Language

The traditional language of Kung Fu is, of course, Chinese. More specifically, Northern styles such as Shaolin traditionally use Mandarin, and Southern styles use Cantonese. Your instructors will use a mixture of English and Cantonese, gradually increasing the amount of Cantonese as you progress.

Since Cantonese is a character, or symbol, based language, translations are phonetic. A number of the sounds in Cantonese do not have direct equivalents in English so will vary a little between instructors; for example the Cantonese for a front kick may vary from ‘tsin tak’ to ‘tyin tak’ A list of the commonly used terms can be seen here.