Chatty Cantonese | 粵語白白‪講‬ Chatty Cantonese

In this episode we interview the award-winning literary translator Jennifer Feeley. Jennifer has helped introduce English-language readers around the world to a variety of works of Hong Kong poetry and fiction. She has been particularly prolific this year—her translation of Lau Yee-Wa’s novel Tongueless came out in June, and her translation of Xi Xi’s Mourning a Breast just came out this month. Our conversation with Jennifer is split into three parts, with this portion focusing on how she cam...

Measure words (also referred to as "classifiers" in linguistics, or 量詞/loeng6 ci4) appear in multiple languages, but they have some special functions in Cantonese. Today we begin to discuss what to watch out for when studying or teaching them, as well as some of the ways that their usage differs between Cantonese and Mandarin.

In this episode, we are joined by Israel, Kenny, and Samuel from the podcast seoi6 jin4 kwong4 soeng2. In that podcast, the trio uses Cantonese to discuss learning just about every other language in the world, and we highly recommend it to listeners of Chatty Cantonese. Another portion of our conversation appeared on the seoi6 jin4 kwong4 soeng2 feed back in January, so once you finish this episode, you might as well listen to the other part–you’ll find a link in the show notes. 以下呢一集係特備...

Born and raised in Canada, Allan Lau is a versatile musician, doing everything from orchestrating movie scores to crafting commercial theme tracks for multinational corporations. He is also a voice artist and bass singer, bringing to life video game characters and movie trailers.Duck Lau Cho Tak is an award-winning Hong Kong musician/composer actively engaged in various music scenes. He is also an experienced singer, having served as chorus member and performance director for numerous concert...

Welcome to Season 3 of Chatty Cantonese! We start things off with a double-interview with two notable figures from the world of Cantopop, Allan Lau and Duck Lau. In addition to talking about their own musical experiences, the pair explain some Cantopop history and how newbies can learn more about the genre and its connection with Hong Kong culture. Link to vocabulary and transcript

Inspired by a listener question, this episode addresses an issue all beginning Cantonese students face: in thanking someone, when should you use do1 ze6 (多謝) and when should you use m4 goi1 (唔該)? The underlying principle becomes clear with the help of a few hypothetical situations. Transcript and vocabulary