How to Learn Mandarin as a Cantonese Speaker ft. CantoMando

If you want to learn Mandarin Chinese through your Cantonese, check out the Canto to Mando Blueprint here: www.thecmbluep...
Special Guest
Sheldon Ho / sheldonhoho
CantoMando / cantomando
/ cantomando
Featuring
Jessica / jessicaxlin
Wes / thewesleychan
Benson / bensonq
Edited by
Michelle H / homeofthehoney
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[@bensonq]

We're still finding Sheldon's teaching materials days after filming this episode.

[@CantoDramaClub]

Sheldon's a great teacher! I'm part of the course right now and he definitely makes the learning process WAY more fun than the traditional Saturday School classrooms... When I was younger, I went to Saturday school every week for 8 years and the only thing I came away with were notebooks full of doodles 🤣

[@infradebbie]

oh god this brings back memories LOL I dreaded saturdays as a kid

[@CantoDramaClub]

@@infradebbie absolutely brutal 😂

[@DD-hb9gr]

this is so cool!! Cross-linguistic research helping language learning is amazing 💜

[@Kay-ji3wr]

Wow sheldon a whole mandarin teacher now!👏👏👏 love the collab!

[@Emily-9005]

I am a (kinda) fluent canto speaker and I learned Mandarin just by watching dramas and variety shows, I didn’t even know about majority of the stuff Sheldon taught. The more I watched shows the more it became easier to understand, when I talk to myself sometimes before it’d just be English then the more I watched it naturally turned into Mandarin😂

[@bryansl0587]

It's okay Wes. I don't know either. But as an engineer, I appreciate the mapping a lot. I also like the flashcards, but that's more personal learning style.

[@xoxjelloxox]

I like the stats lol

[@boredallday1]

As a canto speaker that took a semester of mando in uni, this is actually super helpful!! I’ve attempted to learn to read in canto but most resources are mandarin based and don’t provide canto pin yin, ig it’s back to learning mando now! 🤓💪

[@CantoMando]

Canto speakers can and should be learning both at the same time! 😊 It's really intuitive as long as you know what you're doing 👍

[@tymanung6382]

There are some older textbooks that use alphabetized texts 1) Spoken Cantonese. 3 vol. s by Parker Huang. Yale U. Press 2) ? Cantonese.by Foreign Service Language Institute, FSL, 2 vol.s 3) etc. ? Both are often for sale on line. Juk, nei hou wanhei!!!

[@Willxdiana]

jyutping

[@egee1010]

So cool. Learned a lot. Always love collab with CantoMando! Also like Wes who can speak Canto and trying to pick up Mando

[@杰克逊迈克尔]

hi 你好

[@ryanchau2236]

Benson is gaginang!?!? I can confirm that any cheat codes to languages that you have up your sleeve are really cool. And that goes for stumbling into words that are similar between Korean, Japanese, and Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, Teochew) as well.

[@tymanung6382]

All those, except Mandarin, use pre 1500s pronunciations. like --k. --p. --t at times glottal stop, + --m syllable end consonants. Mandarin and Xiang dialect of Hunan since 1500 drastically changed their pronunciation compared to all those others---- but WHY ?!

[@speechless05]

wow that was so fascinating. As a Cantonese speaker whose been trying to learn Mandarin, this was so insightful

[@Popstar16]

I wish I had this a few years earlier! I went to Taiwan to study Mandarin so I could learn how to understand/speak Mandarin and read Traditional Chinese. (Shoutout to the CantoMando guys they helped motivate me to go do it) It was all worth it, my Cantonese background helped me learn faster and appreciate Cantonese more. There are a lot of things that don’t express themselves the same in Mandarin than in Cantonese. I may not be perfect in both but I can say I’m “fluent” in Chinese now :)

[@celine5]

I love the editing style change once the lesson started! reminded me of Asian variety shows 😄 Great job, Michelle!!

[@windsluvr1]

I love hearing Wes' canto and Sheldon is so good at teaching!!!! 👏👏👏 making Canadians proud!

[@hartsung]

Fun fact, in Shandong province in Northeast China, people speak grammatically similar to English in their daily conversations.

[@exquisiteintricacy]

This is amazing! I'm mindblown about the mapping, this is so helpful as someone who grew up speaking Cantonese and is currently learning to speak Mandarin 👍

[@maryannetaglienti1068]

I think this is great! I’ve actually been learning mandarin because i have a couple patients that don’t speak English so I took it upon myself to learn. I think people feel intimidated by learning languages, but I find the more I practice with people who speak the language and I’m happy when they’re willing to correct me if I make a mistake. When I came across this video. It actually helped me a lot so thanks.

[@jenayabonner1737]

As an intermediate Canto speaker, I think this is awesome!

[@_jesa]

i think many mando speakers wanna learn canto so it would be cool if the course also can go both ways

[@Kentalot]

Unfortunately, the way Mandarin evolved, it has much less sounds than Cantonese, so the mapping doesn't work as well because you end up with one to many mapping. Same with tones. Obviously there's four (or five) tones on Mandarin but six (or nine) tones in Cantonese so you will end up with one to many mapping as well. Therefore the mapping system doesn't work nearly as well (if at all). I speak both and I originally spoke Cantonese and I intuitively learned the mapping of sounds (mapping of tones is new to me, but definitely interesting).

[@unsugoi]

wes was SWEATING and i RELATE. Cantomando vids inspired me to learn mando and improve canto despite being subpar in speaking and never going to chinese school and it's crossing my wires so hard. GOOD JOB WES!!

[@justixn1835]

I can’t believe Benson is gaginang omg! Would totally love to see an episode of him speaking teo chew 🥰

[@chandrew38]

As someone who speaks only a little bit of both Cantonese and Mandarin, this is actually super helpful

[@VlogsJake]

What I learned from this video is that my ADHD and dyslexia definitely don't let me learn. If you want them to pay attention, you have to pay attention too. Lunch break room has carpet, and I couldn't stop looking at Sheldon still.

[@surelyslim]

Something you also learn growing up is we also have unique pronunciation for the interchangeable characters. For example "watch", the mandarin "kan"... I believe sounds closer to "horn" in Cantonese. We use "tai" way more, but I've notice it more in formal speech or writing. The more obvious one is "ta" (he/she/it) is not a sound available in Mandarin.

[@stawbewii]

Super useful! Sheldon is a great teacher, have been a fan of CantoMando for years

[@Andesu]

There are actual differences between Cantonese and Mandarin that would need to be accounted for, even for sentence structure. Mapping will for sure get you to an intermediate level, but like learning any language, exposure and practice will get you to fluency. That is really why someone like Sheldon was able to speak Mandarin.

[@arlentan]

Great to see CantoMando on here again! Hoping for more guest features in the coming eps

[@jayf4612]

That was a fantastic video. Great system! While learning Mandarin about ten years back, I had picked up on some of the nuances described here. Think that's great that Sheldon created a systematic course of learning for us more versed in speaking Cantonese.

[@avolovo]

My family is from Guangdong and mainly speak Taishanese/Toisanese at home. I can understand a bit of Cantonese from having grown up around it for a while, but definitely can’t speak it. I was able to understand the Cantonese they were speaking in this video. If anyone who speaks Toisanese took the course , please let me know how it was!

[@kellyy9582]

AHH omg i speak taishanese too!!

[@tymanung6382]

Sidney Lau of HK writes dialect teaching books---- several on provincial Cantonese 1 + ? on Toisan subdialect..His books are often sold on line.

[@CantoMando]

Just want to mention I just noticed this comment but we have a couple Taishanese speakers in the community and they've had great experiences with improving their Cantonese too!

[@cantobritt]

This was so fun! I’d watch more of Wes learning Mandarin through Cantonese 😎

[@DaseAhrinia]

As somebody who's Teo chew, born and raised in australia, it would be amazing to see similar mapping into cantonese or mando, from teo chew or other dialects. I can understand cantonese when its spoken to me, but its difficult to make sentences since i dont have this sorta mapping in my mind.

[@PhilipLy]

wow this is so helpful!

[@socan345]

hearing sheldon teach mandarin, all i can hear echoing on loop in my head is "so what i'm gonna tell you today is yoU aLREaDy kNOw cantonese!" 😂😂

[@arlentan]

was just gonna comment this! Throwback to the OG canto to mando blueprint where Sheldon's #1 lesson was Canto sentence structure = Mando sentence structure 😂

[@mxiuting]

Yay! Didn’t know Benson speaks Chiu chow !

[@bennyvee88]

"Canto" and "Mando" are also both Spanish words. CANTO means "I sing." MANDO means "I'm in charge." ;-)

[@tsubasangel]

WOW! So proud of sheldon and wes did great! :) Sheldon is such a great teacher!

[@l3eex10n9]

Yo Wes, your family is from Guangzhou? My Fiancée is Chinese and her family speaks Cantonese. They're also from Guangzhou! I was invited to visit Guangzhou with them in 2019 and the experience was very nice. I couldn't get enough of the Canton Tower because it's so beautiful! I miss the food so bad.

[@Klam121]

Benson is teochew? A fellow gaginang!

[@Calida]

What he's doing is what Linguistics is! 👏👏👏

[@freemankuo3309]

希望Wes有一天能看得懂這個句子uwu

[@ariel3725]

Language with tones add another layer of difficulty, not to mention the sentence structure. However, once you get the idea, it becomes easier to understand. I studied a bit of Thai, which has a lesser number of tones than Mandarin, and I thought the sentence structure was odd at first, especially coming from an English sentence structure. Also, the type of tones used somewhat becomes like context clues when the sentence is formed.

[@SmileyStarz]

Great to see Sheldon back!

[@kevinliu6011]

huge fan of canto mando and wong fu

[@kcreate9253]

OMGG finally someone who speaks teochew 😂😂

[@R_L_1369]

I know right? Wish there was a Hokkien speaker too!!!

[@lcc726]

Sheldon!

[@angelawang3428]

Wow! Good job, Sheldon!! 🙂

[@amkgvideos]

HHH, i had Wes's same experience, when i took Korean class. I took it in university( intro to korean) and the other koreans were just super fluent *easy A* and I was there like the only actual newbie. :(

[@findyourvoiceasia]

Thank you for helping with my learning.

[@JeannieOng]

WAIT BENSON, TEOCHEW/CHIUCHOW?!

[@sandyl6633]

Such a fun episode for me!

[@pipsplace9072]

So cool!!

[@butterflyet]

this was amazing!!!!

[@mov744]

Any recommendations for someone wanting to learn Mandarin with no Canto or Mando experience? I want to surprise a friend in Taiwan by speaking or communicating in Chinese. Any tips help! :)

[@henryhuang7553]

Oh my god, you guys were eating together without barriers

[@collegethrifter2840]

I went to Chinese (Canto) school for a few years. Didn’t learn a thing. Workbooks and homework were in Chinese, parents didn’t have time to teach me and I can’t figure it out myself because I can’t read it. Pointless, but I am fluent in Canto.

[@ynjtrng]

Wow this was so cool!

[@Reginalee-k3x]

Me tooo I live in Macau too

[@Osmanthussoul143]

Wow learned a lot

[@kayejaye4125]

Kinda like learning from Chamorro to Spanish...yes I had to do that. They are similar too. 😊

[@skr0794]

The edit in this video🤣🤣🤣

[@bu2fulFantasy]

Elephants are known to have incredible memory; tis why I think canva used an elephant for remember 😌

[@machoboy95]

Funny...I learned mando....but my parents bothe speak canto to each other...so through time...I picked up quite a bit....I can understand most canto...but only speak a litttle

[@jaimie64]

I am no longer fluent in Cantonese. I lost some of the language since moving away from home. But I can understand and somewhat speak it.. but I can't read or write other than my name, numbers, and a few words (thanks to Japanese Kanji)

[@deanab-se5op]

My KZbin crushes 😮

[@chefstereo]

Had anyone trying to do the reverse of your course. Fluent in Mando and try to learn Canto ?

[@CantoMando]

We have one student in the course who is using it in reverse! The course is not designed to be used that way, but I can totally see how it can work both ways. They seem to be having a pretty good experience so far 👍

[@coni3538]

Just learned my Cantonese is worse than I thought. I've always put time first.

[@donu568]

me too

[@rbsayshi]

番茄醬牛腩麵不吃辣 these are the 9 tones of Cantonese

[@donnguyen2517]

I need a viet to mando one lol 😆

[@bluishblow]

me, a portuguese speaker hearing all this 🤯🤯🤯 the tonal factor is so interesting!

[@tymanung6382]

Cantonese speakers in Macau (Ou.mun in.Cantonese,. Aomen in Mandarin. were occupied by Portugal for centuries. Ums poem falar, o Portugues, Euro. Nao esta, sorprendente.

[@kianeching9152]

I am from Hk but my mandarin is like really bad,but my English is really really really good

[@ronnnnie]

wow i wish mandarin is taught this way in hong kong. although learning mandarin is like learning a new language for us Cantonese speaker, there are a lot of similarities that I did just learned mandarin through watching tv. is there another way around for mandarin speaker to learn Cantonese since cantonese is a dying language that needs more people to learn it.

[@bryansl0587]

I'm sad because I don't know either language so I can't use this 😭

[@yalazha]

I need mando > cantonese 😭For those of us who suck at our native tongue but had to go to Mandarin school.

[@tracywu589]

As someone with the Cantonese of a 5 year old, this is very interesting.

[@duckymomo7935]

Elephants have good memories

[@ilai7893]

Lol Sheldon with the 懒 swag, hardly a word for a lazy person to write

[@loot6]

Wow why am I watching them eating dinner.

[@kyoko703]

The struggle of the diaspora is real.

[@kristinat0rz]

Does Cantonese use 礼拜 a lot for week? I'm a Mandarin learner and we've only ever used 星期 or 周

[@grammarnazi12]

Yup! I think 禮拜 is the most common in canto. 星期 also works. I rarely hear 周 used, although I think people would still understand you.

[@kristinat0rz]

@@grammarnazi12 well to be fair i only hear 周 in spoken, never really see it written. But interesting to know! Thanks for the info

[@ilai7893]

周 isn't really Cantonese. It's kind of the Mando equivalent where 星期 and 礼拜 are both used in Canto

[@katyb2793]

So what's more common in mandarin? 星期 or 礼拜? I only learnt 星期 but I haven't studied a huge amount yet.

[@kristinat0rz]

@@katyb2793 星期 is more common in mainland Mandarin, I can't speak for Mandarin spoken on Taiwan.

[@sookguttilla3979]

i like to know how i can get some information on this course, i tried the link and tells me to speak to someone. I want get info first before getting started. I speak cantonese and want to learn mandarin

[@CantoMando]

Hey so we are doing more over the call stuff now just because we want to make sure that your chinese level is a good fit, and also just to be sure that we can actually help. Speaking to our team doesn't lock you into anything, and it's just a way to see if or how we can help. If you're open to that, just check the link in the description!

[@ttv.x34nng80]

Hi

[@wawawho18_adventures]

not gonna lie i just change the tone on some canto word and hope it mandarin...rofl

[@yinfa3129]

What if you speak mando but wanna learn canto😭

[@Kentalot]

Much harder, unfortunately (mapping is not reliable most of the time, unlike canto to mando). But definitely possible. My Taiwanese wife learned from watching lots of HK dramas and practicing with me (native Cantonese speaker).

[@SS-th7kr]

the approach is a bit strange. I learned proper Cantonese grammatical structure in Cantonese Chinese School which is equivalent to Mandarin. After going through that, the everyday language in Cantonese are like slangs.

[@tymanung6382]

But Cantonese and other dialects have many dialect use words that are old Mandarin words. now largely obsolete on.most, of China. like tai. to see or read. sik, to eat or food. yam to drink or a drink. etc.

[@SS-th7kr]

@@tymanung6382 I'm not a professional in Cantonese but I have read through hundreds of text in Mandarin and Cantonese, poetries, and subtitles in dramas in both Mandarin and Cantonese. From my knowledge, the word 睇 is not used in formal grammatical text but appears in phone text messages and daily words. To see is written differently in formal text. You will usually see 看/见 in formal text. To drink is 饮 which appears in Mandarin words. Mandarin prefers the word 喝 (for verbs) and this is the word that is usually used in Cantonese formal grammar. Cantonese language prefer 饮 in speech.

[@Kentalot]

​​@@SS-th7kr actually, that's not entirely accurate. Written Cantonese is not formal Cantonese. It is Mandarin written down and then read using Cantonese pronunciation. However, being the official written language and the first one to be standardized, and the fact that before Hong Kong became an important cultural place, written Mandarin was the only way educated people wrote, written Mandarin has an air of formality and educated status, but it definitely is not formal Cantonese. No one speaks in written Mandarin. Using your examples, no real Cantonese speakers ever use 喝 in any setting, formal or not. It is only used if you are writing standardized Mandarin, which is what is taught in schools even in Hong Kong. Also, the Tynan ung is correct that words like 飲 and probably even 食 are actually the formal words used in ancient texts. They just aren't used in that way in Mandarin anymore so standard written Mandarin uses 喝 and 吃, which is what is taught as the written language in Cantonese schools, but it is not Cantonese (well, 吃 is used in toishanese so it is Cantonese but you get the picture).

[@SS-th7kr]

@@Kentalot based on what I know ancient text is more closely aligned with Cantonese. A lot of classic poems can be closely associated with written Cantonese. Their choice of words and what words existed can be a reference. kzbin.info/www/bejne/bIeokHiMpc1snLc being the official written language and the first one to be standardized

[@Kentalot]

@@SS-th7kr no, we are not in agreement that it is only slang. It is colloquial. There are a lot of slang and Mandarin has a lot of slang as well. However if you speak using the characters written in Mandarin, you do not sound weird because it is still accepted as colloquial as well. That's the whole point. Most written Chinese was exclusively ancient Chinese before Mandarin was chosen as the main language and standardized and characters were made up and borrowed in order to write down Mandarin speech. Ancient written Chinese was like Latin in the west. No one actually spoke ancient Chinese but many countries used it as their written language including China. There was no formal way to write any normal Chinese speech down, not even Mandarin. Then Mandarin was standardized and a written language for Mandarin colloquial speech was created. This wasn't necessarily formal speech. That didn't happen for Cantonese for a long time until Hong Kong started to do it much later. So written Chinese before that was Mandarin Chinese for all Chinese languages and colloquial speech for languages other than Mandarin basically didn't have a standard written language. That doesn't mean those languages are all slang and none were formal, that just meant their normal speech including formal speech didn't have a standard writing system. Characters like 睇 is ancient I think, though not necessarily written that way. Anyway, not being ancient doesn't mean it's slang either. If it's not Mandarin and not ancient, that doesn't mean it's not formal. For example, does Mandarin only have formal words? Of course not. Many Mandarin characters were made up or co opted for their sounds and replaced their ancient meaning. Like no Cantonese speakers say 這 because that's a Mandarin word but not from ancient Chinese. Your example of 見 is common in Mandarin and Cantonese and ancient Chinese and in all forms of writing. So that's a bad example as if because it is used in Mandarin it makes it formal. Rather it is used in colloquial speech in practically all Chinese languages. Things like 的 and 在 are also shared in Cantonese and Mandarin, just that Mandarin uses it a lot more and in more contexts but using Cantonese basically only use it in very limited contexts and if a Cantonese speaker used it in all the places it is used in Mandarin just like the written Mandarin, then you'd sound weird and not sound formal. I hope you get the difference. Finally, 渴 is not 喝. As you noted it's a different radical and a different meaning. 渴 Means thirsty for both Mandarin and Cantonese. 渴 And 喝 have different meanings in Mandarin too. So again, a bad example. My original point still stands. No Cantonese says 喝。

[@BeautifulCookingDay]

Lol

[@harukaidouismyhusbando1104]

Sheldon's so 🥵

[@bradcha5413]

of course Chinese would have math in it

[@jamorant7132]

W

[@Ethan-zo8tv]

Honestly this is kinda sad to watch. You can probably guess from my name that im Cantonese and ouch Wes is kinda making us look bad. Some of us can naturally speak Mandarin as well!

[@therainbwolantern6842]

So cool!!