The Secret To Learning Cantonese Tones

A reader named Leo recently sent me a question about a language very close to my heart.

He wrote: “My question concerns Cantonese, which I know is one of your favourite languages. I recently started studying Cantonese, and I’ve been having trouble with the tones. So my question is: what did you do when you learned Cantonese to deal with the tones?”

It’s a great question, and one I’m well placed to answer — not because I’ve found Cantonese tones easy, but precisely because I haven’t. Cantonese is a language I’ve been learning for quite some time.

It’s not my strongest language, partly because it’s really, really hard, but I enjoy it enormously, and I’ve been through all the ups and downs of the learning process. So here are some words of experience — if not wisdom — on how to get to grips with the tones.

What Are Cantonese Tones?

For anyone not familiar with tonal languages, here’s a quick bit of background.

Cantonese is a tonal language, which means that the same sound — or what would seem to us to be the same sound — can mean totally different things depending on the tone that goes with it.

In Cantonese, there are six tones. You’ll find debates around this — some people will tell you that strictly speaking there are nine — but in my view, several of those have merged together over the years, and six Cantonese tones rather than nine is the best way to think about it.

Take a syllable like “si”. Said in each of the six tones, it becomes six very different things. Not every combination of sound and tone happens to mean something, but the principle holds: every single word you learn in Cantonese comes with a tone attached.

There’s no such thing as a neutral word. You can’t just learn the sound of a word and ignore the tone, because the tones are baked into the word itself.

Why You Should Never Ignore Cantonese Tones

This is partly why I think it’s such terrible advice to ignore the tones.

This is advice you do sometimes hear — that if you’re learning Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai or any other tonal language, you can just ignore the tones because you can communicate without them, and pick them up later.

If there’s one thing you take away from this post, let it be this: do not ignore the tones. It will come back to bite you, big time, later on.

You need the tones to communicate, and if you learn words with the wrong tones, it’s going to be really tough to relearn them correctly afterwards. So learn your tones from the beginning, and don’t ever be tempted to push them off till later.

How Long Does It Take To Get Used To Cantonese Tones?

Leo mentioned that he’d recently started studying Cantonese, and the really key word here is “recently” — because learning tones takes time. Tones are not something you sit down and memorise like a grammar rule. They’re something you have to get used to.

What you’re aiming for is a stage where you hear or say a word in Cantonese and you just know, instinctively, what the correct tone is.

And here’s the proof that this is how it works: if you ask a Cantonese speaker what tone a particular word has, they usually can’t tell you.

They have to say the word to themselves a few times to work it out — and even then, they’ll often get it wrong. Tones are felt. They’re known implicitly and instinctively, not learned consciously.

So if you’ve recently started and you’re feeling that familiar frustration — “these tones are really hard, I need help with this” — the chances are you don’t actually need help. What you need is more time.

For me, it was a good three to six months before I really started to feel I had a handle on the tones. Even then, you’ll still get them wrong and forget some — it’s an ongoing process.

But it’s through deliberate practice over time, paying close attention to the tones, that you’ll eventually master them.

Learn The Tone With Every New Word

In terms of how I learned Cantonese, the first thing is this: with every single new word you learn, learn the tones that go with it. That might mean one tone for a single-syllable word, or two tones for a compound word with multiple syllables.

This is simply a fact of life with Cantonese — whenever you learn a new word, always learn the tones that come with it.

As for how, there’s no shortcut, really. What I do personally is write down each new word in my notebook along with its tone.

Then, whenever I’m practising — whether through flashcards, speaking or anything else — I pay attention to those tones, and I don’t stop until I know them. It’s unglamorous, but it works.

Start Speaking From The Beginning

The second thing I found super important is to actually be speaking Cantonese from the beginning.

It’s one thing to recognise a tone, or to learn it by yourself with your notes and your flashcards. It’s a very different thing to produce it while you’re speaking — to get a long string of words out of your mouth with the correct tones attached.

And it’s precisely because that’s so difficult that you need to start doing it from day one.

My suggestion is to set up regular speaking sessions in Cantonese. Find a tutor on a platform like italki and practise with them from the beginning — once, twice, three times a week.

Have simple conversations, and let your main aim be nothing more ambitious than getting the words out of your mouth.

That process works as a kind of double team. On the one hand, you’re learning more passively through your study; on the other, you’re actually outputting and speaking. That’s essentially what I did.

For about six months I just kept at it, week after week — learning, listening to Cantonese, then speaking, getting corrected all the time, and trying not to get frustrated.

You give it time, and eventually it all starts to come together — usually at the moment you least expect it. But it does happen.

Cantonese Tones FAQ

Give It Time And The Tones Will Come

If you’re struggling with Cantonese tones right now, take heart: you’re not doing anything wrong, and you’re certainly not alone.

Tones feel impossible at the start because they’re a completely new dimension of language for most of us, and there’s no way to shortcut the process of getting used to them.

But the recipe is simple, even if it isn’t quick.

• Pay close attention to tones from your very first lesson, and never be tempted to leave them for later.
• Learn the tone with every new word, write it down, and keep noticing it until it sticks.
• And above all, speak from the beginning — regularly, imperfectly and without fear of correction — because producing tones in real conversation is the skill that matters most, and the only way to build it is to do it.

Give it three to six months of that kind of deliberate, patient practice, and one day you’ll realise the tones have stopped feeling like an obstacle and started feeling like part of the language.

Cantonese is a wonderful language, and it’s well worth the effort. Keep going — and good luck.

Olly Richards

Creator of the StoryLearning® Method

Olly Richards is a renowned polyglot and language learning expert with over 15 years of experience teaching millions through his innovative StoryLearning® method. He is the creator of StoryLearning, one of the world's largest language learning blogs with 500,000+ monthly readers.

Olly has authored 30+ language learning books and courses, including the bestselling "Short Stories" series published by Teach Yourself.

When not developing new teaching methods, Richards practices what he preaches—he speaks 8 languages fluently and continues learning new ones through his own methodology.