Lonely Planet Cantonese Phrasebook 3/E

Better than most beginner's guide. Very easy to understand and made very interesting. Believe it or not now I can find the context of conversations.

Mostly all the translated words are on the mark and in nice neat cantonese. Lonely planet has done a great job. Much better than the yale style because the cantonese part is broken into syllables and you don't have scratch your head too much about where the stress/intonation points go. Hamburger is "hon bo baau", museum "bok mat gwoon" It does take a small degree of guess work and a decent speaking knowledge of cantonese get it 100% right, but that's life. Also provides sample sentences for everyday actvities. Would be useful for learning colloquail terms and traveling. Of course if you're in Hong Kong you could just speak english... Lastly I also have the Periplus Pocket cantonese dictonary, it is just that a thin long dictionary and hardly "ideal for...travelers"

This was my first book on the long trek to learning Cantonese. The book provides a detailed food section, which will come in handy when dining with the girlfriend's family. Food seems to be of high importance with the Chinese culture, so it is good that this section is very well done.The problem I found was that the book does not use the widely accepted Yale romanization. I've been collecting all kinds of books for the last year, and Yale seems to be the most easily understood and most intuitive romanization technique that I've found.Overall, the book has a diverse collection of phrases and vocabulary. It is a good book to have in your Cantonese collection.

For a small little book, there is a ton of information. Useful and fun. Great value.

This phrase book has authentic cantonese characters. Cantonese is an oral language and they use a few special characters aside from the "chinese" characters. I have seen another phrase book which uses all "chinese" characters. If you literally read it in cantonese, the pronunciations are all wrong, but the meaning is the same. It is frustrating if you know a little cantonese, and want to know the cantonese characters. This book is good because of the cantonese characters and the correct pronunciations that go along with them. If you have no background in a language and want to learn never choose a phrase book. Go buy a textbook.