In English, the length of vowel is quite important. If you are not cautious, “sheet” will become “shit”, and “beach” will become “bitch”. Same as English, length of vowel is important in Cantonese. Other than that, tones are very important in Cantonese too. If you change the tone, you change the whole word. The combination of wrong length of vowel and wrong tone in Cantonese can be hilarious, which is the case in the following.

This Tuesday night, my Cantonese beginners’ class was working on the unit about occupations. Teacher was one of the occupations. Its Cantonese is “Gaau6 si1”. As a native speaker, I had never thought this word could turn into something hilarious. When the class practiced its pronunciation, one of the students pronounced it as “Gau2 si2”. I just couldn’t help and laughed. Then the class asked:”Why is it so funny?” I explained:”Well, ‘Gaau6 si1’ is teacher, and ‘Gau2 si2’ is dog poo!” Then everyone just laughed.
 
This is more than just a funny story. It also shows one of the difficulties of learning Cantonese, especially for speakers of non-tonal language, such as English. There are six tones in Cantonese, and it is quite difficult for English speakers to distinguish them because English is not a tonal language, and its speakers are not trained to pick up tones. Some people may worry about this. However, I think it is just a matter of time and practice. If you put enough effort into it, it is not difficult at all. At the end, these six tones are actually distinguishable.