Chatty Cantonese (粵語白白講)
A teacher and a student in real Cantonese conversation, with transcripts.
- LevelFor intermediate · For advanced
- PriceFree
- Made forFor learners
- Episodes here5 newest
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This episode features an interview with Dr. Zoe Wai-Man Lam, a lecturer in Cantonese at the University of British Columbia and the main instructor and curriculum advisor for the Cantonese Saturday School at the Mon Keang School in Vancouver’s historic Chinatown. Dr. Lam has a PhD in Linguistics from the University of British Columbia as well as both a masters and bachelors from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Our conversation focuses on Zoe’s experiences with teaching Cantonese within th...
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This episode features the conclusion of our conversation with Jennifer Feeley. Where in previous episodes we discussed specific Hong Kong literature that Jennifer has translated, here she shares some advice for anyone interested in getting into literary translation. We are also thrilled to announce that since taping this episode, the American Literary Translators’ Association has announced two emerging translator mentorships for Hong Kong literature, including one with Jennifer. We have inclu...
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This episode features the second portion of our conversation with the award-winning literary translator Jennifer Feeley. Where last time we learned about her journey to Cantonese and her work translating the poetry and prose of the Hong Kong author Xi Xi, this time we hear about her recent translation of the psychological thriller Tongueless, by Lau Yee-Wa. Set in a Hong Kong secondary school, it zeroes in on the pressure-cooker environment faced by contract teachers as they navigate the shif...
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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...
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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.
What it is
Forty-plus episodes of unscripted Cantonese conversation aimed at building listening, interleaved with English-language interviews with people in the global Cantonese world — linguists, literary translators, community-school teachers — and every episode links a transcript and vocabulary list. The transcripts are what make the Cantonese episodes usable at intermediate level. It stopped publishing in April 2025, so this is a complete free archive rather than a live show.
Episodes are played straight from the publisher's feed — nothing is hosted here, and the five newest are whatever the feed served when this page was last built. All Cantonese podcasts →