Learn Cantonese from YouTube with Jyutping

A Cantonese YouTube video is useful only if you can read the line you just heard. taihaa takes the subtitles, shows Jyutping over them, and lets you save the words that blocked you. It does not add captions to a video that has none.

What you need

• A YouTube link. Watch, youtu.be, and Shorts links all work.
• Subtitles in Chinese. Creator captions are used when they exist. Otherwise taihaa uses auto-generated captions. Auto captions are often wrong.
• If no subtitles are found, paste a transcript yourself. The video can still play.
• Cantonese as the lesson language, so the text gets Jyutping rather than Mandarin pinyin. When the captions could be either, taihaa asks you to pick.

Turn the video into a lesson

1. Create a free account and paste the link on import or on a new lesson. Start reading free.
2. Look the video up. Choose Cantonese if both Mandarin and Cantonese are offered. Written Cantonese (佢, 係, 唔, 嘅) is the clue that the captions match speech.
3. Create the video lesson. Video mode keeps the player above the caption text. Read mode hides the player and leaves the text. You can tap a word in either mode.
4. If the channel disables embedding, the lesson still opens and the video plays on YouTube.

Jyutping on the captions

The caption text is a normal Cantonese lesson. Jyutping, with tone numbers, sits above the characters. Turn it off when you want to try a line from the characters alone. Jyutping is generated. Check a reading that looks off. The Jyutping guide covers the letters and the six tones, and the Cantonese Jyutping reader shows the same screen.

Split a bad word break

Captions are not dictionaries. A line may glue two words together or cut a compound into single characters. Open Split (Fix word split) from the word panel and tap between characters to add or remove a break. That splits a compound into characters, or joins characters into one word. The change is saved on that lesson for you. Reset puts the automatic split back. New pieces get translations and review cards the same way as any other word.

Save the words that stopped you

• Tap one word. Check the English translation before you save it. Spoken Cantonese words are in the dictionary, not only written Chinese.
• The sentence stays attached, so review is the caption line, not a bare word.
• Dictionary lookups have no daily cap. A new AI translation, only when the dictionary has no entry, is 8 a day on the free plan.
• Natural Cantonese voice is 5 plays a day free. taihaa does not substitute a Mandarin voice.

Limits

• Free accounts can create 3 new video lessons a week. Taihaa Plus removes that weekly cap, within fair use. Text imports are not part of this cap.
• Not every Cantonese video has Cantonese subtitles. A Mandarin subtitle track will not become spoken Cantonese just because you wanted it to.
• Auto-generated captions drift. Read the line before you save a word from it.
• Copyright still applies. The lesson is for your own study.

Paste one link and read the captions with Jyutping. More on the reader is on the Cantonese page. The same steps for Mandarin, with pinyin, are in learn Mandarin from YouTube.