|
 |
And now Cantonese ... | ||
Share with:
| ||
 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 65 of 124 02 July 2013 at 12:59pm | IP Logged |
|
CANTONESE
I’m not exactly sure what it means to dream “in” a language, but recently, I’ve been having more dreams where I speak Cantonese to people. In my dreams, my Cantonese isn’t any better than it is in real life, but I think my brain is starting to get saturated with the language and is using REM time to cope with new words, new grammar and new patterns. Aside from some conversation practice and lots of Anki work, I haven’t done any formal study of Cantonese in the past few days. There are simply so many sentence patterns that I have been busy memorizing that I don’t have much energy to move forward and learn new material. I think I’ll get over this slump soon, but in the meanwhile, I don’t think it’s a bad idea at all to spend some time solidifying what I have already studied, rather than trying to cram too much new stuff in. I’ve reached a point where I can get across almost any point that I want, albeit with lots of circumlocution, some weird non-native phrasing, some hesitation and some grammar mistakes. What I really need at this point is substantially more conversation practice, so that I can speak more fluidly. My work with memorizing sentence patterns has been great, since it is helping me develop good habits and proper sentence structures – but I think the oral fluency is just going to take a lot of time. I haven’t done any language exchanges or language meet-ups in Cantonese, but I think that might be the next step to take my language to the next level. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:21am 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 66 of 124 04 July 2013 at 4:20am | IP Logged |
|
WANDERLUST
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt language wanderlust. I think the last time was back in 2010 when I tried to learn some Japanese in preparation for a trip, but quit after getting to the middle of Pimsleur Comprehensive Japanese II. Since then, I’ve been so busy with non-language related things and languages that I have studied that I didn’t feel like starting anything new. But recently, I’ve been looking for Japanese language learning materials for my partner, who really does want to learn the language and has been asking me for self-study materials post-Pimsleur. I’ve settled on the Genki books, which I’m planning to order from Amazon and pick up when we are back in the States in about a month from now. But in the process, I’ve been asking myself if I eventually want to return to attempting to learn Japanese. We are also planning a trip to Seoul in a few weeks, and the planning process has made it clear to me that it is hard to get by without knowing Korean. Obviously, it wouldn’t be worthwhile to try to learn Korean just to spend 2-3 days in Seoul, but if it is a city we end up liking, I can imagine that I would want to add Korean to my hit list. We also just went to Bangkok last year, and loved it. The people were friendly, the food was delicious, the city felt safe, and everything was extremely cheap. The only issues we had were the extremely hot weather (although compared to Hong Kong, it doesn’t seem so bad anymore) and the fact that we didn’t know any Thai, making it hard to get around. Unfortunately, Thai isn’t closely related to any of the Asian languages I’ve studied or learned, so it would be starting pretty much from scratch. But I can’t help but longingly look at various Thai self-study methods, such as Thai for Beginners, Everyday Thai for Beginners, and the Learn Thai Podcast series. The problem, of course, is that my language list is already too long. Assuming that I get to a comfortable point in my Cantonese (which I think will take until end of next year, at earliest), I want to devote time to improving my Spanish, German and French. I would love to get my Spanish up to advanced fluency, and my German/French up to basic fluency, but that will take time and lots of hard work. Then there is Brazilian Portuguese, which I learned to a decent level back in college but haven’t used much since. Every so often, I bump into native Brazilians and chit-chat in the language, and it reminds me how much I love it. And of course, there are also Khmer and Mandarin. For personal reasons, these languages would be much more useful to me than Japanese and Thai, and they would be easier to learn as well. As a heritage speaker of Khmer, I already know a fair number of words and have the pronunciation down, although learning how to read and acquiring new vocabulary will certainly be a challenge. I would of course also get lots of practice with family. If I study Mandarin after Cantonese, I can take advantage of similarities between the languages, but even so, I think it would take at least two years to get to a good level. In brief, adding new languages doesn’t make any sense, but I still remain tempted. I suspect that the real reason is that after four months of fairly intensive Cantonese studying, my brain is getting bored and wants to try something different. I’ve gotten to the point where I can “get by” in the language, and my brain doesn’t want to put in the effort to make additional gains, which will be slow. I experienced the same thing about four months into my stay in Germany, when I started buying Italian learning materials and trying to learn the language on the side (another failed language endeavor). I think there are a few options here: (1) I can indulge by learning a bit of one of those languages, much as I tried to learn Italian and Japanese in the past – it’s likely this will just be a month or so of flailing around, and then I can return to Cantonese and my other languages, (2) I can try to sublimate the wanderlust by turning to one of the languages already on my list, like German or Khmer – this would be more productive for my overall language goals, but it could also risk derailing my focus on Cantonese, or (3) I can just try to ignore the wanderlust, although it probably would continue to bother me for at least a few months. For the moment, I’m going with option 3, although I might stray towards one of the other options in the future, especially after my partner’s Japanese books arrive! Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5111 days ago 2238 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 67 of 124 04 July 2013 at 2:28pm | IP Logged |
|
Mike, first, I really enjoy reading your log. You've done very well learning Cantonese! I can sympathize with wanting to learn all the languages you come across. When I travel and can speak the language with the natives it is a much more satisfying experience.
Another option you can have is to have a long term goal to learn the other languages only to A-1 or A-2 level. You don't have to learn them all to the same level as Cantonese and Spanish. If you have a specific goal of being able to communicate on a very basic level, there's less flailing around trying to learn the whole language. For me, being able to have a very basic conversation while in a foreign country would be better than not being able to talk at all. That's what I've done with Haitian Creole. Though, obviously, I wish I could speak better than very basically, it does make my interactions with Haitian Creole speakers more fulfilling. They are so surprised and pleased to hear a "blan" speaking their language at any level. Keep up your good work with Cantonese. Edited by iguanamon on 04 July 2013 at 3:10pm 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 68 of 124 05 July 2013 at 9:42am | IP Logged |
|
Thanks, iguanamon! Yes, I can see how an A1 or A2 level would be incredibly helpful for travel situations, especially in countries where people speak minimal English. I think the problem in the past has been that I’ve gotten mired in lots of grammar rules or vocabulary that aren’t necessarily applicable to the kinds of tourist situations I usually find myself in when traveling. If I do decide to turn back to Japanese or start Thai in the future, setting smaller goals or even just starting out with a phrasebook learning approach could help keep things manageable. I'll think about it some more and see what makes the most sense for my language learning.
CANTONESE I know it’s trite, but the more Cantonese I learn, the more I realize that I still have left to learn. I’ve reached the point where I’ve covered almost all of the important grammar points and I’ve learned a fairly substantial amount of vocabulary covering most everyday situations. But as I continue to make my way through the Intermediate Cantonese and Living Cantonese books, I realize that there are still so many idiomatic expressions, synonyms, colloquial usages, and other things that I still need to study. Living Cantonese is the best book I’ve found so far for teaching realistic language – the interjections, sentence particles, ellisions, abbreviations and other little things that native speakers use on a daily basis that makes their speech colorful and authentic. I hear a lot of these colloquialisms everyday, but because I’ve never formally studied them, I don’t feel comfortable yet incorporating them into my speech. One example is “je’eh,” which roughly translates as “that is to say” or “what I mean is.” It’s a phrase that never shows up in the grammar books and almost never in scripted speech (like TV documentaries), but it’s as natural to a native Cantonese speaker as words like “um” or “uh” are to a native English speaker. It seems kind of strange to be putting these words into Anki and drilling them, since they are so spontaneous and situational and, indeed, who intentionally tries to speak with “ums” and “ahs”? But I think they are crucial to speaking authentic Cantonese, so I’ll be practicing them with the goal of being able to insert these colloquialisms into my own speech as appropriate. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:24am 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 69 of 124 07 July 2013 at 5:39am | IP Logged |
|
CANTONESE
I haven’t made any new progress with my textbooks, but I have been spending a lot of time watching television and going through my Anki decks. Lately, I’ve been watching television and adding new words with the assistance of Cantodict. If there are words that I don’t know, I’ll check them up based on their jyutping romanization, and then add them to my Cantonese deck. This has been a great way to find new words that might not necessarily show up in my structured word lists. A lot of people I’ve spoken to about Chinese language learning are of the impression that you can just sort of absorb Cantonese over time, and that you can learn Cantonese just by doing some sort of fun activity like chatting with friends or singing karaoke or following along with the Chinese characters at the bottom of newscasts. Vlad’s blog on Mandarin language learning also recommends a similar approach of just socializing and letting the language come in naturally, rather than using Anki and structured vocabulary studies. Well, that approach may be fine for some people, but it doesn’t work for me. I actually need structured studying for the words to sink in. It feels great when I encounter a word or sentence pattern for the first few times and I have trouble understanding how to use it or say it fluidly, and then coming back to it after a few weeks when the word or sentence feels like second nature. Of course, my retention isn’t perfect. But considering that I learn about 200 new cards every week – even if I only retain 85-95%, that’s already a lot. KHMER After some consideration, I’ve decided to sublimate my wanderlust into learning Khmer. On the one hand, learning Khmer shouldn’t be too bad at all, since I already have a decent basic knowledge of the colloquial language. But on the other hand, I know almost nothing of the formal/polite language, I have never studied it before, and I am completely illiterate in the language, so this actually feels like a new language to me (as opposed to, say, improving my Spanish or French). My family is tentatively considering a trip to Cambodia next year, so there will be good motivation to learn how to read and do touristy stuff in the language. Cambodian is diglossic, so the common and rather "coarse" language that I use with family would definitely not be appropriate in formal or polite social settings. And of course, I would love to be able to use more advanced Khmer when speaking with my parents. Based on online research, I am planning to use the following resources: Colloquial Cambodian, Cambodian for Beginners, and Modern Spoken Cambodian. Colloquial Cambodian comes highly recommended by js6426, who learned Khmer within about a year. Cambodian for Beginners is available as an iPhone application, which I can download and use on the go. And Modern Spoken Cambodian is an FSI-style audio-lingual method that I picked up a few years ago and which is loaded with audio drills (available for free from Yale’s website!). My goal is fairly straightforward: I want to learn how to read basic Khmer and get through one of the above books by the end of this year. Khmer apparently has the hardest alphabet of any language in the world (including 33 consonants and 23 vowels), but at least it’ll be easier than trying to learn thousands of Chinese characters! I started learning yesterday, and have made it through 16 consonants. I think it helps a lot that none of the sounds are "foreign" to me, and it's more a matter of connecting the letter with the sound that I am already familiar with. At this rate, I think I can learn the alphabet within a few weeks, and then start practicing reading simple words. As I progress, I’ll revise my goals later if it turns out to be too easy or too difficult. Cantonese is still my highest priority given circumstances, but I think I can devote about 30 minutes a day to studying Khmer, with this figure varying based on my personal interest and energy levels. Hopefully, this will provide me with enough variety to keep me from getting bored with my Cantonese studies! Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:25am 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 70 of 124 08 July 2013 at 10:35am | IP Logged |
|
I’ll be traveling the rest of this week, so I will have minimal time for learning. I don’t plan to bring any language books with me, but I will have my iPhone and iPad, which have my Anki decks, my language learning MP3s, and the Cambodian for Beginners app that I just purchased.
CANTONESE I am now up to Chapter 19 of Routledge Intermediate Cantonese and Chapter 5 of Living Cantonese. I have been having some trouble with a few of the new grammar constructions, especially the “verb + héi séuhng làih” construction. It’s not one of the patterns included in the Sidney Lau books, so I don’t have much exposure to it, and I don’t hear it often in spoken Cantonese, so it’s not something I am familiar with. I’ve added a few example sentences to Anki though, so hopefully, with enough practice, I’ll get it. The authors of Basic Cantonese and Intermediate Cantonese actually have a third book available, Comprehensive Cantonese, which is widely considered to be the best and most comprehensive discussion of Cantonese grammar. Unfortunately, it’s extremely expensive here in Hong Kong, so I’ve ordered a copy online and will pick it up from the US next month. My understanding is that the book covers much more grammatical ground than the two smaller volumes, and is chock full of additional vocabulary and sentence patterns, so it'll be great to use to "finish up" my study of Cantonese grammar. I expect to finish Intermediate Cantonese within about a month, but I think I’ll wait several months after that before I start Comprehensive Cantonese. In the meanwhile, I’m planning to talk more with people, watch more television, finish up my vocabulary lists and new Anki cards, and get through my Greenwood Press materials. This will give me some time to let the language sink into my head before I return to studying grammar and structure. KHMER I’ve now studied all of the Khmer consonants, and plan to move on to the vowels soon. The consonants weren’t so bad, but I think the real challenge will be to learn all of the vowels and then figuring out how they are fit together with the consonants to form words. Khmer alphabet letters are a little strange in that each consonant actually has an inherent vowel sound (one of two classes), which may or may not come into play in writing out the word. Additionally, each vowel interacts differently with the consonant depending on the consonant class, which makes things even more complicated. After looking more into various methods I’ve selected, I’ve decided to start with Cambodian for Beginners, and then will move on to Colloquial Cambodian and Modern Spoken Cambodian. Cambodian for Beginners is pretty basic, but it will give me a good grounding in formal language and the basics of reading Khmer. I think it’ll be well in line with trying to keep my goals small and achievable. Unfortunately, the iOS system does NOT support Khmer fonts, so I will not be able to use Anki Mobile for learning new Khmer vocabulary. I think this is okay for the time being, since the Cambodian for Beginners app sort of works like a flash card system. However, once I finish that app, I’ll have to find some other system for learning new words. I might have to stick to using the desktop version of Anki, which does allow Khmer characters. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:26am 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 71 of 124 13 July 2013 at 3:13am | IP Logged |
|
WANDERLUST
This is always how it starts! Just days after I decided to start studying Khmer on the side, I suddenly have both the pressing need and the motivation to study Japanese. On Thursday, I found out that we’ll be spending two weeks in Tokyo in November. The first week will be largely on my own, and the second week will be with two non-Japanese speaking friends. During my last trip to Japan back in 2010, it was extremely hard to get by without speaking/reading the language. We had to rely on sign language and pantomiming to get our points across, since the scant few words I remembered from Pimsleur and my partner’s knowledge of Chinese characters just weren’t enough. Since then, my partner has learned some Japanese. He probably is now at a high A1 or low A2 level, and he can read kanji, hiragana and katakana, so it’s enough to eke by as tourists. Nevertheless, if I am going to spend the first week largely wandering around Tokyo by myself, I’ll need to learn some survival Japanese. Besides, I don’t want to pass up this awesome opportunity to learn some Japanese and actually use it for two weeks! Last time, I failed in my efforts to learn Japanese. I was planning back to back trips to Paris and Tokyo, so I was dividing my attention between learning basic French/Japanese. I was also trying to learn some Cantonese, finish law school, move houses, and study for the bar exam all at the time. Japanese was too hard and I did not have the time and energy to push through. And my Pimsleur study was too haphazard and insufficient. Without seeing anything in writing, I just wasn’t able to commit things to memory. So I gave up. Three years later, I have a lot more time on my hands. Even though I am still planning to juggle Cantonese and Japanese simultaneous, my Cantonese is at a much higher level than it was back in 2010. Indeed, I am largely done with Cantonese grammar and I mostly spending time getting more comfortable with speaking and learning new words for now. My goals for Khmer are small enough (and I have enough prior background in that language) that Japanese will be my only “beginner” level language. This time, I am going to go about learning in a different way. Instead of using just Pimsleur, I am going to go for a multi-track approach: learning hiragana/katakana first, then using Assimil Japanese with Ease and listening to JapanesePod101, and using the Genki textbooks as soon as I can get my hands on them. I will also use Anki to start cramming in as many Japanese words as I can before my trip. I am not so concerned with using native-speed language or grammatically perfect or "proper" formal/informal Japanese. I just want to be able to get my point across and understand the basics of what people say to me, even if I have to ask people to speak SUPER slowly and repeat themselves multiple times. Since learning about our upcoming trip in Japan, I have already started learning hiragana. I know all of the basic letters, and plan to finish learning the rest by the end of the weekend. I also started with Assimil Japanese yesterday, and have made it through Lesson 1. I have four months before my trip to learn as much Japanese as I can. Hopefully, this will be successful! CANTONESE I caved and ended up bringing my Cantonese study materials on my trip with me. I finished reading through Intermediate Cantonese, but I still need to go back to complete the exercises and add all of the vocabulary and example sentences into Anki. I’ve also made it through Chapter 5 of Living Cantonese. That book continues to be my favorite Cantonese resource. It feels a little bit like an intermediate/advanced Assimil course – hilarious dialogues, excellent voice acting, lots and lots of vocabulary and useful expressions. There are only ten lessons, but I think I will have added 400-500 new cards to my Anki deck by the time I’m done with it. Not that many new words and phrases (maybe 200 total), but there is a ton of useful example sentences that I want to memorize. I am also up to Episode 22 of War of the Genders. This is really a very entertaining show, but my comprehension ranges widely. There are some episodes that I understand almost completely, but then, Episode 21 just flew right past me. There were a few minute-long rants where I caught maybe 10 words total. This is still largely a vocabulary problem. There are just so many words and expressions I *still* don’t know. KHMER I have finished learning all of the consonants, and am now on to vowels. I feel a little guilty, but I am approaching this very slowly, since I am not in a super rush to learn Khmer. It’s already hard enough studying Japanese’s two alphabets without also trying to cram in the Khmer alphabet as well. That said, I’ll be going home to see family in two weeks. This is a great opportunity to speak and listen to Khmer every day with my parents and siblings. I’ve also told my mom that I want to learn how to read Khmer, so she’ll be available as a resource. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:28am 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 72 of 124 15 July 2013 at 3:51am | IP Logged |
|
It’s interesting how quickly the focus on my studying has shifted from European languages to Asian languages. Just earlier this year, I was spending most of my free time reviving my German and French skills for trips. Now, my studying is mostly about the Asian languages. I am still learning 5 new words every day in French/German/Spanish, and I still have 1 hour of Skype Spanish classes per week. But the bulk of my attention will be on Japanese and Cantonese, with some time devoted to Khmer.
JAPANESE After lots of studying over the past three days, I have learned all of the hiragana and about 70% of the katakana. I can now slowly and painfully read words written in hiragana, but I still have a few days before I can do the same with katakana. The Japanese alphabets are a lot easier than the Khmer alphabet, since Japanese vowels are very regular and easy to remember, and the symbols are fairly simple. I know that it will be a different story once kanji comes into the picture, but so far, I am appreciating the (relative) straightforwardness of these two writing systems. I’m now up to Lesson 3 of Assimil Japanese, and Lesson 3 of JapanesePod101 Newbie Season 1. Both are going pretty fast right now, since I do remember a little bit from Pimsleur. I’ve been inputting the vocabulary words into Anki with the Japanese kanji/furigana/hiragana/katakana. Right now, it’s simple stuff like greetings, but I think it’s a good practice in reading the Japanese script. I’ve never really used JapanesePod before, although I did download a bunch of episodes during a trial period back in 2010. A lot of people here on HTLAL have spoken highly of JapanesePod, so I am hoping to make this a regular part of my studying. The first three lessons have been slow, but entertaining. I don’t really understand the different “seasons” but I am planning to go through at least the first two or three Newbie seasons before my trip in November. CANTONESE In light of my foray back into Japanese, I am planning to ease up (for the time being) on my intense Cantonese studying. I am still learning 20 new Anki cards per day, including lots of vocabulary and sentence patterns, but I am not actively learning new grammar. I am however spending more time watching Cantonese television, in an effort to improve my listening comprehension. My tentative long-term goal for Cantonese is to reach a good level of “colloquial” knowledge by the end of 2013, and then start learning standard Chinese and how to read early next year. For various reasons, I’ve held off on rushing to learn how to read too early. I wanted to get the pronunciation and tones of words down before going into characters. Colloquial spoken Cantonese also differs radically from standard written Chinese, so reading doesn’t help that much with spoken Cantonese. Furthermore, I originally learned how to read in Mandarin (learning about 500 characters), so knowing Mandarin pronunciations could create some confusion. And lastly, if I am trying to learn to read in two other languages, I don’t want to overload my brain by adding Chinese characters to the mix. That said, it is hard to get by here without being able to read. Usually, I can recognize every other word in a sentence, and based on context, I can sometimes guess the unknown characters. But this doesn’t really work with street signs or restaurant menus. Additionally, I can’t read any magazines, newspapers or books in Chinese, which constrains my future learning. Sooner or later, I'll need to buckle down and study the characters. I am still looking for a good method. Even here in Hong Kong, almost all the books I have seen focus on Mandarin, including Mandarin pronunciations. Several of my Cantonese books have Chinese characters, but I think I need a more systematic method of flashcards/drills/exercises to learn than just by reading through them. KHMER I have now learned three vowels. My goal is to try to get through most of the vowels by the end of July, so that I can start practicing reading when I am back at home. Edited by mike245 on 23 August 2013 at 3:29am 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. |
