Cantonese is tricky. Spoken Cantonese (sometimes called colloquial or conversational Cantonese) differs from the standard written Chinese you typically see in print.

For example, if we want to say “I’m eating right now” in Cantonese, we would say:

But, what you see in published writing (and what’s taught in school!) will look more like this:

You will never hear this latter sentence spoken in real life – at least unironically – and you historically almost never see the former sentence in a children’s book.

Fun fact: Mandarin and Cantonese, despite both being “Chinese”, are not mutually intelligible – which is a fancy word for saying if you put a Mandarin speaker and Cantonese speaker in the same room to chat, they actually wouldn’t understand each other.

But, since they share the same written language, if these same Cantonese and Mandarin speakers were to write a letter to each other, they can communicate just fine. Kind of wild, right?

The dilemma: What we typically see vs. What community wants to learn

When our project began, there was a lot of soul-searching, thanks to this very unique characteristic of spoken Cantonese not matching standard written Chinese.

On one hand, we could do what is typically done, which is what people naturally expect of “books written for Cantonese speakers” …

• We could print standard written Chinese because that’s how Chinese books are, and how they’ve always been. After all, learning to read this standard Chinese is necessary for overall Chinese literacy.
• In this world, we still add value by providing Jyutping inline, and have the Reading Wand narrate the written text using the Cantonese pronunciations, so readers can learn how to pronounce the standard Chinese text “the Cantonese way”.
• Fun fact: While inline Mandarin pinyin is common in children’s books for Mandarin speakers, Cantonese Jyutping is still very rare in traditionally published children’s books.

But we also heard from our community that what they meant by “passing on Cantonese” to their kids was primarily about speaking the language.

• Since many in our community (those interested in a Habbi Habbi Cantonese series) cannot read standard Chinese text, even if there were inline Jyutping to help them pronounce the written Chinese text in books, reading these books out loud as-is, still feels like foreign language.
• We kept hearing people wishing for more books written in Cantonese as it is spoken – even if that is not what is standard, done normally, or usually seen in children’s books. This way, someone reading the story out loud doesn't have to do the mental gymnastics of translating standard written Chinese into conversational Cantonese on the fly (which by the way, is what every fluent adult Cantonese speaker does when reading aloud to kids. By default, Cantonese adults almost never read a Chinese book, as written, to a child if they want the child to understand and enjoy the story)

We asked our community…

There is no “right” answer, but we want to be intentional with our choices.

We reached out to the community with a survey, which was followed up with a live virtual town hall to hear the subtle nuances and vibrant discussion that is sometimes hard to capture in a form.

The exact slides below were used to help clarify and tease out all the available options (including some really wild-looking ones, just to make sure we’re not missing anything!)

Each box in the grid above represents something we can print onto the page, with green and orange representing Chinese characters (standard Chinese and conversational Cantonese, respectively); and blue and yellow representing their corresponding Jyutping romanizations in latin script.

With this, we arrived at the following table of 6 options, along with an initial assessment of their pros and cons:

Notable options:

• Option 1: This is the simplest option of printing just standard written Chinese. It is what is usually done in traditionally published Chinese books.
• Option 2: This takes the previous option and adds Jyutping, which helps non-fluent readers pronounce the Chinese characters in Cantonese, but the sentences still won't match what is spoken.
• Option 4: This is conceptually appealing because it “has it all” – both conversational Cantonese text and formal written Chinese
• Option 5: This option prints conversational Cantonese text only

What about the Reading Wand audio?

We also separately thought about the available audio options. After all, the Reading Wand (which narrates the text) is an integral part of the Habbi Habbi experience.

Habbi Habbi books historically have 3 modes of narration (Target, English, Bilingual). We considered the following 6 different audio options to fill those 3 “slots”:

Notable options:

• Option A: Narrates colloquial Cantonese, which better mimics everyday speech
• Option B: Narrates standard written Chinese, but uses Cantonese pronunciation of the character
• Option F: Narrates standard written Chinese, but uses Mandarin pronunciation of the characters (yes – we also considered adding Mandarin too!)

We considered option F, because folks sometimes ask “Do I have to purchase both Cantonese & Mandarin separately? Or are they available in the same book?”

So in the early explorations, we wondered whether it would be extra efficient and provide ✨ultimate optionality✨ – to combine Mandarin and Cantonese into the same book, and offer both narrations (as different “modes”).

After our discussion in our virtual Town Hall, we eliminated this option. The feedback was that it would be confusing because:

1. The written text (and corresponding romanization) can only match just one of either the Cantonese or Mandarin audio; OR
2. There would be multiple lines of printed Chinese text, which would be very confusing to the reader

You can see that we cast a very, very wide net when exploring possible directions, and were not afraid to break out of the current format if it meant creating a better and more useful experience for our Cantonese families.

Where we landed & the principles behind the Habbi Habbi Cantonese series

After hearing from the community, and had many people weigh in on the all the possible options, we ultimately chose to write in conversational Cantonese (粵文) for the Cantonese translation of the Habbi Habbi books.

Initially, this felt too radical. However, after many conversations with the community, as well as exploring the direction of new Cantonese resources (e.g. certain comic books, Ham Baang Laang), writing in conversational Cantonese emerged as an option that the community wanted most, and it was also getting more traction in the recent years.

Here is some of the thinking that guided us towards this decision:

Designing for young kids means speaking comes first

• We are designing these books for young children
• Unlike adults learning a second language, young kids who are learning their first language(s) follow a natural progression of learning to listen → to speak → to read → to write
• If our goal is to help little readers learn Cantonese, it is crucial for them to have a good command of the spoken language first
• To "know" Cantonese is being able to listen and speak it
• In order for little readers to learn the spoken language, what they hear from the Reading Wand has to be the spoken language as it is used in everyday life – not just a Cantonese narration of the formal written language
• We want little readers to mimic what they hear, and be able to immediately use it in their daily lives

Habbi Habbi’s unique Reading Wand means audio must match written text

• Habbi Habbi books are unique in that they can be paired with a magic Reading Wand
• The Reading Wand reads the text out loud when you interact with the page. This extra audio element makes the experience of using these books quite a bit different from a standard Chinese children’s book.
• We believe it is important that audio from the Reading Wand match the printed text, as this correspondence helps develop (eventual) literacy skills by reinforcing that each printed character produces exactly one syllable, and that there is a 1-to-1 match between what is heard and what is written
• If we want the Reading Wand to narrate conversational Cantonese, then it follows that the written text should also be in conversational Cantonese to maintain that 1-to-1 match

Effective design eliminated having both conversational & formal together

• Indeed, why not include both spoken Cantonese and written Chinese on the same page then, and try to get “the best of both worlds”?
• We go back to our first principle of designing for a young child. We want things to be approachable for the child who is just developing language skills. Doubling the amount of text on the page (and corresponding Jyutping!) looked very overwhelming
• A child who is using these books independently wouldn’t know nor understand the difference between the spoken vs written text on the page. They are all just Chinese characters – they will try to mimic it all!
• Moreover, while the spoken and written language are different, there is still overlap, which would result in a lot of repeated words on the page if we were to print both the conversational and formal written language
• For those reasons, we opted to only include one set of Chinese text in the main content of the book – conversational Cantonese

How we still incorporated standard written Chinese

• That said, we fully understand the importance of building skills in reading standard written Chinese for Chinese literacy
• So, we decided to include reference tables at the back of each book that list the standard written Chinese “translations” for the corresponding conversational Cantonese that appeared in the book (if they are different)
• Budding readers (and curious caregivers!) who are ready to venture into the world standard written Chinese, can start familiarising themselves with it, without having this more “advanced” text distracting readers from the main content of the book
• It is obviously not a replacement for proper instruction in standard written Chinese, but we hope that it can be a small stepping stone for those who want to explore further into this beautiful language!

To close, we wanted to show you how much care and thought went into creating this Cantonese collection (we truly agonised over every little detail!) . We hope your little ones love them as much as we do!

The Cantonese Habbi Habbi collection comes in 2 set options:

• Starter Set (Wand + 5 Books)
• Assortment Set (Wand + 12 Books + 2 Flashcard Sets)

Please do reach out if you have any further questions! You can reach us at info@habbihabbi.com or on instagram @behabbi.

About our lovely guest contributor: Charing

Charing is Habbi Habbi's Cantonese Language & Culture Lead, and led the translation of the new Cantonese Habbi Habbi titles. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Canada, Charing is bilingual in Cantonese and English. She is also an entrepreneur and owner of Little Kozzi, a Chinese children’s bookstore in Canada, which was started when she wanted to pass on her mother tongue to her kids, but couldn't find the books and resources to do so, locally.

She is absolutely fascinated by language learning, and occasionally shares her thoughts on teaching Cantonese to her two biracial kids (6yo and 4yo). Most recently, she decided to tackle another language (Korean!) to see what it's like to learn a language from scratch. It's been really, really hard, but she's also weirdly excited to see if she can go from zero to conversational, as an adult in her late 30s. For science.

In her previous life, Charing was product manager at both large tech companies and small scrappy startups. She worked in Hong Kong, London, Seattle, and have now settled in the beautiful city of Toronto, Canada.

Check out more bilingual resources from Habbi Habbi

We have lots more (fun stuff!) here at Habbi Habbi. You can explore our free resources such as bilingual printables, resource blog, and audiobooks. Of course, we also have our much loved magical Reading Wand, bilingual books, puzzles & flashcards. Our tools are currently available in Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, French, Korean, and Hindi.