First Impressions from CantoneseHome

In March, Cantonese Font 2 (Pokfield) progressed from testing to Early Access. Carine (CantoneseHome) teaches intermediate-to-advanced Cantonese to adult learners online, and came across Canto Font while searching for a way to help creating original progressive readers. Carine was our first teacher in the Early Access program, with the full Pokfield suite including Regular, Bold, Large Jyutping, and No Jyutping. She uses Win 10 and Win 11 machines.

Here are all the first impressions from her students in the two days. Her perspective as the teacher follows.

Student’s First Impressions

• 睇VF字會更易讀出廣東話. 另外,VF字幫佢學中文字, 因為係緊貼並排一齊. Using the fonts make it easier to pronounce Cantonese. It also helps learning Chinese, because the Jyutping is “attached” to the characters.
  • 佢仲話希望遲啲有yale, 因為有啲學生一開始係學yale, 同到最後都係想繼續學yale. This student hopes there can be Yale editions of the Canto Font, because that is what they started and hope to continue with.
• 另一個學生係IT人, 啱啱响課堂上比咗feedback, 佢話佢鍾意中文字較大既VF字體, 因為佢覺得中文字比較複雜, 對於佢對眼, 大啲既中文字會對學習有幫助. Another student works in IT (information technology) and he likes the edition of the font with large Chinese characters; the larger size helps him read and learn the complex ideographs.
  • 字體下如果有英文, 佢學中文字就會更快. If there can be English underneath the words, it would make learning the characters even faster.
• 今日最後一個學生都好欣賞VF字體. The last student from today also likes the font. 有形象化啲嘅調號, 呢個學生更加容易改正佢嘅聲調. With the visual tone marks, this student was able to correct his tone much more readily.
• 今日學生反饋就冇咁直觀, 有係語言學者, 所以話已經响HBL見過呢類字體. Today the student’s comment is not so favorable. He is a linguist, and say he have already seen similar font from Hambaanglaang.
• 對年長既, Cantonese 非常好既 Canadien 學生, 幫到佢睇得快好多. 如果冇啲音, 佢話佢查字典應該會花好多好多時間. 佢既回應亦都特別有意思.  The font helped a older Canadian student with good Cantonese. It helps him read faster. Without the Jyutping, he would have needed to spend lots of time looking it up in dictionaries. I thought it was an interesting comment.

Teacher’s First Impressions

我打中文字時,馬上出現拼音, 學生馬上睇到並能做出反應. When I type Chinese, Jyutping appears instantly and students can respond to them without delay.

因為我要教佢呢篇文章, 我可以馬上比佢跟住讀廣東話, 如果淨係得字, 我地兩個都覺得課堂冇咁好效果, 因為咁, 我地二十分鐘內學完呢篇文字. While teaching this prose, we can read this together immediately. It is much more effective than if there were only characters. Thanks to the font, we could learn this text in 20 minutes. 佢話會買你既出品 He say he’ll buy Canto Font when it’s available 😆