Difficulty: Challenger (Level 2)
For many foreigners who come to Hong Kong for work, one of the city’s appeals is the widespread use of English. Many never feel compelled to learn Cantonese.
But 29-year-old Australian Jonas Groom has made a splash on social media doing exactly that. His videos follow his Cantonese language-learning journey, with some clips garnering hundreds of thousands of views.
Groom moved to Hong Kong a little over a year ago. He works as a strategy consultant and wanted to learn the language so he could connect better with the local people.
At first, he learned Cantonese by taking online classes. Now, he mainly learns by talking with friends and people he meets.
“There aren’t a lot of Westerners who learn Cantonese,” Groom said. “I feel that when there is someone learning Cantonese who doesn’t have a Cantonese background or Cantonese heritage, it stands out slightly … people really appreciate it.”
Challenges of learning Cantonese
Cantonese is a very hard language to learn. It has tricky tones – sounds that are new to English speakers – and its spoken and written forms are quite different.
Many people who want to learn a Chinese language are not choosing it any more. Instead, more foreigners are studying Mandarin, which is the main language spoken in mainland China.
To help him learn, Groom has stuck Post-it notes with the Chinese characters and corresponding tones on various items and pieces of furniture. The flip side has its English translation. He also regularly writes down keywords and phrases he wants to practise before heading out.
Language learning journey
A few months in, Groom began posting videos on his Instagram account. In one of his earliest videos, users expressed amazement at how quickly he had been able to pick up the language.
“Your Cantonese is so good already!” one wrote.
“Keep going! You can do it,” another user wrote.
One of his best-performing videos has more than 750,000 views. It features a comedic interaction in which Groom orders a dish from a local restaurant in Cantonese, and the shop owner responds to him in English.
“Uncle speaks English and Jonas speaks Chinese … The tables have turned!” one user commented.
He has also used his videos to showcase cultural exchanges, with clips that show the differences in how Cantonese is spoken in Hong Kong and the nearby mainland city of Guangzhou, as well as ones where he teaches his local friends Australian slang.
Groom said he hoped his videos would encourage more people to learn Cantonese.
“Everyone’s really friendly and outgoing, and when you make a little bit of an effort to learn some Cantonese, even if it’s broken, even if it doesn’t make grammatical sense, it really goes a long way,” he said.
