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WingSuet’s log (TAC 2015 - Team Rätsel) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6575 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 17 of 116 14 December 2011 at 9:02am | IP Logged | ||
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The thing with the frequency lists of Chinese characters is that they're lists for Mandarin. I doubt any lists exist for Cantonese, since there isn't really a corpus for that. So while they'll be useful for reading Mandarin (with Cantonese pronunciation, if you want, like the Hong Kongers do it), they're not accurate for actual Cantonese. Many of the most frequently used Mando characters are never used in Cantonese, and many of the most frequently used Canto characters don't exist in Mandarin.
And I'd personally recommend concentrating on words, not characters, at least in the beginning. Characters without words are useless. So with that in mind, I'd say you'd be much better off going to CantoDict, which holds real Cantonese words, as opposed to Mandarin characters, if you want to memorize things. CantoDict has a classification system for frequency. It's not perfect, since it's volunteer-based, but it's got 448 Level 1 compound words at the moment. Some of them are arguably not that necessary, but most of them are pretty high-frequency, and you'll get a lot farther in your Cantonese by memorizing those than by memorizing a bunch of Mandarin morphemes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5344 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese | Message 18 of 116 14 December 2011 at 10:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, I know it's for Mandarin, but as most texts in Cantonese are actually written in Mandarin (like you said) I thought it would be good to learn those characters first. Sure, it's a problem that I only know what one character means and not the words, but I'm studying words along side with the characters. It helps me to learn new words, knowing what characters it consists of. I haven't seen that list on Cantodict before though, thanks for the suggestion!
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| silverpolyglot Diglot Groupie Canada silverchallanges.wor Joined 4907 days ago 42 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, Somali Studies: French, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 19 of 116 31 December 2011 at 7:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck on both your studies and the challenge! I'm excited to read your log as you are
studying both Cantonese and Mandarin at the same time! What are your impressions on the Teach Yourself series? I was thinking of starting it for Swedish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4952 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 20 of 116 01 January 2012 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just dropping by to post you the list of team logs so that you can find it easily:
Team Logs Here 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5344 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese | Message 21 of 116 06 January 2012 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's finally time to update my log and start the TAC 2012! I arrived in Hong Kong three
days ago and have therefor been very busy with orientation programmes and adjusting. So far loving it, but not much language studies has been done. I have tried to use as much of my Cantonese as I can, which is not that much. I noticed that my biggest problem is to understand what they are saying to me. But I can feel that my ears are getting adjusted to hearing Cantonese already and I'm able to catch more ^^ What made my day was when my new Cantonese friends complemented me on my pronunciation and said that if they hadn't seen me talking they would have mistaken me for a local :D 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4952 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 22 of 116 06 January 2012 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | ||
That's good to hear! I bet you'll be able to understand them in no time because your immersed :P. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5344 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese | Message 23 of 116 07 January 2012 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've only used TY for Cantonese and a little for Thai. My expression of the Cantonese
one is that they moved on from really easy to much more difficult with faster conversations really quickly. Maybe that's okay for languages that are easier to learn, but with Cantonese I think that's too quick. Fortunately I already knew some Cantonese and the tones, so it was easier for me to follow. Not sure if TY is build up the same for every language though. @NickJS: I certainly hope so! I'd really like to be able to hold a conversation as soon as possible! It's always fun to see the reaction when I say something in Cantonese. They are always so happy! Unfortunately that might lead to a long stream of rapid Cantonese words which I can't understand! Edited by WingSuet on 07 January 2012 at 5:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6575 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 24 of 116 07 January 2012 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm super envious of your long stay in Hong Kong. It's really is a wonderful city. I'll be visiting for two weeks in
February and I'm really looking forward to being able to speak Canto to everyone (it's such a fun language!). 加油努 力 (gaa1 jau4 nou5 lik6) and enjoy your stay. Make sure to take a trip up to the Peak and look out over all the city. Best time is to do it just before sunset, so you can watch the sky darken and a million lights light up below. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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