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TAC 2011 - Team 唐 － Cantonese, et al. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6294 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 1 of 59 01 December 2010 at 6:58am | IP Logged |
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Edit: I'm going to use this as my log for TAC 2011 Team 唐
I've wanted to learn Cantonese for years and now I'm living in Hong Kong so no more excuses... I happened across a good language school yesterday and had my first class today. I'm pretty excited; I have a good teacher, a good book, and audio files for the textbook. I'm set. As a bit of background, I already speak Mandarin quite well and have studied Taiwanese Min-nan (but can't speak it) Korean, and Japanese. I think I'm well positioned to make it happen with Cantonese. Today's items of interest. 1. Tones Six tones and three clipped, uh, sounds. They don't seem TOO bad but I've always found tones difficult. My teacher gave me a handout with some sentences illustrating the tones. I'll use Jyutping romanization because that is what is in my textbook. (Gotta just pick a system and learn to love it.) 六調九音練習 三九四零五二七八六 saam1 gau2 sei3 ling4 ng5 ji6 cat1 baat3 luk6 香 港 靠 & nbsp;誰 帶 & nbsp; &nb sp;領 出 &nb sp;困 局。 Hoeng1 gong2 kaau3 seoi4 daai5 ling6 ceot1 kwan3 guk6. 2. Alternate meanings of characters I already know from when I studied other Asian languages. (This point will be a recurring theme.) 度 dou6 can also mean "over there" in Cantonese. Learning more about Chinese characters through my study of Cantonese is going to be interesting. There will be: 1) totally new characters for Cantonese, 2) ancient words that are not used frequently in modern standard written Chinese (or other East Asian languages) but are commonly used in spoken Cantonese, 3) words that are used the same way as they are used in modern standard Chinese (or other East Asian languages), 4) words with different shades of meaning from other East Asian languages I'm not sure how long it will take me to learn to get around reasonably well in Cantonese. I guess it is a function of how hard I work at it and staying focused since I can get around town just fine with a combination of English and Mandarin. My goal is to be reasonably fluent by Christmas 2011. Edited by jimbo on 27 December 2010 at 6:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6379 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 59 01 December 2010 at 7:17am | IP Logged |
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What textbook are you using?
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| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6294 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 3 of 59 01 December 2010 at 7:30am | IP Logged |
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Cantonese for Everyone by Chow Bun Ching
Publisher: The Commercial Press I haven't seen this book at the bookstores before. Apparently, there are two versions. One uses Jyutping romanization, one uses Yale romanization. I only got it this morning but it seems pretty good. It includes the Chinese characters and even has glossaries at the back. (Cantonese <--> English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6379 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 59 01 December 2010 at 8:00am | IP Logged |
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Thanks. I'm going to Macau in a couple of weeks and want to check what Cantonese materials are available.
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| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6294 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 5 of 59 01 December 2010 at 8:14am | IP Logged |
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There is a pretty good audio course called Rhythmic Cantonese that a lot of the book stores sell. Three CDs in the series sold separately. Not free but worthwhile.
(They use their own romanization system and don't mark the tones in the accompanying booklet but it is an audio course so it isn't a deal breaker.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6294 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 6 of 59 01 December 2010 at 9:01am | IP Logged |
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Some of the example sentences I've seen to illustrate the tones just crack me up because they use characters with tones in order 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Here is another one from the textbook:
一碗細牛腩麵。 jat1 wun2 sai3 ngau4 naam5 min6. One small bowl of noodles with beef brisket. I'm kind of curious as to whether it should be "一碗細" or "一細碗". I'll have to ask someone. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| indiana83 Groupie United States ipracticecanto.wordp Joined 5490 days ago 92 posts - 121 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Cantonese, Italian | Message 7 of 59 01 December 2010 at 9:49am | IP Logged |
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I'm not a native speaker, but I've been learning for 3 years.
I would definitely have said 細碗 and not 碗細. But if they were trying to be poetic, then it's okay to use a non-standard word order (just like in English). Even better would probably be to use the adjective 細 on a noun and not on a classifier. Or, to topicalize the sentence by putting the bowl of noodles first, and then specifying that it be small. This might not be the best example, but it's all I could find: http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/examples/841/ - note this is "wun2 zuk1 lam1" which in your case would be "wun2 ngau4 naam5 min6 sai3". 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6379 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 59 02 December 2010 at 7:06am | IP Logged |
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Have you looked at the Sidney Lau books? They're supposed to be good.
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