Ten characters you can already read
The oldest characters still look like what they mean, so you can guess them before anyone tells you. These ten also turn up as the pieces inside larger characters.
Cantonese lessons
Learn to read Cantonese.
We’ll start with characters you can read from their shape, then the pieces they are built from, then the words a short story runs on.
Then you can try two stories and see how much you follow.
13 core chapters · 3 optional references · Free, at your own pace
Starting from scratch
Start with ten characters you can already read, then the pieces behind them, the words the stories use, and the little words that tell you who did what. The cards below let you try a greeting or look at the characters first.
Start with the characters →Try saying helloA first hello
Read a character
A first hello
in Cantonese.
Start with hello, then read a sentence in the order you already expect. The pronunciation and English are there to help.
Try the lesson A reading-first approachRead a character
from its shape.
The oldest characters still look like what they mean. Guess ten of them, and you’ll meet the same shapes again inside bigger characters.
See how the characters workChapter 1 of 16 · Explore the Cantonese path
Start here · Chapter 1 of 16
How these lessons work
See how the Cantonese, the pronunciation and the English fit together, and why this path asks you to recognise characters rather than sound every one of them out.
≈ 2 min of reading · Practise at your own pace
What’s in this chapter
- This path starts from no Cantonese and ends with a short story whose pronunciation and English begin hidden.
- You decode ten real characters in the very next section, before any explanation of how characters work.
- The books are in written Cantonese in Traditional characters, as Hong Kong writes it — not Mandarin.
- The pronunciation guide is Jyutping, with a tone number 1–6 on every syllable.
- Three sections are reference tables. Open them when something blocks you and walk past them otherwise.
This is short preparation for reading a book, not a complete course. Cantonese asks something different of a beginner than French or Spanish do: the characters do not spell out their sound, so you cannot sound out a word you have never seen. What you can do — quickly, and this is the whole plan — is learn to recognise the pieces a character is built from, learn the sixty-odd characters a small story actually runs on, and learn the handful of little words that tell you who did what.
cat
貓
maau1
The large text is the Cantonese. maau1 is the pronunciation guide, and the number is the tone. The English is the meaning. At checkpoints, the last two stay hidden until you choose to reveal them.
How to use a checkpoint
Look at the Cantonese first. Then reveal.
- 貓
One character, one syllable, one word. Its left side is an animal marker.
Show answer +Hide answer −
貓maau1 “cat”. Say “maau” on a high, level pitch.
The chapters
What do you want to work on?
If you’re starting from scratch, follow the chapters in order. Otherwise, pick the bit you need. You can skip the reference pages and come back to them.
Six tones: why the pitch of a word matters
Pitch is part of a Cantonese word, the way a vowel is, and six pitches give six different words. For reading this is a heads-up: the character already tells you which word it is.
1 chapter in this part
Read a sentence in the order you expect
Cantonese puts the doer first, the doing word next and the done-to last, and nothing changes shape. Say hello, then meet the ten small words that mark a book as Cantonese.
The words a fable is made of
Fewer than thirty words carry almost every sentence in a short animal story: the creatures and places, the describing words, and the six joining words that hold a paragraph together.
The doing words a story runs on
Seventeen verbs carry almost every action in the closing stories, and none of them ever change shape. Learn where the place sits, and how a second verb says how the first turned out.
Read your first story with help
Read about a cat and a dog meeting on the road, one line at a time. The pronunciation and English stay visible while you practise finding where an unspaced line comes apart.
Come back to these chapters whenever you need them.All Cantonese chapters ↗