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Chinese Odyssey 2024 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes  Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 89 of 169 13 January 2012 at 1:22am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Day 13:
I will work on mastering the first 150 characters in the set I plan to study this year. I can recognize about 70% of them, but what makes it slower going is that I am also learning the words that they are used in. Just learning the character is not enough, I have to learn the words they belong to; then learning the words is also not enough, I have to use them in sentences. It's the sentence-farming that takes the longest time. Finding a good source of grammatically correct sentences that include the word you are trying to remember is a challenge. I may go to the bookstore and see if I can find a dictionary with plenty of example sentences. Pleco is quite useful in that regard, but sometimes it's easier and more creatively satisfying to have a book in your hand. A sturdy, for-the-ages dictionary with dog-eared pages and numerous comments scribbled on its pages never needs a battery. Ah, here's an interesting link on the Minnan variety of Chinese. Fujian Language Romanization Edited by zhanglong on 13 January 2012 at 1:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 90 of 169 18 January 2012 at 4:34am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Day 18:
The New Year is flying by and in typical fashion, there is less time than things to do, it seems. The more I study, the more a particular idea seems to present itself. I'm still working it out in my mind. On the one hand, there is my rationale behind studying Mandarin and Cantonese: to communicate with native speakers/writers and learn more about Chinese culture. This absolutely requires meeting and interacting with others. On the other hand, there is almost a monastic aspect to learning a language in that you spend a lot of time alone memorizing, drilling, researching, etc. to become good at whatever you are studying. If you can do both things at the same time, it becomes a virtuous circle of linguistic learning. But one of the difficult ( yet exciting ) parts to all this is that it's a constant experiment to see what works for a particular learner and what doesn't. In any case: I'm learning Mandarin through Spanish (because, Mandarin is so easy, right?), and I'm learning Cantonese through Mandarin. L2 --> L3 --> L4 I don't know if this has happened to anyone before, but when asked to say something in a foreign language, French, let's say, I have to consciously suppress Mandarin output. Otherwise, I mumble “我 m'appelle 张龙。” To those of you who can keep all of your languages in their own private space and withdraw them when you need them, I salute you. I'm only partially successful in this regard. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| petrklic Triglot Pro Member Czech Republic Joined 5084 days ago 95 posts - 109 votes Speaks: Czech*, English, Russian Studies: Vietnamese Personal Language Map | Message 91 of 169 21 January 2012 at 12:42am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Not even remotely. Russian keeps leaking to my English and Czech. And really, everything leaks to everything. Depends on concepts that I'm trying to express and phrases that I've seen that just hit the exact meaning. With Czech and Russian the added wrinkle is that words are so similar that I find it hard to distinguish Russian vocabulary from (native!) Czech, because Russian words fit right in, except of course they mean something completely different :) E.g. I might be tempted to say "záplata" (a patch) instead of "výplata" (a wage), because in Russian, "wage" is "зарплата" ("zarplata") ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 92 of 169 23 January 2012 at 4:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Day 23:
新年快乐！ Learning vocabulary in isolation and using it in the field leaves a little to be desired. I enjoy using words I've just learned in daily conversation, but it helps to have more context. I've decided to finish up my time here with learning the material from Integrated Chinese, which appears to be a standard text for learning Mandarin in the U.S. Here is a new website that explores Mandarin grammar. It's in the form of a Wiki. Chinese Grammar Wiki Edited by zhanglong on 23 January 2012 at 4:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| petrklic Triglot Pro Member Czech Republic Joined 5084 days ago 95 posts - 109 votes Speaks: Czech*, English, Russian Studies: Vietnamese Personal Language Map | Message 93 of 169 24 January 2012 at 11:22am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Btw, what's the situation with text books on Chinese languages? Is it possible, for example, to buy a book on Cantonese, written in Mandarin? Or even books on some of the less known languages? I heard that Chinese authorities like to present China as one whole, one language to rule them all, etc., so perhaps this would be frowned upon. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 94 of 169 25 January 2012 at 12:23am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Ah, that's a great question. Here in Guangzhou it is entirely possible to find textbooks about Cantonese written in Mandarin. There are many, in fact. I was even able to buy a parallel dictionary that contained Chaozhou language, Hakka language, Cantonese, and Mandarin. But, that seems to the exception and not the rule. China's answer for increasing literacy and managing the governance of over a billion people is to standardize the language everyone is supposed to speak. Rather than give its citizens the option of learning the common national language, Mandarin, they systematically enact laws making it *illegal* to broadcast in local languages. Again, this is a broad generalization, but the government targets all sorts of campaigns at children, trying to convince them that speaking Mandarin is virtuous and all other languages are a provincial waste of time. The Chinese people may have begun to internalize this idea. Mandarin and English, even in Hong Kong, are the languages of money and power; local languages seem to be slowly fading away. In Lhasa, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Sanjia Mandarin seems to be supplanting the local languages. Hong Kong people in particular are fighting back against this linguistic imperialism, as it were, but as Hong Kong becomes more and more a part of Mainland China, the future of Cantonese may one day resemble that of Shanghainese and other local languages. Edited by zhanglong on 25 January 2012 at 12:25am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6580 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 95 of 169 25 January 2012 at 7:03am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Does that include Cantonese, Hakka etc. words, or does it just list Mandarin words and their pronunciations in these languages? I remember finding a "Cantonese" dictionary in Foshan, but it was just a Mandarin dictionary with the pronunciations switched.
Quote from Victor Mair's excellent article How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language:
Hong Kong may be becoming more and more a part of China, but attitudes amongst the population is not. Surveys find a consistent trend where more and more people identify themselves as "Hong Kongers" and less and less as "Chinese", and the opinions of a lot of Hong Kongers towards Mainlanders is ... not very positive. There's a popular slang term for them: "蝗蟲", wong4 cung4, "locusts". 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 96 of 169 26 January 2012 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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@Ari:
The dictionary is just a list of Mandarin vocabulary with the equivalent pronunciations in the other varieties of Chinese. Thanks for the link to Mair's article. I've read that Hong Kong parents are exhorting their children to learn Mandarin rather than Cantonese. I don't know how wide-spread that is, but if even one couple discouraged their children from learning Cantonese, it is tragic indeed. It could lead to a generation that cannot speak to their own grandparents and forget who they are and where they come from. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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