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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| joan.carles Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6182 days ago 332 posts - 342 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, French, EnglishC1, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Hungarian, Russian, Georgian | Message 1 of 8 24 August 2007 at 2:30am | IP Logged | ||
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It's already the third day since I started with Cantonese the "audio" way, as I won't write any single word, any single character in the near future. I just plan to listen, some podcasts I found here and there:
- Cantonese Podcast : learn in a fun way - RTHK : Naked Cantonese Besides, I'll keep listening to Eason Chan's songs which it's already some months since I started listening to, without intention to learn more, except for NEI and NGO. I've chosed this approach as a new way, for me, to tackle a language without any single note (something I've done and I'm doing with other languages, at present with Georgian and Hungarian). Besides, as I already speak some Mandarin, I don't want to be conditioned by its pronounciation each time I see a Chinese character (so eventually I'd end up reading NI instead of NEI for character 你. So let's see what come up from this... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chelsea Bilingual Triglot Newbie China Joined 6157 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Cantonese*, English Studies: Spanish, German | Message 2 of 8 24 August 2007 at 3:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Cantonese is not difficlut to learned if you've already learned Mandarin.Just keep on listening and speaking.Many of my classmates(Most of them are not Cantonese and can only speak Mandarin at the very begining) spent only one year to manage the language.And I like Eason Chan's songs very much:)
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| joan.carles Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6182 days ago 332 posts - 342 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, French, EnglishC1, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Hungarian, Russian, Georgian | Message 3 of 8 24 August 2007 at 11:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Chelsea. It's really helpful that Cantonese works much as Mandarin does, for example in the formation of plurals, just having to add the TEI to NGO, NEI, KOI, as with Mandarin MEN for WO, NI, TA. And the same for possessives. For the moment, I just want to let the language come into my brain without bothering about characters or other things.
I find also that it has some similarities, though maybe only on the surface, with Vietnamese. I guess due to the proximity. Even if it's only limited to some shared vocabulary, it's good to find some vocabulary in common, such as HOC "to study", or at least for me, a phonetic similarity, so much better if this can provide me some shortcuts to learn the language faster and easily. Anyways, my level of Vietnamese is not very advanced, so this similarity will be quite restricted for me. As for Spanish, how far are you with it? Talking about music, did you hear about Joaquin Sabina or Juanes? I find music a very good tool to learn languages even if it's only to motivate myself to learn them. Eason Chan's songs are a good motivation as I like them and I feel curiosity to know what is he talking about in the songs. Joaquin Sabina, though interesting, can be a bit hard to follow if you are in a beginner to medium level, but quite interesting and you'll learn much slang, and fun with him if you have a higher command of Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy_Liu Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong leibby.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6635 days ago 255 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Mandarin, Cantonese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 4 of 8 25 August 2007 at 8:27am | IP Logged | ||
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Joan Carles, have you tried Cantonese FSI as well? Well, I've once listened to a later chapter... some expressions sound funnily old, but it's still fairly comprehensive - considering the few resources available.
As I read from my Mandarin audio course, the two languages actually share a lot of similarities in vocab (well, obviously), esp. those about economics and politics. But the biggest difference is, actually, the sounds. Compared to Mandarin, Cantonese has a smaller inventory of phonemes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| joan.carles Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6182 days ago 332 posts - 342 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, French, EnglishC1, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Hungarian, Russian, Georgian | Message 5 of 8 29 August 2007 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | ||
Lei ho. To tell the truth, no, I haven't tried it, but I'm going to check it out. As my intention is not to write nor read anything till I get a good feeling of the spoken language, the more sources and the more different pronounciations, the better. For the moment, I start my "lessons" by listening to a song or two and then I listen to a complete podcast session, repeating the expressions that I can grasp completely, which is not so obvious. I find the sounds and syllables quite different from Mandarin, and as I said, closer to Vietnamese and I feel like brushing up my Vietnamese too...but I'll resist! Otherwise I'm sure eventually I'll mix up everything. Thanks Andy! Edited by joan.carles on 29 August 2007 at 3:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6389 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 8 29 August 2007 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I see that you also speak Mandarin. Do you occasionally mess up in reading the characters by reading them the Mandarin way rather than the Cantonese way?
As a speaker of Spanish, it is very impressive that you are attempting Mandarin and Cantonese. Even though I speak Mandarin everyday, I still find it very hard to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sheetz Senior Member United States Joined 6226 days ago 270 posts - 356 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, French, Mandarin | Message 7 of 8 29 August 2007 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm curious. How do you intend to begin reading Cantonese when so few materials are actually written in it? Do you intend to try reading standard Chinese using Cantonese pronunciations or will you try to find texts written in colloquial Cantonese? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| joan.carles Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6182 days ago 332 posts - 342 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, French, EnglishC1, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Hungarian, Russian, Georgian | Message 8 of 8 29 August 2007 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, actually that's why I don't want to study on the written part of Cantonese but just to 'acquire' by listening and repeating, otherwise I'm sure I'll mess them up. I already have the tendency to read Bulgarian with Russian pronounciation because I have Cyrillic associated to Russian. You're right, it's a big jump from Spanish (any Indoeuropean language) to Chinese. But I find the Chinese culture very attractive as well as the script (though they seem less practical when it comes to learning them compared to an alphabetic or syllabic script, they are amazing). It's a bit frustrating that after several times coming back to Chinese and leaving it for some time, I still can't read a normal reader, but as I just do it for fun, I enjoy the process instead of worrying about not achieving the goal. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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