Cantonese Dictionaries?

[tomgerman822]

Can anyone recommend a good Cantonese<->English dictionary? Furthermore, are there any Cantonese readers out there? Thanks

[Lboo]

I have the same questions. I've been going through Mandarin readers and looking up unfamliar words in "The Right Word in Cantonese" (Kwan Choi Wah, Commercial Press), but that's more of a survival dictionary with some good lists of vocab in the back, but limited entries in the dictionary itself.

Cantonese readers (intermediate and above, for me)--glossed with definititions and pronunciation--would be great. Better English - Cantonese (and Cantonese - English, for that matter) dictionary would be helpful, too.

Any suggestions?

[Guest Yau]

I didn't see any comprehensive dictionary for cantonese so far, but there's finally one.

The dictionary here is complied voluntarily by dozens of cantonese natives and learners. There's no guarantee for the correctness of every entry (are they any faultless dictionary?), but you can see they're eager to make an update and correction frequently.

http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/scripts/wordsearch.php

[Altair]

I have a copy of A Pocket Dictionary of Cantonese, by Roy T. Cowles, first printed in 1914. I find the romanization quite strange, but there seems to be quite a bit of vocabulary for a dictionary of this type and of this vintage. If you are not daunted by unusual transliterations and have nothing else, I would still recommend this as a cheap reference book. Please realize, however, that despite the frequent reprintings (as late as the 1980's, perhaps?), the vocabulary is probably quite dated.

Another choice would be Lonely Planet's Cantonese Phrase Book by Kam Y Lau. It has quite a lot of situational vocabulary, including items on mathematics, camping, Feng Shui, and traveling with a family. As an example, they list seven items of a "Cantonese breadfast": 點心; 油炸鬼,油條;炒麵;腸粉;蝦腸;牛腸;粥;牛肉粥;燒餅;飽;豆漿.

This book would be quite useful to a beginner who likes this method of study. The dictionary portion of the book is, however, a little sparse and would be of limited use as a stand-alone reference book

[tomgerman822]

Hmm. So basically there aren't any good dictionaries out there for Cantonese? I find that pretty incredible.

As for the online dictionary, it seems impossible to use for Cantonese->English, since you'd have to know the reading of the character to type it in if you were entering it from anywhere besides a computer (i.e from books or tv).

I suppose they don't make these dictionaries because there are no english speakers learning cantonese (except me).

[Quest]

tomgerman, when Cantonese write, they write in formal Chinese (i.e. Mandarin). Everyday Cantonese words and phrases haven't been standardized or formalized. Many Cantonese themselves don't even know how to write out what they say in speech. Cantonese and Mandarin share the majority of their vocabulary, so other than the few everyday words that you can pick up from a "Teach yourself Cantonese" book, a standard chinese-english dictionary would work pretty well. It would be 90% redundant to compile a comprehensive Cantonese->English dictionary.

There are, of course, handbooks for Cantonese specific words that work sort of like a dictionary... I haven't used any though since I am Cantonese myself. These handbooks however, are usually for speakers of Mandarin.

[tomgerman822]

I understand how the Cantonese write. Even though they may write "Mandarin" characters, they don't think of them in terms of Mandarin readings. I guess what I'm looking for is a dictionary that gives Cantonese readings... I still understand that Cantonese has unique character compounds etc.

Since I don't live in Hong Kong, reading would be pretty much the only way for me to learn new words. And the only way to read would be a dictionary which shows the Cantonese pronunciation of compounds or solitary characters, and their meanings.

[Claw]

This book may be adequate for your needs:

http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/7536123507/

It uses simplified characters though (whereas almost everything in HK is traditional), and uses a weird form of romanization. At the very least it will help you with the Cantonese pronunciation of each character, in addition to Cantonese specific characters, plus give you some compound words in which they're used.

[tomgerman822]

Cool, thanks Claw.