be spoken. Many Cantonese This book has been of tremendous materials on the market (including the help for me in learning Cantonese. However, otherwise brilliant Pimsleur Cantonese) give others may find it difficult to use if they are rather archaic pronunciations for certain words. For example, Pimsleur presents the inexperienced at learning languages. This nd book is a reference grammar, not a language pronunciation of the 2 person textbook: there are no exercises in the book, and discussions about greetings and politeness are at the end rather than the beginning of the book. Despite this, the authors are clearly writing for the general reader here, rather than for linguists. The authors strive to use grammatical Courtesy of Matthews and Yip terminology familiar to pronoun as néih, whereas the vast majority the average English of speakers pronounce it as léih, and the pronunciation of the word for “house” as Courtesy of Amazon.com speaker, and the book is written in prose rather than linguistic ngūkkéi, whereas the vast majority of formalisms. Best of all, though, the book is speakers pronounce it as ūkkéi. Matthews filled with examples: many pages seem to be and Yip, on the other hand, give the 80% examples and 20% explanations. Each pronunciations actually used by most example in the book has three parts: A speakers in the majority of their examples, Cantonese sentence, word-for-word although they mention in the chapter called translation ignoring English grammar, and “Cantonese Speech Conventions” that néih an idiomatic English translation. The word- and ngūkkéi are sometimes used in formal for-word translations are extremely helpful situations. In the chapter on phonology, the for understanding the differences between authors also highlight pronunciations Cantonese and English. You could learn common among people under 30, such óh plenty of Cantonese from this book even if instead of ngóh for the first-person pronoun, you ignored explanations of grammar and and gok instead of gwok for the word just read the examples. “nation”. The Journal of East Asian Language Educators July 2009 Although the authors do try to write “The fact that some adjectives for a general, English-speaking audience, may be used as verbs, as in having some knowledge of Mandarin would make this book much more useful for you, fèih-jó ‘has become fatter’ is because the authors are always trying to hardly more remarkable than relate a particular construction in Cantonese the fact that English verbs such to an analogous construction in Mandarin. as run and cut may be used as You can see this phenomenon most clearly in the chapter on noun phrases, where the nouns, or that box or shell may authors equate the Cantonese possessive be used as verbs” particle ge with the Mandarin particle de. The authors also make note of the fact that The authors of this book do not try spook in formal contexts, Mandarin vocabulary out readers with claims that Cantonese is and grammar can substitute for native some sort of alien language that you can Cantonese vocabulary and grammar. For only learn by leaving behind every concept example, tāmùhn (from the Cantonese of grammar familiar to the English speaker, reading of the characters of Mandarin tāmen) may sometimes be used in news as do some authors of books on East Asian rd languages (e.g., Harold Gould Henderson, broadcasts as the 3 person pronoun instead Handbook of Japanese Grammar) and of the native Cantonese kéuihdeih. In similar American Indian languages (e.g. J. Richard contexts, the native Cantonese possessive Andrews, Introduction to Classical marker ge may be replaced by dīk, which is Nahuatl). Cantonese grammar, and the the Cantonese reading of the character for grammar of Chinese languages in general, is Mandarin de. remarkably similar to English grammar, and the authors make efforts to highlight these In brief, Cantonese: a similarities whenever possible. For example, Comprehensive Grammar is an outstanding in the chapter on parts of speech, the authors reference book, and those who have a concede that in Cantonese, adjectives are linguistic background and know some often used as if they were verbs. However, Mandarin can use it alone to learn they argue that English words can also be Cantonese. However, other learners would very flexible with regard to their part of do better to use it in conjunction with some speech, as when “swim” is used as a noun other Cantonese program, such as Simon (“take a swim”), or when “light” is used as a and Schuster’s Pimsleur Cantonese. verb (“light a candle”). Created by Mark Bublitz on July 6, 2009. .

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