How a phonetic app can help you tone up your Cantonese skills
A part time inventor is helping to break down the barriers of daily communications between foreigners and locals in Hong Kong
One of the biggest hurdles for foreigners in Hong Kong is communicating with the locals. With words spelt out as Tsim Sha Tsui, it is no wonder they do not know how to correctly pronouncing it in a way taxi drivers would understand.
But, learning Cantonese is not as hard as you think, according to Dean Head, a language enthusiast. Despite it being a complex Chinese language, he believes those troubles can be tackled if the phonetic method is adopted.
This approach led to the idea for online app, Fonetic Cantonese, in 2006, which would enable the user to hear the correct pronunciation and denote the tones.
Head and his friend, Paulus Lee, spent around two years matching Cantonese words with the western phonetic system. With the help of 10 other linguistic professionals, the app became a reality.
“The process was very time intensive,” Head says. “I simplified the phonetic system that was taught in school and made it accurate to the pronunciation of the Cantonese words.
“We used a spreadsheet in the app development system and columns to input the Chinese characters, English explanations, phonetics, tone marks and the audio recording to break down all the words.”