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| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes  Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 121 of 169 28 April 2012 at 9:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Cantonese Goal: A1
While I don't know of any objective test for evaluating one's Cantonese level, akin to the Mandarin HSK, the CEFR recommends certain elementary tasks to be performed at this level. Among them: Cantonese Listening I can understand everyday expressions dealing with simple and concrete everyday needs, in clear, slow and repeated speech. I can follow speech which is very slow and carefully articulated, with long pauses for me to get the meaning. I can understand questions and instructions and follow short, simple directions. I can understand numbers, prices and times. -- So at this stage, I should be able to use basic greetings, talk about where I am from, talk about my family, times of day, days of week, months of the year, ask for and give directions, describe money transactions, and count from 1 to 100. -- While there are several people who offer to "teach" me, I find that working out of a text and focusing on a particular area is more effective. If, for example, I don't know how to order a particular dish, I will learn its name and role-play going to a restaurant, ordering it off of a menu, and paying for the meal. After rehearsing a few times alone, I try it with a native speaker, interacting with them for a few minutes to see if a) the language is authentic, b) if I sound not-horrible and c) if it's grammatically correct. Then the final part is actually using it in a real situation after all of the rehearsal. I am slowly working on approach that is harder, at first, but seems to be yielding some results. I have an audio file from a particular textbook. I listen to the audio, repeat it afterwards, interact with the audio, and memorize it. I will rehearse it until I no longer need to "remember" it because it's already in my head. Then I will attempt to develop my own grammar from this dialogue to see how my understanding of the language is developing. Finally, I will consult the text to reinforce what I may have gotten right and correct what I may have gotten wrong. In short, I pretend that I've just heard this audio as a random snippet on the street and then try to figure out how it works, as if there were no lesson books or grammar ever written before, and I'm tasked with piecing it all together. I'm doing this because of my over-emphasis on the written word. If I need to be able to speak to and understand others, the majority of my work should be listening-based. Edited by zhanglong on 28 April 2012 at 9:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 122 of 169 01 May 2012 at 1:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Mandarin
Well, I am traveling throughout China and once again, people think I am much more fluent than I really am. When this first happened, when I got in over my depth, I would pick up my non-ringing cellphone and have a "conversation" with dead air to cut off the river of words I didn't know cascading around my ears. But since then, I just listen, even if I can't understand, and see how much I can pick out of the stream of language coming from someone's brain. Anyone ever see the "13th Warrior"? Two scenes in that movie stand out to me. The first was when a smaller, seemingly less capable warrior defeats an opponent, using strategy rather than muscle. The second, is a scene when the Arabic diplomat sits around a campfire and doesn't understand a word of Nordic speech, but with time, and through context, is slowly able to distinguish words and phrases. With enough input and observation, he is able to gain meaning from the language he is hearing, and he surprises his hosts with the ability to speak their language. In this analogy, I'm the guy who lies sans cabeza because I m sik tang Mandarin. I did two hours of listening yesterday. Oh my. It was boring as hell. I need to find authentic, but INTERESTING materials. It's like learning English by reading a phone book. Cantonese I also listened to my Cantonese mp3's yesterday, but I can't find a partner to practice with on a regular basis. This month, I will work on creating a network of people so that each day I have at least a little practice speaking to others. Tibetan I really want to sit back and work on this, but I am in a bit of a time crunch. I am devoting the bare minimum to this language while pouring as much time as I can into Mandarin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 123 of 169 01 May 2012 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Mandarin
I am appreciating more and more how important Mandarin is. If I want to gain a better understanding of any of the other Chinese languages, I need to learn Mandarin. One reason is that Mandarin is arguably simpler than all the others, since there are less tones. Another reason is that Mandarin is a tremendously influential language to all of China's neighbors, such as Japan, Korea, etc. It has exerted its own influence on other Chinese languages as well. Third, if I want to learn Classical Chinese (TAC 2017), I'd be better off if I learned Mandarin well. Finally, there is a tremendous amount of linguistic materials that are only available in Mandarin Chinese. Scholars have already done a lot of the work I am interested in, but the majority of it is in Mandarin. So, I need to devote as much time as I can to the Mandarin Boot Camp, before I can play with all the other linguistic treasures China has to offer. It's a long apprenticeship. Yet, I'm not leaving China without learning this language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 124 of 169 03 May 2012 at 4:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Cantonese
I did another hour of listening. The looks I got in Beijing as I'm speaking to myself out loud in Cantonese...priceless. Mandarin Yet, I'm at a particularly disturbing phase. I can speak enough so that people think I'm fluent. But when they speak back to me, I have no idea what they are saying sometimes. I need to really increase my listening comprehension. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 125 of 169 04 May 2012 at 10:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Cantonese The more actively I listen, the better I get at recalling and using the language, but it's so tempting to actually write down what I'm hearing and saying.
But I want to see how far I can get without getting too absorbed in the 汉字 and the different transcription systems. If ancient Greeks could memorize the Iliad and the Odyssey and modern muslims can memorize their holy book, we can certainly remember audio dialogues, right? The trick to avoiding paper is just saying them so much that they become ingrained. At least for me, I'm trying to avoid the crutch of writing to see how far I can develop my oral ability, but I know that I can get a richer understanding of the language once I start to see it on the page, especially with such a homophone rich language like Cantonese. Mandarin As a backup, I can always rely on Mandarin to make me feel just a little less unworthy. Today I surprised my hosts who were busily speaking in really fast Mandarin. When they asked my opinion of something, I was able to give it with no hesitation and then guide one of the cars with my taxi-cab Mandarin so that we didn't lose an important appointment on the road. The best way to learn a language is to *use* it. I saw one of the youtube polyglots yesterday teaching a lesson on one of the languages I either speak or study. It was interesting in that, there is little money to be made on such an activity, so what is the motivation? But it did inspire me to think about something. I know many professional teachers of their L2. They have devoted their careers to teaching a language they learned long after their L1. What would it take for us to to the same? I would imagine it would take going beyond C2 in ability, but not every professional teacher can do that. Hmm...maybe time for some other threads... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 126 of 169 05 May 2012 at 5:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Cantonese I listened to another hour of Cantonese. I'm experimenting more with shadowing and echoing so that I can better remember the dialogues I'm memorizing.
I heard a funny character or word: I want to hear how a native speaker says this character: 僅 gan2 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 127 of 169 05 May 2012 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Mandarin I'm trying to keep my Mandarin audio interesting and different, so I'm using youku and other sites just to watch videos. Now it's the time 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5306 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 128 of 169 05 May 2012 at 6:59pm | IP Logged | ||
What's so special about it? My 僅 rhymes with my English "gun". When I speak English with a strong HK accent, "gun" and "跟 gan1" are identical... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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