Your next story will help express your feelings, make excuses, give gifts, wish someone a Happy Birthday and express gratitude
Why do we learn to speak? In the first story, Goldilocks used her communication to introduce herself, have her choice of food and drink and say when she needed the toilet. She did so politely and in a way that encouraged the Wild Pig family to engage with her.
If you can do that now in Cantonese:
好正啊
hou2 zeng3 aa1
Awesome!
I can guarantee that you will put a smile on the faces of native speakers around the globe (that's 80 million speakers worldwide!) and they will tell you:
你好叻
nei5 hou2 lek3
You are very clever!
It's that easy! If you are still struggling, don't worry, just listen again. Capture the music of Cantonese: sometimes go up and sometimes go down. Just like a child would, repeat the story until you own it
Once you have that, you will want to express yourself further and who better to help us than Snow White and her seven good friends: Clever Guy, Sneezy Guy, Happy Guy, Grumpy Guy, Sleepy Guy, Scaredy Guy and Silly Guy? Suddenly you will have a good range of adjectives and be able to say how you feel. As with the Goldilocks story, I have included questions to give you more fluency practice and build your confidence. Asking questions is one of the best ways to get a FREE Cantonese lesson - don't worry at first if you don't understand the answer, just use the magic word: 吓？ haa2 with a shrug of the shoulders and your native speaker will repeat themselves for you.
Click on the picture below to access the story:
Read along with the sound clips. Try to mimic the story teller.
Just like with the story of Goldilocks and the Three Wild Pigs, the Story of Snow White is designed for you to be able to take the text and use it in different situations.
To practice this, ask and answer questions (問題 man6 tai4) on the text - just click on the buttons below for the worksheets. If you have been tracing over the characters, you should be getting pretty proficient by now.
Again, I haven't provided the English translation as I would like to encourage you to make friends with native speakers and engage with them on your learning journey. You can always contact me if you get stuck, but the best way to learn is to make friends with a native speaker!