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Learning Cantonese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| Asiafeverr Diglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6142 days ago 346 posts - 431 votes  1 sounds Speaks: French*, English Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, German | Message 1 of 5 19 May 2008 at 10:20am | IP Logged |
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Dear Prof. Arguelle:
I have been reading your section for a long time and I am interested in learning Cantonese using your shadowing method. My native language is Canadian French and I am at a low-intermediate level in Mandarin. There is, unfortunately, no Assimil for this language. I bought Colloquial Cantonese and I find it very difficult to apply the technique on it. A unit from Colloquial Cantonese usually starts with a list of vocabulary, then plays dialogues spoken at a native speed followed by questions (in English) about the dialogue, and then offers some interactive activities before moving on to the next unit. Considering that this is the only decent learning material I own for this language (excluding an electronic dictionary that I can always use to find the translation, pronunciation and stroke order or certain words/characters), how should I proceed? I believe you recommend others to edit the audio out of all the English; should I also edit the vocabulary list? How should I separate all the files before transfering them to my mp3 player: by unit number, by theme, by dialogue? I am also having a hard time trying to shadow dialogues spoken at a native speed (although I have no problem understanding them), should I try to slow them down or simply try harder? Here is a video of me trying to shadow a conversation from Colloquial Cantonese, perhaps you could help me with my technique: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z48Dwsc1x1w Thanks in advance and best regards, Philipp Zukernik Edited by Asiafeverr on 26 May 2008 at 3:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7056 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 2 of 5 26 May 2008 at 12:57pm | IP Logged |
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Mr. Zukernik,
If they help you, you should certainly work through the vocabulary lists and the exercises a number of times, but I would recommend that, while editing out the English, you retain only the dialogues for repeated shadowing. Certainly, you should keep them in the order they are presented. If you have the ability to slow them down somewhat, then you might try this for a while, but I think that, rather than trying harder, you simply need to give it more time to get them right at native speed, given your existing facility with Mandarin and your ability to understand them well enough already. Once you have edited the dialogues this way, you will probably be left with only about 30-45 minutes of recorded material, which is not quite enough to internalize before you get bored with it. So, I think you need to look a bit harder for additional materials. Teach Yourself also makes a Cantonese course (Hugh Baker and P.K. Ho, 1995); I have it and have just leafed through it and it appears as solid as any. You should get another 30-45 minutes from this. Back in 1970, TYS and Linguaphone collaborated to make another 45 minutes of readings of Cantonese interlinear texts to accompany the volume by R. Bruce. The three of these sources together should give you a solid 120 minutes, which is more along the lines of what you as an initial sample chunk of a language for digestion. Beyond this, if you possibly have access to an East Asian bookstore and/or library, you can probably find quantities of small press offerings, some of which could certainly be pressed into service. Cantonese is on the remote peripheries of my field of vision, but in such venues here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I know I have seen many such courses. As for your shadowing technique: you appear to be rather inhibited, but I imagine much of that probably comes from being cognizant of making a video. In any event, relax and at the same time be more conscious of maintaining better posture and of articulating clearly at high volume. Do not stay inside your study, but go outside and find a track where you can make this a combined mental and physical exercise. It is actually quite tricky to get the shadowing technique down right, and there is only so much help I can provide by commenting in distance learning like this. At any rate, you are certainly to be commended for trying so earnestly! Best of luck to you! Alexander Arguelles 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| unzum Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom soyouwanttolearnalan Joined 6714 days ago 371 posts - 478 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 5 26 May 2008 at 5:25pm | IP Logged |
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You could try using Cantostories (audio stories in Cantonese with characters, jyutping and English transcripts) and Cantophilia (video and audio with transcripts in English, characters & jyutping). Those could be quite easy to adapt for shadowing and it's easier than buying a whole load of expensive courses and only getting a few minutes of dialogue.
Also, FSI Cantonese has dialogues at the beginning, as well as several conversations for listening at the end. There are 30 lessons, so I imagine there would be quite a lot of audio to get from that, plus it's free. Chinese Pear Stories has narratives for seven Chinese languages, including Cantonese. You can hear a speaker describe a story they have been shown on video with transcripts in traditional characters and romanization. There are 30 speakers for Cantonese alone, all telling the story in a different way. And as you're studying Mandarin as well you can also listen to it to compare the two languages. These are all free resources so hopefully they should provide you with enough shadowing material in the mean time. Good luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| nhk9 Senior Member Canada Joined 6604 days ago 290 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 5 30 May 2008 at 11:23am | IP Logged |
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I'm not Prof. Arguelles, but here's my take on it:
You can go to www.tvb.com and watch news broadcasts from that channel. It is the website for "Television Broadcasts" and they have news shows spoken in Cantonese (at normal speeds) with subtitles in standard written Chinese. If you would like to know how they write in Cantonese, you can always go to forums like www.uwants.com or magazine/newspaper sites like www.appledaily.com.hk 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Asiafeverr Diglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6142 days ago 346 posts - 431 votes 1 sounds Speaks: French*, English Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, German | Message 5 of 5 01 June 2008 at 10:29am | IP Logged |
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I would like to thank Prof. Arguelles as well as unzum and nhk9 for all your advices and links. I will try to collect as many conversations as possible and to work on my shadowing technique. It is much easier for me to understand the dialogues in Colloquial Cantonese when I already know the key words so I will also shadow the vocabulary lists offered in the course. The glossary at the end of the book lists about 800-900 words and the course teaches the most important sentence structures so by internalizing its content, I will probably have a solid knowledge of the mechanics of the language.
By skimming through the book, I noticed a lot of similarities between Mandarin and Cantonese grammatical concepts (measure words for example); knowing these concepts will make the learning much easier for me. I am moving to Hong Kong in about 2 months and the university I am going to attend contains a huge library so it will probably be very easy for me to get more cantonese material. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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