by inkyoto | 2026-02-01 04:36:48+00:00
Given that linguistics does not have a concept of what makes a language «hard» or not, the language hardness classification is highly subjective and perceptional.

I have already commented on why I do not think that Cantonese tones are hard, so I will leave it at that – it is the first, oft repeated myth that is not based on facts.

> 2. the lack of learning materials relative to the number of speakers […]

On the subject of the availability of learning materials, there would have been a strong case for, e.g. Wu (Shanghainese), Min (Hokkien), Hakka etc – for all of which the learning materials virtually do not exist, and that is true.

With Cantonese, it is a remarkably different situation. My local bookshop has two large shelves stacked with Cantonese textbooks and dictionaries that suit a range of people from vastly different age groups – from toddlers starting to babble to serious advanced learners and anyone in between. More is available online, e.g. Virginia Yip's Routledge series, which includes a comprehensive book on the Cantonese grammar of rarely seen quality and coverage, Robert Bauer and Victor Mair's «ABC Cantonese-English Comprehensive Dictionary», and many more. There are online resources, an open-source, cross-platform «Jyut Dictionary», Google and Apple support the Cantonese keyboard etc.

If their printed versions are not easily locally available, they can be purchased as Kindle books as well.

Granted, Mandarin surpasses Cantonese in terms of the quantity of learning materials, and that is a dry fact.

> […] the confusion between written Chinese and written Cantonese […]

Many languages have quirks or come with a wealth of idiosyncrasies when it comes to how the language is spoken and written down. Burmese, Thai, and Tibetan, for example, are written according to extremely archaic pronunciation rules to the point that spoken and written languages have to be learned separately.

Written Cantonese has existed since at least the Ming dynasty[0][1], but the reasons why there are two distinct forms are entirely different as they go back to replacing Classical Chinese, which had become incomprehensible to anyone in the late 19th century without years of dedicated study, with a modern standard written standard based on northern Chinese varieties.

> […] (and also the general lack of the latter).

This is the second often repeated myth. Many Cantonese speakers believe that Cantonese can only be spoken but not written down, which is patently false – if a language has a writing system, it can be written down with it. When pressed with question «why do you think so», there is typically no answer or «because we have been told so». 口語粵語好容易用漢字寫低，就好似書面粵語咁。 There is a real issue of some native Cantonese words not having dedicated Chinese characters for them, but it is more of a philosophical disgreement between the academics rather than an insurmountable problem.

So, in reality – at least in Hong Kong – since formal literacy has long meant competence in Standard Written Chinese, not in a full Cantonese-written system, schools and institutions tend to penalise written vernacular Cantonese forms in formal contexts – entirely for non-linguistic reasons as explained in [2].

To sum it up, I do not find any of the counterarguments to be compelling, persuasive or supported by linguistic facts which would make Cantonese a «hard» language.

[0] https://www.fe.hku.hk/clear/doc/WC%20and%20Implications%20fo... – «The story of written Cantonese begins in the Ming dynasty with texts printed in woodblock print books called wooden fish books (木魚書)»

[1] https://cantoneseforfamilies.com/cantonese-vernacular-and-fo...

[2] https://hkupress.hku.hk/image/catalog/pdf-preview/9789622097...