crush wrote:However, my experience with the course has been very positive, despite my partner commenting on odd pronunciation patterns i've picked up (the way she says 惊 is different from the speaker in the course, for example).
I am using the new Glossika (subscription-based) for Spanish from Cantonese (my native) and I can understand your partner's comment. I presume the Cantonese pronunciation did not change much between the old and new Glossika. My wife, overhearing the Glossika Cantonese pronunciation, also made similar comments on its (slight) weirdness. But I would say the Cantonese sentences are quite good - yes, the weird things exist but are acceptable. Out of the 500 or so Canto-to-Spanish sentence pairs I tried, for 50-100 sentence repetitions per day, only a small number of choices of vocabulary or grammatical construct different from the usual HK usage that really feel weird to me.
e.g. Vivimos en la calle principal. -> 我哋 住 喺 Main 街 。
"Main街" is simply odd to HK ears... Or would it be a usage by overseas Cantonese diaspora? Why didn't he simply say 大街 is beyond me.
All in all, I would say the Glossika version completely qualifies as the same variety as the one spoken in HK, save for a few weird word choices.
For your particular example, I guess the character 惊 (simplified) /驚 (traditional) was pronounced as ging1 , rather than geng1 (using Jyutping)? The former sounds like when we read out a written Chinese text in Cantonese, while the latter is the usual vernacular pronunciation.
But in general Hongkonger (I suppose your partner speaks the HK Cantonese?) can be a bit "less accepting" when it comes to other Cantonese accents, probably because we are quite limited in exposure to other varieties/dialects of Cantonese due to sociopolitical reasons. HK and the parts of Cantonese-speaking Guangdong are separated by customs border, so we are not like, say, the UK people who are constantly exposed to all sorts of English accents within the UK.
crush wrote:My long-term goal is to help preserve Cantonese and make more high quality resources available...
Your noble goal is most welcome! I see quite a few resources published by Commercial Press HK in local bookstores, though I have neither used nor read any of them enough to make comment.