Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar: Edition 2

Stephen Matthews · Virginia Yip

May 2013 · Routledge

About this ebook

Cantonese: A Comprehensive Grammar is a complete reference guide to Cantonese as spoken by native speakers in Hong Kong. It presents a fresh and accessible description of the language, concentrating on the real patterns of use in current Cantonese. This makes it the ideal reference source for all learners and users of Cantonese, irrespective of level, in schools, colleges, universities and adult classes of all types. Moreover, it will provide a lasting and reliable resource for all fluent speakers of the language.

The book is organized to promote a thorough understanding of Cantonese grammar. Arranged by both syntactic categories and language functions, the Grammar provides an in-depth treatment of structures and pays special attention to idiom and speech registers. Explanations are full, clear and free of jargon. An extensive index, numbered paragraphs and generous use of headings and cross-references provide readers with easy access to the information they require.

Features include:

Comprehensive pronunciation section

Full use of examples from films, advertising and authentic conversations

Cantonese-English parallels highlighted throughout the book

All examples given in characters as well as pinyin

Ratings and reviews

Great book. Very detailed, that makes me understand better how Cantonese is structured. It helps to understand the Chinese way of thinking as well. Unfortunately there are many mistakes, partly to a degree that it is not legible. The quality of the Chinese characters is bad as well, especially for someone who wants to learn Cantonese. It would be better to have the Chinese as text than as pictures. I would prefer Jyutping as romanisation. Without these drawbacks I would give 5 stars.

this is an extremely thorough examination of Cantonese grammar. It doesn't fall into prescriptivism either, instead examining the language as it actually spoken without judgement. It's precise and methodical, and it provides illustrative examples. I would rate this 5/5 stars without hesitation based on the content alone, however the typesetting is atrocious on this digital copy. The example texts, rather than truly being text, are actually embedded images, and they're extremely low res. This makes most of the honzi difficult to discern, and some of the more complicated honzi like 聲 are rendered borderline illegible. they also use Yale romanization which isn't my cup of tea. Unless you're a true linguistic nerd who wants something academic, you'll be better served by Basic Cantonese: Grammar and Workbook which doesn't have typesetting issues present here and has useful exercises as well.

About the author

Stephen Matthews