Cantonese Classes Sydney
Australasian Centre of Chinese Studies (ACCS)

Cantonese for Beginners
This is a unique course specially designed and developed for people wanting to speak or understand a few words of Cantonese for both serious and fun reasons.
The objectives of this program are :-
1. To give an appreciation of the Cantonese spoken language.
2. To learn a few essential words of the Cantonese spoken language.

Introduction 
Cantonese is spoken in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macau and the surrounding region. Cantonese is only a spoken dialect. Its writing is the same as Mandarin. However its pronunciation is very different from Mandarin and cannot be used interchangeably with each other. Historically, Cantonese has had some English influences. Pronunciation of some words are exactly as in English, for example, “ball”. Cantonese is also a tonal language like Mandarin, but it has 9 tones instead.

Like the majority of Asian languages, Cantonese is a high context form of spoken language - this means that people understand each other not only from the uttered word but also the "context" in which the sound was uttered. On the other hand, English is a low context language, implying that the words spoken are very specific in its meaning. So, with this high context nature of Cantonese, it is not so important to learn to say your Cantonese words very accurately - Cantonese speakers will understand you even if you mispronounce your words.