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Creating your material for rare languages | ||
Tags: Rare Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Asiafeverr Diglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6277 days ago 346 posts - 431 votes  1 sounds Speaks: French*, English Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, German | Message 1 of 7 11 December 2011 at 1:31pm | IP Logged |
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I would like to learn a Chinese dialect from a small town in Zhejiang where some of my friends live. There is no TV content produced in this language and no learning material exists for it, even in Chinese. I've looked on Youtube and Youku and could only find two 3 minutes videos in the language. I currently live far away from this town so my only option would be to use the native speakers as language learning tools and create my own material. How should I go about creating my own content to learn this language and get feedback on my progress? Does anybody here have experience with this?
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| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5243 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 2 of 7 11 December 2011 at 5:58pm | IP Logged |
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Seeing you're in HK - have you tried the Language Lab in the Central Library opposite Victoria Park? They have lots of courses on Chinese dialects. And make sure you're typing both traditional & simplified Chinese when you search on the internet.
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| Asiafeverr Diglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6277 days ago 346 posts - 431 votes 1 sounds Speaks: French*, English Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, German | Message 3 of 7 11 December 2011 at 7:16pm | IP Logged |
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I have. They have books on various dialects from surrounding cities like Ningbo, Suzhou and Wenzhou but nothing on the one I am trying to learn (Cixi dialect, 慈溪话). I think creating my own material is the only way to go for such an obscure dialect. I have read online that people from Ningbo can understand ~70% of what people from Cixi say so I could also start by learning the Ningbo dialect and then learning the differences but then I will end up with the same problems regarding the lack of resources. Edited by Asiafeverr on 11 December 2011 at 7:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5946 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 7 11 December 2011 at 10:59pm | IP Logged |
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I suppose the default first step would be to download a list of phrasebook-style phrases from the internet in Mandarin or Cantonese, and get them translated. I'm guessing it probably doesn't have its own orthography, so you'll have to get recorded audio. But once you've got it, don't keep it to yourself.
Why not get in touch with the local school, donate a couple of cheap digital camcorders and ask them to produce videos for the internet about their area in their own language? You could also encourage them to record their traditional stories, and get them translated to Mandarin or Cantonese. This is something that wouldn't only help you, it's something universities the world over are interested in. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Scorpicus Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5270 days ago 27 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English*, ItalianB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 7 18 December 2011 at 11:20am | IP Logged |
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Here is a rather long article entitled "Leave me alone! Can't you see I'm learning your language!"
It goes in depth on methods to learn an 'obscure' language without commercial materials available. I think you'll find it of interest ;) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5113 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 6 of 7 19 December 2011 at 2:01am | IP Logged |
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Isn't Zhejiang a Wu province?
Won't Shanghaiese do? Edited by clumsy on 19 December 2011 at 2:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 7 19 December 2011 at 10:19am | IP Logged |
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There are rare languages and rare languages. Asiafeverr has chosen the most difficult type, namely one where there not only aren't any language learning materials around, but not even written or spoken sources, apart from the daily talk and knowledge of the speakers themselves. So to get the amount of study materials which you normally need to learn a language you have to extract a formidable amount of information from the native speakers - and the question is whether they are ready for this.
This project is not just a question of writing a textbook (or even a language guide), but a question of doing regular fieldwork of the kind that normally ends up with a dictionary, a grammar and a trained linguist who along the way has picked enough up of the language to speak and write it (in IPA and with Chinese signs). In other words a fairly daunting task - and one which nobody in their sane mind would try to accomplish without staying right in the midst of the community. Good luck, Asiafeverr - you'll need it. Edited by Iversen on 19 December 2011 at 10:21am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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