Founding Cohort ·

Cantonese Learning For ABCs.

Our 8-week founding cohort opens with just 9 seats. Hold yours with a fully refundable $50 deposit, or enroll today for $199.

See the Program → Learn More

9Seats Total

8Week Program

8Hrs Homework / Wk

$199All-In Tuition

Why ABC Chinese

A small school built by an ABC for the rest of us trying to find our way back.

ABC Chinese was started by Andrew Buoy — a second-generation ABC who got tired of textbooks that treated Cantonese like a museum exhibit. We teach the language the way it actually sounds: on the MTR, in the wet market, at your grandma's kitchen table.

Native-speaker source material

Every lesson is built around recordings of native Hong Kong speakers — family conversations, market chatter, tea-house orders. You'll learn tone and rhythm from how the city actually talks.

Structured Curriculum

Six tones to fluent conversation in a clear, sequenced path. We've refined the same syllabus across 12 years of cohorts — it works.

Small Class Sizes

A maximum of 8 students per class. Everyone gets airtime, real correction, and the kind of attention you can't buy from an app.

Founding Cohort · 首屆學員

Eight weeks. Nine seats. One conversation at a time.

A focused program for everyday Cantonese — built around tones, Jyutping, and the phrases you'll actually use. One live class a week, an hour of homework, and a teacher who knows your name.

Beginner-friendly · 8 Weeks

Everyday Cantonese

日常廣東話 · Founding Cohort

9 seats total

By week 8 you'll be having short, real conversations in Cantonese — ordering food, making small talk, asking for help. We get there by teaching tones through Jyutping, the romanization system locals actually agree on, then putting it to work in live conversation every single class.

Live class, once a week60 minutes with your teacher and 8 classmates — over Zoom, fully interactive.
Tones & Jyutping, demystifiedThe six tones become muscle memory in week 2. We use Jyutping so you can read, type, and self-study any new word.
One hour of homework a weekShort, focused exercises — listening, shadowing, a few sentences to write. Designed to fit a full-time life.
Everyday conversation, from day oneGreetings, ordering, directions, small talk, family — the situations you'll be in this month, not next year.

What 8 Weeks Looks Like

01Sounds & Six Tones
02Jyutping & First Phrases
03Greetings & Introductions
04Numbers, Time & Money
05Ordering Food & Drinks
06Directions & the City
07Small Talk & Family
08Putting It All Together

Our Team · 我們的團隊

The team behind the program.

Your Teacher · 老師

A native speaker who makes it click.

Ms. Chan grew up speaking Cantonese at home in Guangzhou before moving to Hong Kong, where she spent a decade teaching Cantonese as a second language to adults from all backgrounds.

Her approach is simple: real conversations from day one. No rote drilling, no textbook-only vocabulary — just the phrases you'll actually need, taught the way locals actually say them.

"Tones feel impossible at first. Then something clicks, and you can't unhear them. My job is to get you to that click."

Ms. Chan

Lead Teacher · Native Cantonese speaker, 10+ years teaching adults

Guangzhou · Hong Kong · @abcchinese

Your Founder · 創辦人

Built by an ABC, for ABCs.

Hi! I'm Andrew Buoy — and for the longest time I actually didn't care to improve my Cantonese. It wasn't until I visited Guangzhou for the first time that I really realized Cantonese culture was quickly fading away.

So I decided to do something about it — cooking lessons with my mom, trolling my grandma — recording and sharing everything in between. This isn’t a regular textbook class, it’s the one that's built for ABCs. I'll be participating in the program as a student as well, and I'm looking forward to improving alongside each other!

"Most of us didn't lose Cantonese because it was hard. We lost it because nobody made space for us to be beginners. ABC Chinese is that space."""""""""""""""""
— Andrew Buoy, Founder

Andrew Buoy

Founder · Creator · 2nd Generation ABC

San Francisco