CantoMap 粵地圖

Traditional or simplified? And what's Jyutping? 繁體還是簡體？粵拼又是甚麼？

  1. Two ways of writing the same characters. Mainland China's government officially brought in simplified forms of many characters in 1956 with its Chinese Character Simplification Scheme [1]. Traditional characters are the older forms.

  2. Where each is used. Hong Kong and Taiwan use traditional characters. Mainland China and Singapore use simplified [2]. Hong Kong's Education Bureau publishes its official primary-school word list, 《香港小學學習字詞表》, in traditional characters, with simplified forms shown only for reference [3].

  3. Spoken Cantonese is the same either way. The script is about reading and writing. A Cantonese class can teach either one, so ask (see the questions below).

  4. What it means for HK families. (Our view.) If your kids will read books, signs or messages from family in Hong Kong, traditional characters match what they'll see.

  5. Jyutping (粵拼) writes Cantonese sounds with letters and numbers. It was designed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong and finalised in 1993. It uses plain letters plus a tone number from 1 to 6 at the end of each syllable, for example fu1 (夫), fu2 (虎), fu3 (副), fu4 (扶), fu5 (婦), fu6 (父) [4]. It also works as a way to type Chinese on a computer or phone [4].

  6. Why parents like it. (Our view.) If you're not confident about tones, Jyutping in a book or app shows you how a word sounds before your child can read the characters. You may also see Yale romanization in older textbooks [5]. Pinyin is for Mandarin, not Cantonese.

  7. What we know on CantoMap: 15 of our 47 active listings say they teach traditional characters, 1 tutor teaches both, and the other 31 don't say [6]. No active listing says it teaches Jyutping. The one that did, Little Explorers on demand, is offline [6].

  8. Ask the school:

    • Traditional or simplified, and from which grade?
    • Do you teach Jyutping, Yale or another romanization, or none?
    • Which textbook series do you use?
    • Does homework need a parent who reads Chinese?

Know which script your child's class uses? Tell us with "Suggest a correction" on its listing.

Sources 資料來源

  1. PRC Ministry of Education, State Council decision publishing the Chinese Character Simplification Scheme (1956): http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/xw_fbh/moe_2128/moe_2326/moe_1144/tnull_14350.html
  2. Wikipedia, "Simplified Chinese characters": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters (a secondary source; fine for "where each is used").
  3. HK Education Bureau, foreword to the Hong Kong Chinese Lexical Lists for Primary Learning: https://www.edbchinese.hk/lexlist_en/fw_foreword_e.html ; list: https://www.edbchinese.hk/lexlist_ch/
  4. Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, Jyutping scheme: https://lshk.org/jyutping-scheme/
  5. Wikipedia, "Yale romanization of Cantonese": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_romanization_of_Cantonese
  6. CantoMap listing data: each value is sourced to the provider's own page (seen 2026-10-19 to 2026-10-21). The Teachable course is offline.