|
 |
And now Cantonese ... | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6914 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 105 of 124 04 October 2013 at 4:06am | IP Logged | ||
|
CANTONESE
It’s been seven months since I revived this language log for the purpose of learning Cantonese. Excluding the time I spent in Paris and back in the US earlier this year, I’ve spent approximately six months here in Hong Kong. My original goal was to get to a good conversational level in Cantonese by the end of summer (B1/B2), with decent comprehension of television shows. Now that summer is well over, how far have I come? Self-assessment is always fallible, but I do think that I’ve reached a fairly good level of Cantonese. When I started my studies back in early March, I was around a low A2, with a 1,000-1,500 word vocabulary that included mostly food items. I had taken a few Cantonese classes in college, and I had passively absorbed a lot of Cantonese over the years, but I couldn’t really speak it. I knew some basic grammar, but I was missing a lot of important structures, sentence patterns, and critical words and phrases. Since then, my speaking and listening skills have improved to approximately a mid B1. I’ve quadrupled my vocabulary, I know most of Cantonese grammar, and I have a fairly rich arsenal of sentence patterns. If I concentrate, I can understand between 80-95% of most popular television shows(except the news). On a good day, I can talk for a few hours in Cantonese with minimal strain and few mistakes. I don’t think I’ll ever pass as a local, but people often think I’m one of the many Cantonese heritage speakers living here in Hong Kong, who were born in the US but grew up speaking Cantonese at home and are now back in Hong Kong for work. I think if I were studying Cantonese purely as a hobby, I would be pretty satisfied with my progress. But living here, my goal is to keep improving until I eventually reach advanced fluency. It may end up taking years of immersion to get to that level, but I have the time and the resources here. I am committed for the long-haul. JAPANESE It took forever, but I have finally finished JapanesePod101 Newbie Season 3 and moved on to Beginner Season 4 (the recommended progression). I was actually a little sad when it ended, since I started to get attached to the StyleYou characters. When I first started listening to it, I couldn’t stand the bunch, but their antics started to grow on me. Beginner Season 4 has Peter Galante back as the English-speaking host, replacing Rebecca. He has a lot of energy and enthusiasm for the language, which makes it more fun to listen to the lessons. Thus far, some of Beginner Season 4 feels like a rehash of Newbie Season 3. Hopefully, this will change a few lessons in, and it’ll get challenging again. LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE I read an interview in Le Monde yesterday with Usain Bolt, discussing the recent doping scandals in track and field and cycling. I only had to check up a few words I didn’t know, but I wrote down a lot of sample sentences that I’d like to add to Anki. Today, I read an article from Deutsche Welle on the retirement of German swimmer Britta Steffen. It was a pretty short article, but I still had to check up about 15 words. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6914 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 106 of 124 09 October 2013 at 6:21am | IP Logged | ||
|
CANTONESE
I had a very challenging language exchange session yesterday that really pushed the limits of my Cantonese. We discussed racial discrimination and the 1960s civil rights movement, medical marijuana laws in California, visiting a dentist, etc. For the most part, I had enough vocabulary to get my point across – words like, “protest,” “demonstration,” “discrimination,” “marijuana,” and “wisdom tooth.” And I can usually talk around a word that I don’t know in Cantonese. But I learned all sorts of new words, such as the words for “excuse/pretext,” “suspenders,” “dental braces,” “cavity filling,” “facilities,” “acceptance letter,” “quality,” and “drug overdose.” JAPANESE I haven’t been spending much time with Assimil, but I have made it through Lesson 5 of JapanesePod101 Beginner Season 4 (passive). I should be putting in more effort, since my trip is coming up in about a month. But I have been feeling pretty unmotivated. Usually, around this time, I tend to get that fear that comes with knowing I won’t be able to communicate with the locals as well as I would like to. But I have been distracted with all sorts of other stuff that it’s hard to get that feeling of desperation that will jumpstart my efforts. LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE I finally finished all new cards from my Anki deck for German. This feels like a nice accomplishment – I created the deck about six months ago based on Langenscheidt’s Basic German Vocabulary book, and I have been plodding through it ever since. The list is a bit outdated, since the book was published about twenty years ago, but I think it’s an excellent start in building a base vocabulary. I don’t think I’ll be doing any more structured/frequency word list studies for German, although in the future I may put all of the interesting sample sentences from the Langenscheidt book into my Anki deck. I also have been reading more in German. Yesterday, I read an article from Deutsche Welle on efforts to combat school truancy in Germany, and today, I read an article on the nomination of Janet Yellen for the Federal Reserve position. I have been jotting down all the new vocabulary words, and I may input these into Anki in the future. Hopefully, I can continue to read more in French/German to slowly build up my vocabulary and reading comprehension in those languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6914 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 107 of 124 15 October 2013 at 11:11am | IP Logged | ||
|
JAPANESE
I have less than a month before my trip to Tokyo, and I think that queasy feeling of worry is starting to set in. I’m now only up to Assimil Japanese Lesson 47 and JapanesePod101 Beginner Season 4 Lesson 3 (active) and 7 (passive). Assimil has been introducing all sorts of complicated grammatical concepts, but at this point, I am just trying to plod through and learn as much vocabulary and as many essential sentence patterns as I can. I’m sure that I’ll offend old ladies and make small children laugh if I mangle up all of these politeness forms, but at least I’ll get my point across. CANTONESE My Cantonese has been in a slump recently. I don’t know if it’s because I’m pushing myself to discuss more difficult topics or because my brain is tired, but I feel that my speech has been less “fluent” recently. For instance, today during my language exchange session, I tried to say the equivalent of, “first, they slice open your cornea, then they pull back the flap, and then they use the laser to reshape your lens,” but I didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to phrase that in Cantonese. I am also still missing a lot of useful words like “control,” “repeat,” “willpower,” “watery,” “dense/thick,” “reversible,” “dehydration,” fairy tale,” “illusion,” “layer,” and “desert.” It’s a little discouraging to think that I’ve spent 7 months cramming thousands of words and immersed in Cantonese, but I’m still missing basic words like “control” or “thick.” I imagine it’s a bit like that feeling when you go to a foreign country and realize that even though you can read novels in the language, you can’t even ask for a restaurant bill. In any event, I guess it’s better to learn these words late than never. SPANISH After spending countless hours trying to motivate myself to read La Guerra de los Cielos, I’ve decided to put it down in favor of the Spanish-translation of Game of Thrones. I felt like I was wading through Guerra and not getting anywhere. The plot is very convoluted; the characters aren’t particularly likable; and even after reading about 40% of it, I still don’t understand what the book is supposed to be about. Since Game of Thrones gets such good reviews, I am hoping that this will be more interesting. So far, I’ve gone through about 10 pages and it seems okay. I’m not reading too much of it every day, but it has been a nice way to keep Spanish fresh in my head. LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE I finally finished clearing out all of the new cards in my Spanish and French vocabulary decks in Anki. It’s a little strange to get that Anki message saying that I’m finished with the deck for now. Even though I’ve been looking forward to finishing all the new cards, I now feel like I should be spending time learning new words. But I think I’ll wait until after my Tokyo trip to add more Spanish/German/French words to Anki. Right now, the prime focus will be on Japanese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6914 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 108 of 124 05 November 2013 at 11:46am | IP Logged | ||
|
My motivation for language learning has been waning recently. After almost a year of studying languages intensely (first German for a trip to Europe, then Cantonese for Hong Kong, and most recently, Japanese), I’ve been getting bored and my attention is wandering to other things. I only have one more week until my trip to Tokyo, so this lack of motivation comes at a bad time. I think that I know enough Japanese at this point to sort of eke by in Tokyo, but it’ll be tough. On the other hand, I don’t know if cramming in the next few days is really going to make a difference. Or will it?
CANTONESE The one exception to my language learning slump is Cantonese, which I still need to use everyday. I haven’t been doing much book learning in the past few weeks, but I have been using the language a lot in daily conversations, with my language partner, and learning new vocabulary with Anki. I would guess that my vocabulary has finally crossed into the 6,000-word mark. My language exchange sessions have been both incredibly frustrating and productive. I usually learn about 50-75 new words per 3-hour session, which is great for learning but also makes me feel like an idiot. Most recently, I’ve learned all sorts of interesting words, such as “cheerleader,” “caffeine,” “espresso,” “sideburns,” “biceps,” “structure,” “texture,” “to dress up (in a costume),” “to sponsor,” “academic scholarship,” and many more. I have noticed that I am getting better at expressing myself and I struggle less often for words when casually chatting with people, but I still often hit topics where I am at a painful loss of words. JAPANESE I know I should be stepping it up, but I have been losing interest in Japanese. I’ve now reached Assimil Lesson 50 and JapanesePod101 Beginner Season 4 Lesson 10. The problem is that Assimil is starting to feel extremely difficult, and JapanesePod101 Beginner Season 4 isn’t fun. Whereas I liked the Newbie Seasons, the Beginner Series is just annoying. The main characters are a wimpy, awkward pro-boxer, his slightly bratty girlfriend, her evil father and her mother, who sounds like a drugged-up seductress. The storyline also isn’t interesting or relevant to me (cleaning piranha tanks? planning golf outings?). I think, however, I’ve done enough studying to get by as a tourist in Japan, albeit in a very clumsy, painful, and awkward way. Usually, I spend a lot of time trying to sound good in a language – spending time mastering the tourist phrases, the accent, basic grammar, but here, I am just going for crude survival language. I think if this trip goes well and we plan more future trips to Japan, then I’ll decide then whether I want to hunker down and really learn more of the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6914 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 109 of 124 16 November 2013 at 9:26am | IP Logged | ||
|
I am writing this post from Tokyo. We’ve already been here for four days, but it’s flown by so quickly! I’ve been visiting a lot of museums, exploring different ramen and sushi restaurants, and poking around all sorts of fun shops and department stores. It's been a lot of fun. The weather is perfect for walking around-- chilly but mostly dry. The museums have been very informative and fun, and the food has been incredibly good.
I am extremely glad that I spent a big chunk of time learning some Japanese before coming. Knowing how to read kana and being able to communicate at a basic level has been extremely helpful. Tokyo isn’t like Europe, where a lot of people actually know some English even if they don’t like using it. Here, a lot of people really don’t know any English, and they are super happy even if you bumble and blunder along. I still prefer to use English when I can, but when people only speak Japanese, I can still sort of scrape by. I can do things like ask for directions, buy things, ask for the prices of stuff, or make very superficial small talk. I have been able to say all sorts of simple stuff like, “I am American but I am currently living in Hong Kong,” or “Which train do I take to go to Ueno Park,” or “Excuse me but where is the bathroom” or “Where is the line for buying tickets,” or “I would like a glass of water,” etc. My Japanese must sound atrocious to them, but I can usually get my point across. For instance, even though Japanese has all sorts of fancy, specific words that mean things like “two days,” “three items,” “four people,” “five months,” etc., they will still understand you if you just say the ordinal number and then the noun, such as “four” and then “day.” Or even if you don’t know the proper way to say, “Hong Kong is warmer than Tokyo,” you can be understood saying something like “Tokyo is cold but Hong Kong is warm.” JapanesePod101 hosts love to say that certain errors or Americanisms sound “weird” or sound “babyish,” but at least, the point gets across! According to Anki, I’ve learned approximately 950 words at this point, which sounds about right, since I’ve made it through the first volume of Assimil and about 75 lessons of JapanesePod101. I still haven’t decided whether I want to continue learning more of the language when I get back to Hong Kong. Cantonese is still my top priority, and I should probably get started on Mandarin at some point in the next year if I will eventually need to use it for my job. But I think I’ve established a fairly decent base in “survival Japanese.” Keeping the words in Anki will help me maintain what I’ve learned to date, and I have compiled enough resources to continue studying if I so choose. Edited by mike245 on 19 November 2013 at 6:54am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6914 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 110 of 124 28 November 2013 at 4:17am | IP Logged | ||
|
After two weeks in Tokyo, it’s nice to finally come back to Hong Kong. I’m extremely glad that I studied Japanese, but I think I’m going to put it aside for a while so that I can concentrate on other things. I probably won’t be making another trip to Japan for at least a few years. In the meanwhile, I need to get my Cantonese up to a good level and get started on Mandarin soon.
CANTONESE I’ve started learning Cantonese characters using a pre-made Anki deck, which has been great. I think that waiting until now to start was a great idea. I’ve noticed that if I already know how to say and use a word in Cantonese, it is MUCH easier to learn how to read it. I’m only studying 5 characters a day, so it’ll take a long time before I get through all 5,000 words in the dek. But I think this is the least stressful way to ease into the written language. I think in about a year, once I’ve learned about 1,500-2,000 characters, I’ll make a real effort to start reading, but in the meanwhile, I am contenting myself with trying to read various characters that I see on street signs, restaurant windows, and the like. I am now finally finished learning all of the vocabulary and sentence patterns in Living Cantonese. That book has been great for expanding my knowledge; every day, I am noticing how people around me use these colloquial expressions and sentence patterns. I still have about 1-2 more months before I finish the Routledge Intermediate Cantonese workbook, but this has also been a huge help in increasing my comfort with sentence patterns and new words. I still have several Greenwood Press books to get through, including Intermediate Themes for Speaking and Listening. It’s a pretty slim volume that is more focused on exercises rather than dialogues, but I think it’ll be helpful for filling in additional holes in my knowledge. MANDARIN I still haven’t created a study plan for Mandarin. Part of me doesn’t want to start studying Mandarin yet, since I feel like I haven’t reached a good enough point in my Cantonese and I don’t want to risk confusion. But on the other hand¸ my job requires that I go to mainland China quite frequently, and it would be a huge advantage to know Mandarin. Furthermore, living in Hong Kong, I can’t stop studying Cantonese, since I have to use it all the time. The only solution is to study both at the same time, and hope that it isn’t too confusing. I've dug out all my old ChinesePod lessons, so I think that's the place to start. I'll probably get started in about a week or two. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6524 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 111 of 124 28 November 2013 at 7:07am | IP Logged | ||
I've been working through that same deck! I've been going quite a bit faster, but then I already knew most of the characters in it. I'm pausing with about 700 cards left, at the moment, and I'll do the last ones after New Year's. I've got to get my reps down to a manageable amount before the holidays when I won't have as much time. I was doing close to 1,000 reps a days when I was at my most intensive. :) Anyway, what you need to be wary of with that deck is that there are loads of extra readings. As I've been working though it I've been editing my cards and asking for clarifications on CantoDict when it couldn't give me the answer. Many times only one of the readings is used (the other ones being obscure or archais variants), sometimes one is literal and the other colloquial and sometimes the different readings have different meanings. I'm planning on uploading my edited version of the deck once I'm done with it, but that's not gonna be until next year. Oh, and I recommend you work through the deck by label, if you haven't. Instead of using X new cards a day, do 0 new cards and then every day make a filtered deck where you display X new cards that has the label "L1". When you're done with L1, do L2 and then start working on L3. There are some characters in the deck that are above L3, and these are often not even known by natives. Good luck, and hang in there! 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6914 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 112 of 124 04 December 2013 at 4:10am | IP Logged | ||
|
@Ari – Thanks for the tips regarding using the Anki deck! I’ve only gone through about 300 characters so far, but I have already noticed your points that: (1) there are lots and lots of readings for the characters, and (2) some of the characters are very advanced. I showed a few cards to some friends of mine who are educated native speakers and they confessed they never use those characters and probably couldn’t write them from memory. I stand in awe of your pace and progress through the deck (I could never do anything close to 1,000 reps a day!). Hopefully, though, I’ll make it through the entire deck. I think my snail's pace will keep me from getting overwhelmed, and I’ll plan to filter the new cards to make things easier going forward.
1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
