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Cantonese Dream - Next in line | ||
Tags: Cantonese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4694 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes  Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 1 of 10 10 July 2013 at 11:43pm | IP Logged |
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Hello all,
This is my first Learning Log as I joined up in the middle of learning German and my Spanish to date as been so sporadic and informal that it would have made for tedious reading at best. So, I've decided to learn Cantonese. Inspired by the numerous posts by Ari describing the fun and creative nature of Cantonese, I have decided to jump in feet first. Resources: Pimsleur Contonese TY Complete Cantonese (with cds) Numerous internet resources from Ari's Cantonese Resource thread My goal is to dedicate 1-2 hours per day to listening to and learning Cantonese. I have about 40 minutes of communte each way to work everyday to listen and should be able to devote another 30-45 minutes of book time per day as well. Today is day one. I have listened to Pimsleur lesson 1 twice as well as the first dialog from TY about 10 times. I think another Pimsleur listen on the way home, a half hour or so of book time tonight and I should be ready to keep moving tomorrow. Wish me luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4694 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 2 of 10 11 July 2013 at 12:54am | IP Logged |
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Ok, so it occurred to me that I did not set any goals, timelines, expectations, etc in the post above, so here goes:
1. I have no interest at the moment in learning to write. My focus will be on speaking and listening. 2. I intend to re-eavluate at the end of one year. I would like to be able to get to at least A2 if not a low B1 at the end of one year of study. 3. Ultimate goal is conversational fluency (B2) in 2 years. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4694 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 3 of 10 12 July 2013 at 12:05am | IP Logged |
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Day 2:
Super busy day today. I started a notebook for vocabulary and grammar. I learned the personal pronouns, a few verbs, negation, and a couple of participles. I listened to Pimsleur lesson 1 again and I think it is sticking. I also listened to the first dialog in Teach Yourself about 20 more times and it makes total sense now. I think the plan with TY might be to over-learn the dialogs a bit. I've also been working quite heavily on my pronunciation and trying to focus on tones as well, although I do struggle to pick up on tones when I'm listening to a dialog. Well, until tomorrow! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4694 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 4 of 10 12 July 2013 at 11:14pm | IP Logged |
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Today I signed up for the Premium service for cantoneseclass101.com and it it pretty awesome. I have listened to the first 5 podcasts in the absolute beginner series and I am in love with Cantonese. I only know a couple dozen words and maybe about 10 intro/survival phrases, but I am really enthralled with the sound and structure of the language.
My plan is to finish the absolute beginner series, tackle the beginner series, and then see where I'm at from there. As a sidebar, I tried to learn Mandarin a few months ago as a 2 week experiment and after 2 weeks of 1-2 hours/day of study, I could only remember 2 words. So far, Cantonese really seems to speak to me more than Mandarin did. Edited by BaronBill on 12 July 2013 at 11:16pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6299 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 5 of 10 13 July 2013 at 12:51am | IP Logged |
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Rhythmic Cantonese published by "The Third Ear" is worthwhile and entertaining. (No, I don't work for them or have any sort of connection to them apart from having purchased their stuff.)
I also found some DLI materials filled with phrases such as "Don't move or I will shoot" to be entertaining. Now I just need to find the time to catch up on some old Hong Kong movies. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6977 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 6 of 10 13 July 2013 at 3:21am | IP Logged |
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Good luck and have fun with your studying! I used to not care much for Cantonese, but
over the years, the language has really grown on me. It is such a rich language, with so many colorful interjections, colloquialisms, and particles. I've not used any podcasts for my studying, but my favorite Cantonese resources thus far are the Routledge Grammar series and anything by the Greenwood Press. Both are very comprehensive, modern and colloquial, and the latter comes with audio and characters. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4694 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 7 of 10 13 July 2013 at 8:41pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks Mike and Jimbo. I will definitely check those resources out.
The biggest struggle so far has been making time to maintain my German with all of this Canto studying! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4694 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 8 of 10 21 July 2013 at 10:08pm | IP Logged |
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In the last week or so, I've gone back and listened to the first 10 podcasts of the Absolute Beginner series on Cantoneseclass101.com and it is cool to see how much I've actually begun to retain. I've also completed the first 4 lessons of Pimsleur and am on lessons 3 of TY Cantonese.
It's a little slower going than I thought initially because this is my first Asian language, but I am catching on to the basics. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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