Cantonese vocabulary overview
LangOria's Cantonese course is built around practical sentence pairs in traditional Chinese characters, each with Jyutping romanization so you can pronounce every sentence correctly. A1 covers greetings and ordering food; B1 covers navigating Hong Kong's MTR and shopping at street markets. Cantonese has nine tones that give it its distinctive musical quality — our audio shadowing drills train your ear to the tone contours that distinguish meaning. Each entry shows traditional characters with Jyutping, so you learn to read Hong Kong signage and menus while building speaking confidence for real-world Cantonese conversation.
Cantonese vocabulary by level
Click any level to see the full list of words at that tier.
Why LangOria's Cantonese vocabulary works
Real example sentences
Every word comes with a real example from the Tatoeba corpus — no synthetic textbook filler.
Spaced repetition
Reviews are scheduled at the moment you are about to forget, so you retain more in less time.
45–65-minute daily loop
A short focused daily session beats a long abandoned one — streaks keep you honest.
Cantonese vocabulary FAQ
How is Cantonese vocabulary organised on LangOria?
By recognised ability levels — CEFR for most languages, JLPT for Japanese, HSK for Chinese and TOPIK for Korean. Each level groups the vocabulary you need at that stage, ordered by frequency and difficulty.
How many Cantonese words do I need per level?
It depends on the level and exam system: A1 covers roughly the 500 highest-frequency words and C2 the rarest academic and literary vocabulary; HSK 1 is 150 words and N5 around 800. Every deck pairs each word with a real example sentence from the Tatoeba corpus.
Where do the example sentences come from?
From Tatoeba, a community-built corpus of translations written by native speakers. Each example is designed for spaced-repetition review, so you meet words in the contexts native speakers actually use.
What is the best way to study Cantonese vocabulary?
The 45–65-minute daily spaced-repetition loop: review each word just as you are about to forget it. Pick the level that matches your goal — survival (A1), everyday conversation (A2-B1) or professional/fluent (B2-C1) — and move up one level at a time.