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Tackling Cantonese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4961 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 1 of 22 14 October 2012 at 10:37pm | IP Logged |
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Just wondering what a good plan for tackling Cantonese would be? it seems as though there
are not many good materials out there, in comparison to Mandarin etc. I have got my hands on a couple but they are just phrase books & I also had a look at Cantoneseclass101. Other than that they seem hard find (from what I have researched so far anyway). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4713 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 2 of 22 15 October 2012 at 4:25am | IP Logged |
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http://fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Cantonese
Good luck :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6584 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 3 of 22 15 October 2012 at 7:41am | IP Logged |
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Aww yeah! Welcome to the sweetest language on the block, bro! Cantonese is by far my favorite language in the world. Unfortunately that awesomeness isn't matched by an awesome amount of resources. I made a Cantonese resource thread some time ago so that's somewhere to start. It hasn't been updated in a while, so if you find other resources, do add them to the thread.
Regarding CantoneseClass101, I'm torn on whether to recommend them or not. I've had a few run-ins with them. The concept is great as it's a copy of ChinesePod, my favorite language learning system ever. The execusion is less than stellar, however, at least the last time I checked. Transcripts were just horribly wrong and didn't match the audio at all, for example. They did seem to want to get better, though, and hired me to do some corrections in their transcriptions. After sending them in for the first season of Advanced lessons and not getting a lot of feedback I got tired of it, though, and I never did get paid. However, at least the first Advanced season is corrected and I think there were fewer problems with the beginner lessons. And this was some time ago (about half a year to a year ago, I think), and they may have improved since. Like I said, I love the concept and there aren't tons of resources out there. Oh, I once wrote a comparison between CC101 and PopupCantonese. You might find it helpful, though it was written in January and things may have changed since then. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| lukbe Triglot Newbie Spain Joined 4437 days ago 6 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Basque, Spanish*, EnglishC1 Studies: Cantonese, Mandarin | Message 4 of 22 15 October 2012 at 1:44pm | IP Logged |
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I'd recommend the Teach Yourself book, which is the core of my Cantonese learning. The dialogues are humorous, and the pace is rather fast. It also includes Chinese characters, which is always a nice feature to have. Of course, some of the vocabulary may be old fashioned at times, but it's not a big issue, particularly if you have access to some native speaker. I shadow the dialogues in it a lot (I'm currently finishing unit 12), which I think is a rather good way to get the tones right without having to think that much about it. I basically end up memorising the dialogues, which is something I like to do anyway. I also add all the vocabulary in this book to a particular Anki deck, and I'd say that works well too.
Best would be to combine it with other resources, as with any other language. And certainly the CantoDict online dictionary is a pretty much fundamental resource. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6852 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 5 of 22 15 October 2012 at 4:16pm | IP Logged |
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Let me preface this by saying I don't speak Cantonese, but I have a few friends who do.
FSI Cantonese comes highly recommended by one of them. He learned Cantonese using that course, then moved to Hong Kong and did pretty well. He now speaks fairly fluently, even though he hasn't lived there in over 5 years. Sidney Lau's Cantonese course also comes highly recommended by Mike Campbell at Glossika. I haven't personally heard his Cantonese, but the friend I mentioned above thinks enough of it that he recently asked Mike for a textbook recommendation. You can find audio for this course online, I believe. I hope to learn Cantonese one day, but it will be a while, if at all. Taiwanese will be the next Sinitic language I learn, since I live here and will for the next few years. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4961 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 6 of 22 15 October 2012 at 8:32pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the replies everyone!
Haha I agree Ari, I've been around it for 15 years of my life with my friends & its still so cool to hear! However after reading your review of those websites I hink I'll stay away...Already had 5 emails off them within 1 day! Hmm it seems FSI is well reccomended, I thought it might be a little outdated for Cantonese, or isnt that the case? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4446 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 7 of 22 16 October 2012 at 4:43am | IP Logged |
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In my part of the world there are Chinese community centers catering to Cantonese who
wants to learn Mandarin or vice versa. These classes are catered for Chinese learning another dialect. There is not a lot of resources for foreigners. You can try Rosetta Store or Pimsleur. What I find is that Cantonese has a lot of expressions the Chinese considered colloquial or something that is spoken but have no equivalent in standard Mandarin used on the Mainland. A character like 有 (yǒu): to have and 沒有 méiyǒu: without is standard Chinese. In Cantonese there is a character that looks like 有 but without the 2 lines in the middle: 冇 they say "mou" (mǎo in Mandarin) which is not considered standard Chinese but people do use the character in online blogs. The other thing I find is that Cantonese has a few characters with nasal sounds such as the common family name 吾: Ng (Wú in Mandarin) or the number 5: 五 ng with slight variation in intonation (wǔ in Mandarin). And the word for "I" 我 ngo in Canto and wǒ in Mandarin. I did come across YouTube videos featuring foreigners who speak fluent Cantonese including "Greg Smith - Cantonese speaking Westerner". He studied Mandarin in the US. Moved to Hong Kong and married to a local. The way he learned was to watch movies with the actor: Chow Yun-Fat. A lot of Chinese movies have subtitles in English & standard Chinese. He simply followed the standard Chinese on the screen while paying attention to what was said in Cantonese. And don't forget Gregory Rivers 河國榮 from Australia who became a TV actor & pop singer in HK. He adopted: 河 as a last name from Rivers. He learned by singing Canto pop songs in Australia while living with Chinese students in University. There are 2 people on YouTube I find useful. The first is Carlos Douh who lived in Hong Kong and picked up enough Cantonese to start teaching others. The other is a Norwegian by the name of Cecilie Gamst Berg also featured on YouTube as a 3-part documentary from HK under: "White Norwegian Cantonese Speaker" living in Hong Kong and teaching Chinese to speak English as well as foreigners to speak Cantonese. You can look up "Carlos Douh" on Youtube. Try to locate these people's contact info and get in touch with them directly to see if they have suggestions for you. The last thing I'd suggest is for people to head over to Hong Kong for a few months and pick up Cantonese from the locals. Except that HK is 1 of the most expensive cities in the world... Edited by shk00design on 16 October 2012 at 5:03am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6381 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 22 16 October 2012 at 6:35am | IP Logged |
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I think sometimes Cantonese learning materials get a bad rap. There is Colloquial, Teach Yourself, a short Pimsleur, Sidney Lau, FSI, DLI, Cantonese for Everyone, plus a whole bunch of stuff offered by Greenword Press. That's not bad compared to some other relatively small languages.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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