Spoken vs Written Cantonese
I've always wondered if I've chosen correctly, when I decided to teach Chinese via Cantonese (instead of Mandarin) with my children.
From a practical perspective (future job prospects, actual usefulness, and even just "ease" of learning/teaching Chinese literacy), Mandarin wins hands down across the board!
Trying to teach Chinese literacy via Cantonese is like playing the game in EXTRA HARD mode. How you write can be sooooo far off from how you say it. And there aren't widely used "phonetic systems" (like zhuyin and pinyin for Mandarin) to help with literacy.
(Yes, I know jyutping exists, but it's nearly impossible to find any children's books that actually have that)
But, I realize I sometimes don't give children the credit they deserve. Their brains are incredible little learning machines!
Today is the first time I witnessed my son (28mo) internalize what you write CAN be different from how we say it!
And he just accepted that as fact. There was no fancy explanation. That was just how things work, and he moved on. Which I thought was so interesting!
There I was, worrying about explaining the difference to him, and whether he would get confused. NEWWWP. He didn't even question it.
We've only ever used γηΉDγin spoken Cantonese, to describe his own daddy and other people's fathers. I've also always used γηΉDγwhen I read books with him.
The ONLY time he's been exposed to ηΈηΈ so far is through Sagebooks (which we're casually going through right now to learn characters). But he made the connection π
So if you were like me, wondering what to do about spoken vs written Cantonese... welp, kids are smart. They'll be fine. They'll get it π