Why is it hard to teach written Cantonese?
Cantonese is spoken and not usually written since it doesn’t enjoy the status of the national language. Literate Cantonese speakers of old often used Classical Chinese, or now Mandarin-based Vernacular Chinese (or “standard Chinese”). Written Chinese spoken word for word in Cantonese sounds quite unnatural because Vernacular Chinese expressions are ungrammatical and unidiomatic in Cantonese.
