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Written Chinese/Prep for Grad School | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4063 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 1 of 1 28 June 2013 at 10:53pm | IP Logged |
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So quick summary of my current situation: Global film enthusiast with lots of time and motivation for language study. Currently I'm spending a minimum of 30 minutes on Cantonese and French each, and 15 minutes on Russian, Hindi, Indonesian, and Turkish each day. In addition to that I have a few hours each day where I can do audio only studying along with my normal routine which I'm currently using for Pimsleur Courses.
I love my current study program, but it's definitely designed for long term goals as I'm trying to have a foot in all the language families I want to study before I die. Recently I've been doing a lot of thinking and talking and think I may start applying for graduate school within the next year or so. My goal would probably be to first get my masters and then get into a good doctorate program. This of course would require me to focus and specialize and give me some shirt term goals to hit. Though my interests are global, I've spent way more time watching Cantonese films than any other so this would be the most plausible area to specialize in. So in terms of prepping for grad school these are the language skills that would be of most use to me for study in order of importance. 1. Reading Written Chinese - Access to Chinese film scholarship seems like the most important thing languages could possibly give me access to. 2. Listening to Spoken Cantonese - Most Cantonese films are available with English subtitles, but this would give me a more nuanced understanding of the films and culture, and access to un subtitled older Cantonese films and Television. 3. Listening to Spoken Mandarin - A number of Cantonese filmmakers have made Mandarin language films, and the Taiwan film industry is very closely tied to Hong Kong and unavailable in English. 4. Listening to Spoken Malay/Indonesian - A lot of big Hong Kong film studios got started in Singapore in the 50s, there's very little English scholarship on these films, and they are unavailable in English. 5. Reading French - There's just tons and tons of film theory in French. These skills are probably not essential for me to get through Grad school, but I personally feel I would need them to do any meaningful study. I also wouldn't need to master speaking/writing in these languages, since I'd be writing in English, but I would practice these skills. And I wouldn't have to perfect these skills before grad school, I just wouldn't want to be starting from scratch in grad school. And there's a chance I could take courses in Mandarin when I'm there. So my main problem is how to go about acquiring written Chinese. My original slow plan was to study written Cantonese to familiarize myself with characters, and then when my Cantonese was good enough to start Mandarin and never study written Mandarin Chinese with Cantonese pronunciations. So what's the most sensible plan, should I focus on Cantonese and start learning to read standard Written Chinese with Cantonese pronunciation, or just stick to written Cantoneae for now? Should I drop some non-essential languages and take on Mandarin and Cantonese simultaneously? And if so should I restrict Cantonese to speaking, or learn both Cantonese and Mandarin pronunciations? Also I guess I should re-evaluate my overall study plan. Well sorry for this huge information dump, but any advice of any sort would be appreciated. Edited by YnEoS on 02 July 2013 at 3:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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