Using Pleco to learn Cantonese

DougHK

Member
For the past three months I have been using Pleco on my iPhone to learn Cantonese. Despite the fact this Chinese app is predominantly aimed at learning Mandarin, I find its Cantonese capability to be very good. And even though the Outlier Linguistics add-on is in Mandarin, I still use this source to help me understand the traditional characters, as the Cantonese sounds and romanisation are easily accessed. I accept that Cantonese is not the focus of Pleco, and is not the long-term future of the Chinese language. However it would be nice if there was access to (graded) readings using Cantonese characters.

I am wondering if there are others using Pleco to learn Cantonese, and if so, what is their experience and/or advice?
 

Shun

状元
Hi Doug,

I'm not far along yet in my Cantonese learning, but I have also used Pleco's detailed Cantonese dictionaries. Would you like to share which study material you are using? I've recently started with this one, which has nice and extensive audio recordings for its Kindle version:

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What confused me somewhat are the different romanizations. The above book uses "a version of the Yale system", which clearly differs somewhat from Pleco's (probably standard) Yale. Does your book use the same romanization system as Pleco?

I also got these books on Kindle, which seem to be of good quality, as well, but the first one lacks Hanzi:

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I'd also love to hear others' advice.

Cheers,

Shun
 

Shun

状元
Thanks! That looks like a classic. I like what I see from the example pages. I can get them from my library.
 
Last edited:

pdwalker

状元
Thanks! That looks like a classic. I like what I see from the example pages. I can get them from my library.

It was used by the HK government to teach Cantonese to civil servants, I believe. Quite comprehensive, but the language may be a little dated now.

They used to be found in many of the book stores in HK.

The romanization system is a little different than the standard ones, so be warned. I’ve been using it for so long now that all the standard ones seem weird to me although i can usually puzzle them out.
 

Shun

状元
Thanks a lot for the info! I'll see if I can learn Pleco's Yale romanization side by side with Lau's romanization.
 

Shun

状元
Hugh Baker's Complete Cantonese and Sidney Lau's Elementary Cantonese complement each other well.

I can highly recommend Complete Cantonese to anyone interested in Cantonese; the voice recordings are excellent, the Kindle version sells at an incredibly low price of $4.46, and it's quite a big book. For the voice recordings, you need a mobile device. They don't play in the Mac/PC Kindle reader app.
 
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