I have already commented on why I do not think that Cantonese tones are hard, so I will leave it at that – it is the first, oft repeated myth that is not based on facts.
> 2. the lack of learning materials relative to the number of speakers […]
On the subject of the availability of learning materials, there would have been a strong case for, e.g. Wu (Shanghainese), Min (Hokkien), Hakka etc – for all of which the learning materials virtually do not exist, and that is true.
With Cantonese, it is a remarkably different situation. My local bookshop has two large shelves stacked with Cantonese textbooks and dictionaries that suit a range of people from vastly different age groups – from toddlers starting to babble to serious advanced learners and anyone in between. More is available online, e.g. Virginia Yip's Routledge series, which includes a comprehensive book on the Cantonese grammar of rarely seen quality and coverage, Robert Bauer and Victor Mair's «ABC Cantonese-English Comprehensive Dictionary», and many more. There are online resources, an open-source, cross-platform «Jyut Dictionary», Google and Apple support the Cantonese keyboard etc.
If their printed versions are not easily locally available, they can be purchased as Kindle books as well.
Granted, Mandarin surpasses Cantonese in terms of the quantity of learning materials, and that is a dry fact.
> […] the confusion between written Chinese and written Cantonese […]
Many languages have quirks or come with a wealth of idiosyncrasies when it comes to how the language is spoken and written down. Burmese, Thai, and Tibetan, for example, are written according to extremely archaic pronunciation rules to the point that spoken and written languages have to be learned separately.
Written Cantonese has existed since at least the Ming dynasty[0][1], but the reasons why there are two distinct forms are entirely different as they go back to replacing Classical Chinese, which had become incomprehensible to anyone in the late 19th century without years of dedicated study, with a modern standard written standard based on northern Chinese varieties.
> […] (and also the general lack of the latter).
This is the second often repeated myth. Many Cantonese speakers believe that Cantonese can only be spoken but not written down, which is patently false – if a language has a writing system, it can be written down with it. When pressed with question «why do you think so», there is typically no answer or «because we have been told so». 口語粵語好容易用漢字寫低，就好似書面粵語咁。 There is a real issue of some native Cantonese words not having dedicated Chinese characters for them, but it is more of a philosophical disgreement between the academics rather than an insurmountable problem.
So, in reality – at least in Hong Kong – since formal literacy has long meant competence in Standard Written Chinese, not in a full Cantonese-written system, schools and institutions tend to penalise written vernacular Cantonese forms in formal contexts – entirely for non-linguistic reasons as explained in [2].
To sum it up, I do not find any of the counterarguments to be compelling, persuasive or supported by linguistic facts which would make Cantonese a «hard» language.
[0] https://www.fe.hku.hk/clear/doc/WC%20and%20Implications%20fo... – «The story of written Cantonese begins in the Ming dynasty with texts printed in woodblock print books called wooden fish books (木魚書)»
[1] https://cantoneseforfamilies.com/cantonese-vernacular-and-fo...
[2] https://hkupress.hku.hk/image/catalog/pdf-preview/9789622097...
As an 外國人 who learned Cantonese as an adult (I moved to HK) I'm jealous of the quantity and quality of materials that exist for learning (not Cantonese). That being said, there are _enough_ materials so it's nowhere near as rough as e.g. Shanghainese.
My opinions on hard language reduces to "is this the first language you're learning from a particular language family?" If so, it's hard to learn. But "is ontologically hard" isn't something that I think is really worth ranking. Any four year old can speak their mother tongue just fine.
But the perception of "hard to learn" did work in my favor for learning Cantonese: as a 鬼佬 who speaks Cantonese I was given lots of latitude to be bad while learning because of that perception. And now I could go back and learn Mandarin now and it would be _much_ simpler than the task that I had in learning Cantonese.
That being said I still write in 口語. Slowly learning 書面語 as I read more and more of it.
(Not sure if you remember or recognize me from this handle. I was with Chaak on the words.hk project . Also Jon spoke highly of you for helping with the tough problems on the fonts :D )
The issue is that among the more common languages that people (outside of language nerds) tend to learn, what I said still holds true for the average learner who's there to learn and whom face the practical difficulties of learning a language, and none of your totally correct linguistic facts really make them less real.
> > […] (and also the general lack of the latter).
> This is the second often repeated myth
The size of written Cantonese corpora was abysmally small up until recent (<10?) years, and much of the content was interwoven with Standard Written Chinese. You still generally can't find written Cantonese on printed materials. Until recent months, LLMs couldn't even write a proper children's story in Cantonese without inadvertently code switching to SWC.
Trust me when I say I'm one of the many people who worked hard to make this "myth" not true (not in linguistic theory but in practice). I never knew it would be thrown back to me like this as a lecture on a random forum lol.
There's a lot more to be done to make Cantonese an assessable language for learners compared with the other major languages. You can compare the linguistic properties of languages all you want, and you'd be absolutely right, but that doesn't make a difference to the prospective learner at all.
I mean, I know I am supposed to refute your point with rational points, but I really don't know what to say except that you're wrong, and you're confusing the cultural divide between Cantonese speakers and non-Cantonese speakers, and the political tensions between Hong Kong and mainland China.
Note that I never said "Hong Kong" in my comment because the majority of Cantonese speakers are actually in mainland China.