The learning of Cantonese as a foreign language at Japanese universities

Cantonese is treated as a foreign language, rather than as a second language, in Japan’s tertiary education. This chapter gives an overview of Japan’s current situation concerning the teaching and learning of Cantonese, highlighting some features peculiar to the situation in Japan in terms of learning environment, materials and so on. It then raises a number of challenges that need to be addressed, particularly the learning difficulties due to the gap between colloquial Cantonese and written Chinese faced by intermediate/advanced learners with no previous experience in learning Mandarin. After pointing out the intrinsic advantages that Japanese-speaking learners have in acquiring written Chinese as a result of constant exposure to kanji (Chinese characters) and kango (the Sino-Japanese lexicon), this chapter proposes a new approach to help these learners overcome the gap between oracy and literacy in Cantonese learning.