7 Ways to Speak Cantonese Fluently in 2 Months.

4 min readJun 13, 2023

The Best Way to Learn Cantonese.

We’ve already had two articles discussing “Is Cantonese easy to learn?”. Here are a few best ways to learn Cantonese more efficiently some Cantonese crash courses online even claim that can be fluent with native speakers within 2 months. following these 7 ways, learning Cantonese is so easy!

1) Focusing on Speaking Only.

Some Cantonese classes will teach both written Chinese and conversation, this is because they are both native speakers of the Cantonese language, they are just copying the way they read when they were children, but this method will make learning very difficult for non-native Cantonese speakers’ surroundings! First of all, we must know that English and Chinese are two completely different systems, and Cantonese is a tonal language, it is also totally different from writing Chinese characters. When a beginner needs to learn two different systems at the same time and use each other, translator and translator, it will be very difficult and troublesome for beginners.

Make it simple, please! Although Chinese calligraphy is beautiful, you don’t actually need to learn to write now, trust me! Your goal is simply to focus on learning how to speak. When you can communicate fluently in Cantonese, you will be able to learn to write Chinese easily!

2) Focusing on How to Pronounce Cantonese

The Cantonese Pinyin system-Jyutping is a Romanization system through which you can effectively self-learn the correct Cantonese pronunciation and distinguish the different meanings of different tones. Different from Yale’s Romanization system or Guangzhou's Romanization system, it effectively solves the problem of one spelling with multiple tones. and convenient application in the computer of Cantonese input. It may be a little tricky at the beginning of the study, It may take time to learn but I promise that it is definitely worth it. When you can handle the Jyutping, you have mastered 50% of how to speak Cantonese.

3) Learn the basic structure of Cantonese

Since you have paid an effort to overcome the Jyutping, you know how to pronounce Cantonese correctly, you have an idea of how the tone and sound work, and you can learn the basic Cantonese style sentence structures by practicing your speech with Cantonese people.

Don’t worry! The grammar of Cantonese is really simple, Cantonese does not distinguish between past, present, and future in verb tenses because it is not a tense language. In contrast to Romance languages, there is no gender in the language and no verb conjugation table to learn (woohoo). All it needs is practice to understand the framework, which is rather simple!

4) Learn new vocabulary and Cantonese phrases by writing them down

When you hear new Cantonese words and phrases that you don’t understand, try writing them down in romanization before copying them to a Cantonese speaker, and then through the web, native speakers will understand you even if you’re right or not. In this way, you can train your listening and speaking skills at the same time.

You can even take advantage of Google Translate’s voice typing feature to see the English translation directly, or you even may find many Cantonese translator apps online.

5) Memorize new Cantonese words and phrases

Once you double-check the correct Cantonese pronunciation and meaning of words with native speakers, you can remember them.

You can memorize new words by writing them down on a piece of paper as a list.

Cover all but the top vocabulary list, then move down the list by saying the words and meaning aloud, one at a time, until the last word in the list.

If at any point you cannot recall a word, start at the top and try again.

Assuming that you can memorize 10 words a day, you will know 300 words a month, which is enough for some simple applications. In 3 months, you will know 900 words, plus practice sentence structure, and you can communicate fluently with native Cantonese speakers!

6) Watch Cantonese Movies and Listen to Cantonese songs

Hong Kong’s film industry developed vigorously from the 1980s to the 2000s and is known as Oriental Hollywood. The internationally famous movie star Bruce Lee, Chow Yun-fat’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and Tony Leung’s “The Grandmaster”, these movies have won many international awards. These high-quality Cantonese movies are accompanied by English subtitles, so you can not only learn Cantonese for free but enjoy yourself. To learn native Cantonese, your can also drop notes of the new Cantonese words, phrases, or Cantonese slang.

In addition, Cantonese songs are also very pleasant, such as the songs of Leslie Cheung and the band Beyond, where there are Chinese people, and there are people to sing those Cantonese songs.