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Cantonese Odyssey 2012 -Team 龍 | ||
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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 33 of 67 02 January 2012 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Day 02:
I listened to an hour of Cantonese today. I reviewed a Pimsleur lesson, increasing my speed, so that I am increasing my fluency. Now I am working on accuracy. This week, I am concentrating a lot on my tones. There are at least six tones in Cantonese. Six distinct sounds, I'm actually doing ear-training boot camp. I've listened to the CantoneseClass101 pronunciation lessons one and two. The lessons are short ( each one is approximately ten minutes long ), but it's just the right length to capture your full attention. I'm trying to lay down a foundation here that will keep me in good stead for the rest of my Cantonese education, so I mustn't rush or get discouraged. Just like Pimsleur sounded difficult to me, and I managed to get it over time, so too with the sound of the tones become simpler the more that I do it. Another hard part is the transcription. I spent almost an hour trying to find this character: 嘅. It's part of Oral Cantonese，so it's not a character that is easy to find; it's used in this expression: 乜咁啱嘅 mat1 gam3 aam1 ge3 which means "What a coincidence!". The Mandarin equivalent of this expression took all of five minutes to find and verify: 真是巧合。 With Cantonese, sometimes it seems as if we are Champollion attempting to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs. The great thing is, no matter how difficult it might seem in the beginning, it's sure to get easier as we go along. 1 person has 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 34 of 67 03 January 2012 at 7:41am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Use CantoDict. You can search for jyutping, even without tones, search for individual characters, words or whole expressions, and search for English, too. The problem comes when encountering words that aren't in there, but most common words are there. Another problem is dealing with words that have no commonly used character. You usually use latin letters to write them and this makes them really hard to search for. Words like "hea" (pron. as in "health", first tone, meaning "To relax, leisurely") and "fing" (jyutping "fing4", meaning to toss or fling) can be impossible to find. The only method I know of is to ask a native speaker. Unfortunately, sometimes even that fails (my girlfriend doesn't know how to write "beu1" meaning to tackle someone, and I can't find it in CantoDict, either). Also, sometimes people write things that do have characters with letters anyway. My girlfriend doesn't use "嘅"; she just writes "ga". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 35 of 67 03 January 2012 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Ari, I'm beginning to see what you mean, especially as it regards words with no commonly used characters.
The particular challenges of this text I'm using is that a) it uses simplified characters. I have to know how to switch between traditional and simplified characters, which would not be so bad if it were for the same language, but b) many characters are used differently in Mandarin and Cantonese. 是 becomes 系 or 係 in Cantonese c) I'm using my L2 to learn my L3. The books translations are not always clear as they use certain colloquialisms that are not a direct translation. For example: 食咗飯未呀 in Cantonese is a greeting that in Mandarin, literally asks you if you have eaten. d) the romanization is not at all consistent with any known system. They use their own, so it's not jyutping, yale, GDR, lau, or whatever. So, this particular text presents its own challenges. The best thing I can say about it, is that native speakers think that the expressions are authentic ( many of whom are not yet in Cantodict ), and that I am really making use of my Mandarin to decipher meaning from the Cantonese. Without the help of native speakers, it would be much harder to continue, but part of the fun, I guess is being able to extract meaning from something that you previously thought impossible to understand. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 36 of 67 03 January 2012 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Day 03:
I listened to a half hour of Cantonese and worked for an hour and a half to learn and remember nine sentences useful for daily speech. I will meet with a native speaker tomorrow to put them to the test. Text: 即学即用广州话 The nine expressions are: Cantonese JyutPing Yale English Mandarin 早晨, 您好! zou2 san4 nei5 hou2 jóu sàhn néih hóu Good morning, how are you? 早安， 你好！ 食咗飯未呀 sik6 zo2 faan6 mei6 aa3 sihk jó faahn meih a "how are you? (informal); lit. have you eaten?" 吃过饭了没有？ 好耐冇見 hou2 noi6 mou5 gin3 hóu noih móuh gin long time no see 好久不见 乜咁啱嘅 mat1 gam3 aam1 ge3 māt gam āam ge What a Coincidence! (真是巧合) 真是巧合 妮几好嗎 nei5 gei1 hou2 maa1 néih gēi hóu mā how are you doing? 你几好吗？ 多謝嗮你呀 do1 ze6 saai3 nei5 aa1 dō jeh saai néih ā thank you very much (for things provided) 谢谢你 唔該嗮你喎 m4 goi1 saai3 nei5 wo3 mh gōi saai néih wo "thank you very much (for services rendered); 麻烦你了 真系唔話得 zan1 hai6 m4 waa6 dak1 jān haih mh wah dāk expression of appreciation 真是咸谢你 咁樣點系呀 gam3 joeng6 dim2 hai6 aa1 gam yeuhng dím haih ā I couldn't accept your generosity. How nice of you to offer. 怎么好意思呢 In the course of looking up and attempting to learn these expressions, I had to teach myself about sentence particles in Cantonese, one of the more interesting, if sometimes complex part of Cantonese grammar. 1 person has 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 37 of 67 04 January 2012 at 7:17am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Actually, I've realized that just about all words do have characters. I've found characters for both "hea" and "fing" (which should be fing6, not fing4, by the way). The problem is that since the characters aren't commonly used and nobody is educated in the use of written Cantonese (except foreigners), if you do use the right character, chances are great that you won't be understood, unless the character is easily decipherable and you've got lots of context around.
Well, it might have been because I was in the south (but then so are you), but the phrase "吃饭了没" was commonly used as a greeting in Mandarin where I was.
I'm assuming the 妮 is a typo? Nevertheless, this should be nei5 gei2 hou2 maa1. And I'm unsure about how commonly used the "嗎" particle (why is this in trads when the others are in simps?) is, but this might be regional.
This isn't right. Should be "gam2 joeng6" or, more commonly, "gam2 joeng6*2" (I use the asterisk per CantoDict convention to indicate a change in tone from the normal one). 咁 is usually "gam3" when meaning "so (much)", for example "咁大隻狗" ("What a big dog!"), but "gam2" when it means "This way" or "Well, then", as in "咁又係" ("Well, that's true, I guess" or "You've got a point"). I usually distinguish between them by writing 噉 for when the second tone is used, but most people don't follow this convention. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 38 of 67 04 January 2012 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Interesting... 咁 everywhere in Cantodict, is listed at gam3, but I've never heard of the distinction you made. Thank you. For future posts, I will follow a simple convention: For this forum, I will write Cantonese in traditional characters and only use jyutping romanization. If anyone would like to see the entries in another form, I'd be more than happy to post the alternate forms. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4927 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 39 of 67 04 January 2012 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Day 04:
I spent an hour listening to Cantonese. I spent another hour and a half correcting (Thanks, Ari) and learning the colloquial expressions listed above. My next homework assignment: finding a way to embed audio or post audio links in the forum posts. 1 person has 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 40 of 67 05 January 2012 at 7:09am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
This is because CantoDict uses the same distinction I use (or rather, I got it from CantoDict). Check out the entry for the character 噉. Note though, as I said, that most native speakers don't make this distinction and use 咁 for both words. CantoDict also distinguishes somewhat between the three "aa" particles 吖, 呀, and 啊. I tend to use them in different ways, but most natives tend to pick one and use it indiscriminately, since there's no standard or education to tell them how to use them and they all sound pretty much alike. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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