The Learning and Teaching of Cantonese as a Second Language

The Learning and Teaching of Cantonese as a Second Language brings together contributions on such issues as Cantonese textbooks, linguistic description, literacy and tone acquisition, supplemented by case studies from the Netherlands and Japan.

The learning and teaching of Cantonese as a second language is a subject of considerable interest in the international academic community, and the first international symposium on teaching Cantonese as a second language, held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in October 2019, brought together leading researchers in this field. This conference provided the inspiration for the current volume, The Learning and Teaching of Cantonese as a Second Language.

In the Hong Kong context, historically, the term ‘Cantonese’ refers to the language varieties of immigrants who came to the territory from various areas in Guangdong province, including Macau, Panyu, Taishan, Xinhui and Zhongshan. From the late nineteenth century onwards, their speech coalesced into the contemporary variety of Cantonese used in Hong Kong today. The term ‘Cantonese’ is also used to refer to the entire Yue subgroup of Chinese, which includes varieties of Cantonese spoken in southern China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore and among overseas Chinese in Australia, Europe and North America. In all, it is estimated that there are about 70 million Cantonese speakers in the world.

This volume is of direct relevance to educators, language teachers, linguists and all those concerned with the learning of Cantonese as a second language.

Siu-lun Lee is Senior Lecturer in the Yale-China Chinese Language Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has over 25 years of experience teaching Cantonese at the tertiary level. His research interests include applied linguistics, Cantonese studies, Chinese linguistics, sociolinguistics, language teaching pedagogy and second language learning. He is the author of the book series Modern Cantonese published by Routledge.