Last Updated on July 2, 2025 by stlplace
I started to learn Cantonese about 3 months ago, via Duolingo. I am still there (in terms of using Duolingo), but I think I should start to learn Cantonese beyond Duolingo.
I wrote about Cantonese songs as well (5 minutes read). People especially my friends could wonder: why learn Cantonese, especially now?
That’s a legit question.
For me, I think preserving the Chinese culture is a fun and rewarding endeavor. One fairly common consensus is Cantonese preserves the traditional Chinese the best: this is partially due to a decent size of Cantonese speaking people. Some stats on the English, Mandarin and Cantonese speaking population, from my blog post here. And I am pasting some stats below.
Google estimates there are 1.18 billion mandarin speakers in the world, vs 120 million cantonese speakers (refer to my blog post here 全球将近有1.2亿人口使用粤语 ). For comparison google search indicates there are 1.5 billion English speakers in the world.
My list and Playlist
Janice-卫兰: I started this list from Ayen何璟昕, who btw, is an excellent singer. Ayen何璟昕 was born in Guandong Province, and she sings in Cantonese, Mandarin and English. She is also a very good content creator, and last but not least, a pop music curator. This is something I realized as I saw she sung quite a few 副歌（英语：Refrain，惯称Chorus）and shared the short video on Douyin, WeChat and RedNote.
For example, I listened to Ayen’s song 衛蘭歌曲串燒！低半度/驗傷/就算世界無童話/街燈晚餐 新歌老歌 吉他彈唱cover | Ayen 何璟昕 and then I realized that 卫兰 Janice Vidal is so good, and I created a YT playlist for Janice-卫兰 too.
Below are my YT list, based on Ayen’s cover (singing) the respective singer’s songs.
张国荣 Leslie Cheung: 12 songs
王菲 Faye Wong: 12 songs as well
陈慧娴 Prisicilla Chan 和 梅艳芳：7 songs. I should emphasize that 陳慧嫻 – 飄雪 Acoustic cover｜粵語歌吉他彈唱｜廣東孩子看到雪忍不住的cover！｜Ayen何璟昕 is the 1st Ayen’s song YT recommended to me – I believe I subscribed and listened to her singing in the past (I just searched YT history and it appears I watched/listened her song on 11-Feb-2024 first). This was the song – ……
陈奕迅 Eason Chen: 8 songs. And my own YT playlist for Eason.
Below are the Cantonese singers I liked and I have my YT playlist for them too.
…… I am adding more singers here ……
Curing Series my own YT playlist
Last but not least, not 100% Cantonese (there are some Mandarin songs), nonetheless, I like to listen to them as background music at work (I work from home), or when I drive.