jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6295 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin
| Message 17 of 59 07 January 2011 at 3:33am | IP Logged |
I'm happy to say I finished my first Cantonese textbook today. (Cantonese for Everyone.) I highly recommend it.
Some ideas for what to do next:
1. Work through the Sidney Lau series of text books as I had originally planned.
2. Watch the old TV series The Bund (上海灘) starring Chow Yun Fat (周潤發) if I can find it.
3. Just start trying to speak to people in Cantonese. I'm feeling shy about butchering the language...
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Li Fei Pro Member United States Joined 5124 days ago 147 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map
| Message 18 of 59 13 January 2011 at 3:50am | IP Logged |
Hey, Jimbo, how's it going? Congratulations on finishing the Cantonese textbook. Did you decide to watch TV or
go out and talk to people?
I envy you the fact that you can walk right out your door and hear your language all around you, and I am sure you
would not butcher the language too badly given all of your other languages! Good luck with your studies.
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jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6295 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin
| Message 19 of 59 13 January 2011 at 6:17am | IP Logged |
I can't find the Chow Yun Fat (周潤發) edition of The Bund (上海灘) on DVD and I haven't been trying my hardest to speak Cantonese when I walk out my door. I gotta get with the program and not take the easy route of using English or Mandarin to get around.
I'm heading down to sunny Thailand for a week so my Cantonese studies will probably be put on hold as I will be trying to work my way through some lessons of Pimsleur Thai I bought a few years ago. Resistance is futile. I'll just have to work extra hard on Cantonese when I'm back in Hong Kong after my vacation.
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newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6380 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map
| Message 20 of 59 13 January 2011 at 6:30am | IP Logged |
jimbo wrote:
I'm happy to say I finished my first Cantonese textbook today. (Cantonese for Everyone.) I highly recommend it. |
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Congrats. I bought a copy when I was in Macau. It is now sitting in the "For future use" section of my bookcase!
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jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6295 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin
| Message 21 of 59 13 January 2011 at 7:45am | IP Logged |
newyorkeric wrote:
Congrats. I bought a copy when I was in Macau. It is now sitting in the "For future use" section of my bookcase! |
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Seems I'm not the only one who buys books faster than he can read them ;-)
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Cowlegend999 Groupie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5145 days ago 72 posts - 94 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese
| Message 22 of 59 25 January 2011 at 11:44pm | IP Logged |
I'm guessing you haven't been posting because you are currently in Thailand? Anyways I am following your
log closely because I am currently trying to learn cantonese too. Unfortunately since this is my first attempt
at learning a second language (besides the mandatory school french) and I don't life in hong kong I'm not
sure if I'll ever reach a decent level (I'm going to try though :D). So I wish you good luck in your journey and
I will follow this log closely.
Btw- about the Sidney lau romanization system, as far as I can tell it is exactly the same as the Yale
romanization system, but it uses the numbers to indicate tones instead diacritic marks (that's what the é è
are called right?). So good luck and keep us posted on how it's going!
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indiana83 Groupie United States ipracticecanto.wordp Joined 5491 days ago 92 posts - 121 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Cantonese, Italian
| Message 23 of 59 26 January 2011 at 1:34am | IP Logged |
Hi Cowlegend, it's very common to modify the Yale system to use numbers instead of diacritics, especially for typing. If you register an account at the forums at http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/scripts/wordsearch.php, then in the account preferences you can change the dicitionary search over to Yale instead of jyutping. There, the yale will use numbers.
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jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6295 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin
| Message 24 of 59 26 January 2011 at 2:40am | IP Logged |
Yep, I fell behind on my Cantonese studies while I was on vacation. I should be back on track after a couple more days. (The funny thing is that although I know just a few words of Thai, they were on the tip of my tongue all the time when I got back to Hong Kong. I had to do some thinking to remember how to say things in Cantonese. Since I can get around in English and Mandarin, it is easy to get lazy and not try to speak Cantonese when I can. Kind of sad though; this is a great chance for me to finally learn Cantonese so I need to make the most of it!)
I finished the textbook I was working on just before I went on vacation so I need to choose the next one and get into a new routine. I was also hoping to find a Hong Kong TV series I could get interested in and watch it with the Chinese subtitles on to see what I could pick up. That helped me a lot when I was learning Mandarin back in the day. (I've been watching Battlestar Galactica instead. Bad, bad, bad. I'm such a junkie.)
Since my daughter is crazy about Dora the Explorer, I'll probably have better luck and more time with the TV if I can find that in Cantonese.
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