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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 81 of 124 24 July 2013 at 3:39am | IP Logged | ||
I guess it comes down to what you are more interested in, but I do think that Mandarin is easier to learn than Cantonese. Mandarin's four tones are much easier than Cantonese's six (sometimes seven) tones, Cantonese uses many more final sentence particles, and spoken Cantonese differs dramatically from standard written Chinese, so to be literate you need to basically learn Mandarin grammar/vocabulary anyway. That said, Hong Kong is an awesome city and there is so much fun native materials in Cantonese. The great thing is that if you learn either of them after Japanese, you'll already have a huge discount on kanji/hanzi! And you'll appreciate the grammatical simplicity compared to Japanese. I just looked at my Anki stats from yesterday, and I spent 97 minutes on reviews, so it was quite a bit under the 2 hour mark. Honestly, it doesn't feel so bad since my Anki review time was all dead time that I've now put to good use. I'm glad that I have Anki Mobile, since in the old days, reviewing on a computer was driving me crazy. Edited by mike245 on 22 August 2013 at 7:45pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4696 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 82 of 124 24 July 2013 at 4:44am | IP Logged | ||
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@mike245 - That's a good point. I guess when I am finished with my Japanese texts and move mainly into just reading and listening, as well as speaking more with people around here, then I will have some more time for Anki.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 83 of 124 25 July 2013 at 11:50am | IP Logged | ||
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JAPANESE
I am now up to Assimil Lesson 14 and JapanesePod101 Newbie Season 2, Lesson 13. The Assimil recordings are still very slow, but I am appreciating the slower speed, which allows me to better absorb and practice pronunciation. Many years ago, when I experimented with Pimsleur Japanese, pitch accent wasn’t really a problem for me, since I was just repeating what I heard. But now that I’m seeing things written down, my brain seems to have certain ideas as to how the words should be pronounced, which often isn’t correct. Putting Assimil on repeat has been helping to reinforce proper pitch accent. Although I’m not translating from Japanese to English when I listen to the spoken language, I am noticing that I translate kanji in my head when I read. That is, I look at the character, think to myself what it means in Chinese, and then ask myself what the equivalent word is in Japanese. I know this is probably a bad habit, but it’s hard to break when most of the kanji are words that I am already very familiar with, albeit with a different pronunciation. Another “bad” habit I have is that I have been studying with a mix of romaji and Japanese script. Usually, when I first study a lesson, I study off the romaji. When I review the lesson later, I switch to reading the kanji/kana. For my Anki deck, I do test myself with the proper Japanese writing (and furigana as necessary), but I also put the romaji on the answer side to make sure I am getting things correct. I know there are a lot of purists who say that you should learn the Japanese script right from the start and then stick to it, since using romaji is detrimental in the long run. Nevertheless, I find romaji to be helpful. There are so many moving parts in Japanese, such as pitch accent, politeness levels, adjective conjugations, complicated word order, etc., that if I also had to learn only from a foreign script, it would add too many layers of difficulty to handle at the same time. Besides, my kana reading is so painfully slow that it would take me forever to get through a lesson if I had to sit down and decipher the kana every time that I reviewed a dialogue or vocabulary list. Rather, I prefer to master the lesson at hand first, learning all the pronunciations, memorizing the vocabulary and getting familiar with the grammar points before I move on to practicing the script. CANTONESE I had my very first Cantonese language exchange today! Although I’ve had good experiences in the past with German and French language exchanges, I’ve held off on a Cantonese exchange because I wasn’t very confident in my abilities. Up until now, I didn’t feel that I had a strong enough grasp of grammar and vocabulary to talk about the subjects I’m interested in, and I didn’t want to start off a language exchange only able to say very rudimentary stuff. But now that I’ve reached a fairly strong intermediate level, it makes sense to get the additional speaking practice. My new language partner suggested that we do two monolingual sessions per week, so that we could be more immersed in the respective language. Today, we had a two hour session in Cantonese, which was great practice for me. We talked about our backgrounds, our language learning goals and what we’ve been doing to learn our languages. I think he slowed down his speech a little bit, but I understood everything he said. He also understood everything I said and told me that my pronunciation is very clear and accurate. For the most part, I could express myself well and I was able to use a lot of vocabulary, although my tones did sometimes break down when I got mired in long sentences. That’s something I need to work on – concentrate on shorter sentences that convey the same point, and master using correct tones in fast or extended speech. The great thing though, was that I didn’t feel like the conversation was a strain for either of us, even though we talked for more than two hours. I think at this point, my spoken Cantonese is actually slightly better than my German and French, even though I have more "academic" vocabulary in those two languages. Edited by mike245 on 22 August 2013 at 7:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| js6426 Diglot Senior Member Cambodia Joined 4369 days ago 277 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English*, Khmer Studies: Mandarin | Message 84 of 124 26 July 2013 at 9:17am | IP Logged | ||
When is the Khmer Assimil coming out? Is it going to be in French or English? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 85 of 124 26 July 2013 at 10:09am | IP Logged | ||
Unfortunately, not any time soon! I emailed Assimil a few days ago, and they informed me that it is coming out in 2014. I gather that the publication date has been postponed a few times already, so hopefully, it'll really be released next year. The book will be offered in French. Hopefully, the book will be worth the wait. Given the quality of the Assimil materials I've used to date, I have high hopes. Edited by mike245 on 22 August 2013 at 7:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 86 of 124 27 July 2013 at 7:44am | IP Logged | ||
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JAPANESE
I am now up to Assimil Lesson 17 and JapanesePod101 Newbie Season 2 Lesson 17. Each Assimil lesson is so chock full of grammar expressions and vocabulary that even at the slower pace, I am still struggling to understand what is going on. By contrast, the JapanesePod101 dialogues are much faster, but they only cover a few new words and minimal grammar each lesson. Yesterday, I was reading up on Ari’s Chinesepod method, and it’s inspiring to see that he was able to use Chinesepod to get all the way up from beginner level to interacting with natives. I’m not sure how long it took him to get to that point, but his experiences and Arekkusu’s experiences with JapanesePod101, both give me some confidence that a podcast-centric method can work well, especially if combined with other methods, such as Anki or Assimil. CANTONESE I was feeling pretty good about my progress after my language exchange on Thursday. But then yesterday, I had lunch with my partner and some of his Cantonese-speaking coworkers, and it reminded me that I still have a long way to go. We talked about a broad range of topics, including food allergies, LASIK eye surgery, and the Hong Kong education system. Although I was able to get my points across in Cantonese, there were several instances where I had to ask people to explain words that I didn’t understand or where I struggled to find a way of expressing my thoughts. I still feel like I’m talking like a toddler. I think linguistic maturity is just going to take time. I am still spending a lot of mental energy making sure that my grammar is correct, that my tones are accurate, and coming up with the correct words to use, so I don't have enough bandwidth leftover to be thinking about the style and articulateness of my speech. I think once I stop having to think so much about grammar or vocabulary, then I can concentrate on sounding more polished. Edited by mike245 on 22 August 2013 at 7:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 87 of 124 30 July 2013 at 8:55am | IP Logged | ||
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With my upcoming trip, I am not sure how much study time I will have each day. So I’ve decided to scale back my new Anki reviews in advance. I am now down to 15 new cards each for Cantonese and Japanese, and I have suspended my new cards for Spanish/German/French. This should help slowly whittle down my number of daily reviews, so that it doesn’t take so much time each day.
JAPANESE I am now up to Lesson 19 of Assimil Japanese and JapanesePod101 Newbie Season 2 Lesson 22. At this rate, I should be able to finish Newbie Season 2 and get to the Assimil review lesson (#21) by the time I leave on my trip. I have a very long flight of 10+ hours, so I anticipate being able to use a good chunk of time to review past lessons and solidify my knowledge. The great thing about the Assimil approach is that you don’t put a lot of pressure on yourself to master everything in a lesson before you move on. I remember when I did FSI lessons in the past, the idea of having to repeat those drills ad nauseum until my responses were close to perfect was just dreadful. By contrast, I usually study an Assimil lesson until I can understand everything in the recording, and then move on to the next lesson. I trust that the grammar points and recall of the vocabulary will sink in after several days of reviewing previous lessons. So far, it’s worked. I just went back to some of the earliest lessons that I had trouble with, like Lesson 8, and was happy to discover that the lesson is now pretty easy. Most recently, I’ve been struggling with Lessons 17 and 18, so I’m hoping I can come back to them in a few weeks and find them easy as well. CANTONESE Today, I had another language exchange today with a different partner. I’m finding these exchanges very helpful, especially as a way of “checking” my Cantonese. Because I have learned thousands of words through self-study and word lists, I tend to wonder if the words I’ve learned are really used and if I am pronouncing and using them correctly. Furthermore, even though a lot of these words are in my “active” vocabulary, I don’t feel like I’ve truly learned them until I’ve used them several times in conversation. This new language partner speaks at full speed, which definitely requires a little additional effort on my part to follow the conversation. She has been good about giving me feedback on words and phrases that sound overly formal or aren't commonly used. She also is good about repeating some of my sentences in correct Cantonese if I have trouble conveying a point, which is extremely helpful. I have noticed that I am getting much more comfortable using grammatical constructions that used to be extremely difficult for me, such as temporal clauses (which caused me a lot of trouble back in May) and "even if ... still" constructions. Nevertheless, I still feel like once I start talking about more complex things or topics outside my comfort zone, my language starts to break down. In terms of vocabulary work, I just came across the book, “The Right Word in Cantonese” at a bookstore in Tsim Sha Tsui. I’d heard of this book on various online forums, but never actually seen it before in a bookstore. The book was wrapped up, so I couldn’t browse it, but it purports to contain 7,500 vocabulary words, split between common words (4,000) and specialized vocabulary (3,500). The book seems older than the Interesting Cantonese books I’ve been using, and the version I found doesn’t come with audio. However, I think this could be the next step in rounding out my Cantonese vocabulary. I haven’t bought it yet, but I’ll keep it in mind for when I finish my Interesting Cantonese deck and am looking for additional vocabulary sources. EDIT: I'm glad I didn't purchase "The Right Word in Cantonese." I was in a different bookstore in Tsim Sha Tsui today, and found Interesting Cantonese 3, from the same author of Interesting Cantonese 1 & 2. This hefty volume (500+ pages) with accompanying CD was just published in March 2013, which is why I haven't seen it around earlier. I'll post more information on this book later, after I start using it, but so far, it seems to be a very comprehensive and up to date resource with lots of advanced vocabulary. Edited by mike245 on 22 August 2013 at 7:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6821 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 88 of 124 03 August 2013 at 2:24am | IP Logged | ||
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JAPANESE
I am now up to Assimil Japanese Lesson 22, and I’ve finished JapanesePod101 Newbie Season 2. I was lagging behind a bit before my trip, but then spent several hours reviewing lesons on my flight. This is a second time that I’ve studied a new language using Assimil, but I still feel happily surprised by how effortless the process is. Compared even to Pimsleur, which tests you with verbal prompts, Assimil is a no-pressure learning system. And the graduated intervals work so well that you are steadily learning just enough new material every day to keep things challenging. After those initial two off-putting episodes of JapanesePod101’s Nihongo Dōjō series, Newbie Season 2 really picked up and became more interesting. I’m looking forward to Season 3. I plan on following the recommended sequence for absolute beginners: Newbie Seasons 2 and 3, followed by Beginner Seasons 4, 5 and 6, and then Lower Intermediate Season 6. I should be able to get through at least Beginner Season 4 by the time I go on my trip in November. CANTONESE I don’t anticipate doing any Cantonese studying in the next two weeks, other than my Anki reviews. However, during the second half of our trip, we’ll be staying with my partner’s mother. We speak only in Cantonese, so it’ll will be hours of conversation practice everyday. I’m actually looking forward to it, since we haven’t talked much in the past few months, and I think my Cantonese has improved a lot since the last time we spoke. Back in March and April, I could converse with her, but it still felt like a strain. I struggled for words, and I had trouble expressing myself clearly. Since then, my vocabulary has gotten a lot bigger, I can use much more complex grammar, and I think I have an overall better control of tones in conversation. At my current rate of progress, I think that I can reach “basic fluency” in oral Cantonese by the end of the year. I don’t think there is much grammar left to learn, but I need to continue to improve my vocabulary and my familiarity with complex sentence patterns, as well as my overall spoken fluency. After I finish going through Living Cantonese, I plan to work through Greenwood Press’s Intermediate Themes for Listening & Speaking. This book takes a workbook approach, with lots of listening and speaking exercises, rather than the intensive dialogue analysis approach of Living Cantonese. However, I think these exercises will help me continue to fill in gaps in my knowledge. Edited by mike245 on 22 August 2013 at 7:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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