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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4798 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 57 of 124 08 June 2013 at 7:09am | IP Logged |
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Congrats on the "intermediate" level achievement. I have a healthy jealousy of you: how faster would my Mandarin go along if I was right now in Nanjing or something!
Well, I'm aiming to get a Chinese grant to bo there next year, if I pass their texting, so I hope so. I see your first mention of Cantonese was on March 5th. I don't know how long you had been "learning" the language prior to that, but if that date is close to your first post then the comparison of your progress vs mine is a great indicator of how much of a boost full immersion provides. You are waaaaaay more advanced than me, and will continue to surpass me. It is an interesting comparison. Keep it up and don't take your time there for granted! 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 58 of 124 10 June 2013 at 12:58pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks, outcast! I do feel that I've made enormous progress here in Hong Kong, but I have to admit that I have been halfheartedly learning Cantonese for a LONG time now. I grew up watching Cantonese television (even though my parents never spoke it with us kids), and then spent years hearing Cantonese everyday through my partner's interactions with family and friends. But my deliberate, formal learning was largely confined to 1 year of conversational Cantonese classes in college, and another semester of conversational Cantonese in law school. I would estimate that by the time I started in early March, I already knew about 750 - 1,000 words and was maybe around a high A1 or very low A2 level.
Good luck on the grant application! Immersion in a TL country is an incredibly challenging but wonderful, satisfying experience. There is no better way to force yourself to learn a language than to have to live it. I am reminded of that everyday, and it has done wonders for my motivation. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:30am 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 59 of 124 13 June 2013 at 10:05am | IP Logged |
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I finished the Routledge Basic Cantonese book a few days ago, and have moved on to the Intermediate Cantonese Grammar volume. It feels much more difficult! This appears to be mostly a vocabulary issue, but there are also some points of grammar that were not addressed in the Sidney Lau books and which are completely new to me. I blew through the Basic book in just a few days, but I think it’s going to take a few weeks before I finish getting through the Intermediate volume and internalize everything.
In tandem with Intermediate Cantonese, I have four very interesting looking books from the Greenwood Press that I am planning to dive into: Living Cantonese, Intermediate Themes for Speaking/Listening, Wedding Bells and A Fung Shui Master. The former two are textbook style with lots of dialogues, whereas the latter two are graded readers. They all look very engaging, and I think they will be very helpful for rounding out my vocabulary and knowledge of colloquial Cantonese. Some of the interesting things I’ve done recently in Cantonese: 1. Sort out an issue with the dry cleaners regarding a missing pair of pants, 2. Ask a vegetable seller at the market how to cook a certain type of green vegetable I’d never seen before, 3. Take a sweater to the tailor to be altered, 4. Discuss the process of applying for citizenship in the US, and 5. Talk about getting a new gym membership card with the receptionist at my gym. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:31am 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 60 of 124 17 June 2013 at 4:08am | IP Logged |
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CANTONESE
It’s liberating not to be juggling too many languages at the same time, since I’ve been able to concentrate on packing in as much Cantonese as I can. Now that my vocabulary is reaching a minimally acceptable level, I’ve been concentrating on cramming in useful sentence patterns. For this approach, I’ve been transcribing lots of the example sentences from the Routledge books into Anki. Intermediate Cantonese, in particular, has a ton of useful sentences (probably in the range of 2-3K), which will take a LONG time to get through, but I think ultimately, this exercise will be very worthwhile. As I read through the grammar explanations in the Routledge book, it’s been wonderful to get that feeling of “ah ha, so that’s why they say it this way!” There are certain things that I’ve never formally studied, but that sort of just sound right to me, so it’s great to finally see the rules. For instance, the combination of “lìhn … dōu … màaih” to mean “even … also” in the sense of “you would even throw away your favorite shirt as well” is something that I can use, but I never understood the mechanics behind it until now. I’ve also started using Living Cantonese by Greenwood Press, which so far has been great! The book is based on ten dialogues excerpted from a popular radio comedy series about a Hong Kong couple, “John & Mary.” Each lesson includes the 3-4 minute dialogue at full native speed, followed by detailed analyses of the vocabulary, sentence patterns, useful grammar points and cultural notes, as well as some learning exercises. The dialogues are hilarious, the language is pretty up to date, and the book is full of useful expressions and notes, especially regarding words/phrases that Cantonese speakers tend to abbreviate or mumble through. I think it's going to take me at least 2 months to get through this book, after which I will move on to my other Greenwood Press intermediate books. The third part of my current studying is watching War of the Genders, a very popular TVB legal comedy series from 2000. It’s a great show, with very snappy dialogues, likable characters and funny plot lines. This is mostly for pleasure, but it is a great way to practice. The language is, I think, just right for my level – I can understand about 75-80% of the dialogues if I concentrate, and the language is modern and colloquial enough for me to put to use in daily life. Most importantly, I am hearing a lot of the words that I’ve been cramming via Anki, which is definitely improving my listening comprehension and reinforcing my vocabulary. I generally watch 1-2 episodes a day, and still have 85 episodes to go, so this will take quite a while. I think after I finish watching the series once, I will go back in a few months and re-watch it, to see if my listening comprehension has improved. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:31am 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 61 of 124 21 June 2013 at 10:38am | IP Logged |
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CANTONESE
After a week of various medical scares that culminated in a two-day hospital stay, I am finally back at home and recovering. That turn of events did however, give me a lot of time to study and practice my Chinese, including talking with nurses and other hospital staff (the doctors all spoke excellent English). I actually just went through medical terms in Interesting Cantonese 2, which was incredibly helpful since I could discuss things like surgery, asthma, anasthesia, blood pressure, body temperature, anemia, thermometers, etc., without struggling for words. As I talked with a nurse in Chinese during an anesthesia-induced daze, I was reminded that this is one of the ways to really ingrain a language into my brain. In an immersion environment, sometimes you just HAVE to use the language, even when you don’t feel like it. It's now been three and a half months since I've been here in Hong Kong. When I first started intensively studying the language back in early March, I set a goal of being able to "converse colloquially in the language and watch television shows with decent comprehension." So where am I in my language learning? Well, I can definitely converse colloquially in the language, and when I watch television, depending on the show topic, I can understand anywhere from 50-95% of what is going on. Travel, food and comedy/drama/soap opera shows are easiest to understand (usually 80-95% comprehension). News is the hardest (generally 50-65% comprehension). There are still a couple of months before the end of summer, so I still have time to reach my goals. Given my current rate of progress, I think I can certainly continue to improve. While B2-level skills still seems so far away, I do think solid, B1-level oral skills are certainly possible by the end of summer. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:32am 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 62 of 124 23 June 2013 at 9:09am | IP Logged |
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CANTONESE
I am now up to Chapter 14 of Routledge Intermediate Cantonese and Chapter 3 of Living Cantonese. I am slowing down the pace of the Routledge book, since I am mining so many example sentences (probably 50-100 sentences per chapter) that it will take me a long time to get through them in Anki. I was originally planning on finishing Intermediate Cantonese by the end of June, but I think I am going to separate my studying into two chunks: (1) skimming the book to the end, reviewing all the grammar and the explanations, and then (2) going through at a more leisurely pace to input the new words/sentences into Anki and complete all of the exercises. Living Cantonese is very useful. The best part of it is the example sentences that use very colloquial expressions and particles, which I have been inputting into Anki and memorizing. This exercise is helping me get accustomed to which final sentence particles belong on certain types of sentences and "moods." There are some particles in Cantonese that I already know and use, but there are others that I am not that good with, so this is really good practice. There are a few new words here and there, but not much compared to the other resources that I am using. The only complaint I have with Living Cantonese (which is not really a fault of the book, actually), is that it uses the high falling tone, which has largely fallen out of modern Hong Kong usage. For ease of learning, I don't really use the high falling tone except for a few words here and there that actually demand it. But listening to the recordings, I have started mimicking the high falling tone, which is messing up my normal speech a bit. I don't know if the other Greenwood Press books use the high falling tone as well, but this is a good thing to keep in mind as I take on other language learning materials. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:33am 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 63 of 124 26 June 2013 at 5:06am | IP Logged |
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CANTONESE
I am now up to Lesson 16 of Routledge Intermediate Cantonese and Chapter 4 of Living Cantonese. In order to accelerate my learning, I've created Anki decks for each of these two books. The Living Cantonese deck isn't so bad, but the Routledge deck already has about 500 cards. Once I've gone through those words, I'll merge them back into my primary Cantonese vocabulary deck. I haven't been watching much Cantonese television lately, but yesterday, I started watching a TV show and was glad to note that my listening comprehension has definitely improved. Unfortunately, however, there is still a lot that I can't follow yet. As usual, this appears to be primarily an issue of vocabulary and idiomatic expressions, since the speed isn't really much of a problem for me. GERMAN I am not actively studying German right now, other than 5-10 new vocabulary words through Anki everyday. However, I've started watching the Oliver & Christian excerpts from the popular German soap opera, "Verbotene Liebe," which are available on Youtube. It's not highbrow television, but story line is very cute and interesting (to me, at least), and the language is modern, colloquial and realistic. Each snippet is 3-15 minutes, so it's the perfect length for daily watching. I find these videos very useful for activating/maintaining/improving my listening comprehension and my vocabulary, especially everyday slang that doesn't appear in the formal books. There are more than 500 videos available on Youtube, so it'll take me a while to get through all of them. I have been watching the version with English subtitles, but I generally only look at the subtitles when I can't understand the dialogues. SPANISH After canceling last week's session because of my hospital stay, I am scheduled for another Spanish class this Friday. This will be the third session with my Skype teacher. Right now, it is mostly free form conversation, with a little bit of vocabulary work. I can understand everything she says and I can always get my point across, but sometimes I feel like I am butchering grammar or that I struggle to find elegant ways to say things. I think a large part of this is lack of practice, since I haven't spoken much Spanish in nearly a decade. I did notice a marked improvement in my spoken fluidity between the first and second sessions, so hopefully, I will continue to get better. I think I have the biggest problem with extended discourse, such as telling stories, summarizing articles and giving short free-form speeches, so we will be incorporating more of these exercises into our future classes. There are also some tenses that I am uncomfortable using in spontaneous speech that I hope to get additional practice with. At $11/hour, my Spanish classes are an awesome bargain. If French or German tutors came that cheap, I would definitely sign up. But the cheapest I've seen is $20-25/hour, which is pretty expensive. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:34am 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 64 of 124 28 June 2013 at 4:23am | IP Logged |
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CANTONESE
I have now made it to Chapter 18 of Intermediate Cantonese, but progress is still slow. Each chapter is only a few pages long, but they are so dense with grammar explanations and example sentences that it takes a while for it all to sink in. I have never been someone who learns a language by studying grammar rules. I suppose that’s why I loved Assimil, where all the grammar just sunk in after lots of repetition. So I’m taking a similar approach with Intermediate Cantonese. I have been drilling the example sentences ad naseum with Anki until they feel like second nature, and in the process, internalizing the various grammatical constructions. This isn’t a perfect method; at some point, I will have to buckle down and learn to organically create my own sentence structures. But in the meanwhile, this approach is helping me to quickly assimilate common and correct sentence patterns. Two big milestones for me yesterday: (1) I rode a taxi by myself and gave the taxi driver directions to get somewhere, and (2) I made an appointment by telephone with the gas company to have a routine home gas inspection. The first was a little scary because I don’t know the streets here that well (and have trouble remembering their Chinese names), I hate having to give directions in any language, and taxi drivers here can be kind of brusque and impatient. But it went well and I got to where I needed to go without a hitch. The second was one of my biggest weaknesses – speaking on the phone without being seized by panic. Phone conversations are always hard for me, even when I am talking with people with whom I am already comfortable live chatting in Cantonese. But yesterday, I needed to make the appointment, and there wasn’t anyone on the other side who spoke English. So I just jumped right in. I made a few mistakes early on (with basic grammar!), but after my nerves passed, I was able to speak fairly well. I am sure it helped that the woman helping me knew I wasn't a native speaker (since I had asked for an English-speaking staff member) and was probably herself relieved that I could speak some Chinese. But it still felt like a big breakthrough! OTHER LANGUAGES My French/German/Spanish Anki decks are now down to approximately 300-400 new words. I have been going through 5-10 new words a day, so I should be finished with those decks by the end of summer. For German, that means I will have finished learning all 4,000 words in Langenscheidt's Basic German Vocabulary. For French and Spanish, I am planning to supplement my Anki decks with the Barron’s Mastering Vocabulary books. Each book has about 5,500 vocabulary words, arranged thematically and with example sentences, much like the Langenscheidt book. I would estimate that my French vocabulary right now is somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 words, and my passive Spanish vocabulary is probably at least 5,000 words. However, there are lots of gaps in my vocabulary in both languages. For instance, in Spanish, I have a fair amount of literary vocabulary culled from reading, but I lack a lot of common household words. Furthermore, my intense cramming of Cantonese vocabulary in the past three months has made me aware that for once, my Chinese vocabulary is in some ways starting to exceed my vocabulary in my “stronger” foreign languages. While I recognize that vocabulary is just one component of language learning, it’s the easiest part to keep up while I devote the bulk of my time to Cantonese. And it’s also the part that is the most time consuming. As my current 150-200 Cantonese words/week cramming has shown me, trying to learn that many words every week is EXHAUSTING. But if I can learn just 5 words per day in Spanish and French, my vocabulary in both languages should be pretty good by the end of the year. Later, once my Cantonese is at a good level and I turn back to actively studying one of my other languages, I won’t have to worry so much about vocabulary work. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:35am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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