The first volume of Modern Cantonese aims to provide solid linguistic training to beginner Cantonese learners, highlighting cultural points with lively language scenarios.

This book provides daily conversational scenarios, such as introducing yourself and others, ordering food, going out with friends, shopping, planning a weekend, and talking about hobbies and leisure activities, as well as holidays and festivals. The scenarios cover daily settings with essential learning points, and on completion of the course, learners will be able to understand questions and statements in Cantonese conversations and will be able to discuss familiar everyday topics using simple sentences in Cantonese.

The book is ideal for students seeking to learn Cantonese as a second language at the novice level, based on ACTFL speaking proficiency guidelines. It may also be of interest to language teachers and linguists in the field of Cantonese as a second language.

Siu-lun Lee is Senior Lecturer 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 and language teaching pedagogy.