Hakka Chinese

[morganie]

I've been studying Mandarin by myself for a while. Anyways, after I become good at Mandarin, I plan to study Hakka, the language of my boyfriend. I guess I can communicate with him in English or Mandarin, but I think he would really appreciate it if I knew his mother tongue (not to mention that his parents probably know very little Mandarin and basically no English). However, I can find absolutely no resources for Hakka in English, and the materials that I find for Hakka all seem to be either in traditional Chinese (which is not what I am learning for now) or contain no text at all (in other words, all audio).

Are there any good resources I can study it through? How about some dictionaries they have for Mandarin, where they list the characters and their corresponding phonetic romanizations?

Although Hakka is just "on my hit list" for now, I just want to track down resources now, because they seem to be so far and few in between.

[calibre2001]

Which type of Hakka? There are several regional variations from the meixian standard to taiwan standard.

[anonymoose]

You are right that there aren't many resources, but if you search Taobao, you will find there are dictionaries and also some courses, for example this one.

Of course, whether they are any good or not, I have no idea.

[chaxiu]

I know almost nothing about Hakka, but I have seen a number of resources available in Taiwan. I have seen textbooks, dictionaries etc. There is also a Hakka TV channel.

If you just google 客家話 the Taiwanese govt has a number of educational sites that might be of some use.

http://www.hakka.gov.tw/mp.asp?mp=1

Hakka Forum

http://www.chineselanguage.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=3&sid=4c59ec5742f38f64e0c6374e1435a026

I have the Taiwanese version of this book:大家來學客家話

It's in Hakka(characters + romanisation ) and Mandarin

http://www.books.com.tw/exep/prod/booksfile.php?item=0010405161

http://www.books.com.tw/exep/prod/books/blcat_04.php?prev_sub=10020703&encoding=C

Maryknoll has a Hakka textbook + CD

http://mklanguage.homestead.com/Bk_List_Lang_2010_Feb_3_html_no_price.htm

hope it helps

Chaxiu

[morganie]

I found this Hakka-English dictionary that looks pretty good:

http://ebook.lib.hku.hk/CADAL/B31445044/

I thought that after I'm proficient at Mandarin, I would just go through this dictionary and learn Hakka pronunciations for each character. But then this dictionary is over 100 years old, so would this not be a good source? Would a Hakka speaker of now speak like how the language is taught in this dictionary?

[anonymoose]

I don't know anything about hakka, but a dictionary on its own may not be enough to learn to speak. Apart from any grammatical differences with mandarin, there may also be other things like tone sandhi for which you will need a proper reference.

[morganie]

I agree. I can't find any of those kinds of reference...

[chrix]

You also need to find out if there's a dictionary specifically of the Hakka variety your boyfriend speaks. Variation across different Hakka dialects can be considerable...

[morganie]

I'm pretty sure he speaks the meixian. I remember him telling me that there are a lot of Hakka dialects and that he speaks the most common and standard one.

[Ah-Bin]

For basic vocabulary there is a good dictionary going from mandarin to Hakka (as well as Cantonese and Teochiu)

广州话客家话潮汕话与普通话对照词典(精装)

It also has a long list of individual character pronunciations.

[morganie]

"I have the Taiwanese version of this book:大家來學客家話

It's in Hakka(characters + romanisation ) and Mandarin

http://www.books.com.tw/exep/prod/bo...tem=0010405161"

The book seems good... Is that book supposed to be one that covers everything or almost everything, things like tone sandhi, grammar, etc? How many characters does it cover? It's not simply a phrasebook, right?

"Maryknoll has a Hakka textbook + CD

http://mklanguage.homestead.com/Bk_L...l_no_price.htm"

I've contacted that email address to ask about the Hakka textbook, but didn't get any responses. I doubt that they would ship outside the US though.

"For basic vocabulary there is a good dictionary going from mandarin to Hakka (as well as Cantonese and Teochiu)

广州话客家话潮汕话与普通话对照词典(精装)

It also has a long list of individual character pronunciations. "

Thank you... How many characters are covered in this dictionary?

[calibre2001]

"I have the Taiwanese version of this book:大家來學客家話

It's in Hakka(characters + romanisation ) and Mandarin

http://www.books.com.tw/exep/prod/bo...tem=0010405161"

The book seems good... Is that book supposed to be one that covers everything or almost everything, things like tone sandhi, grammar, etc? How many characters does it cover? It's not simply a phrasebook, right?

I have the Shanghainese version of this book. It's a phrasebook with pretty bad romanisation. Nothing more, and there's not even second person in the dialogue. So I'd advice caution for buying this type of books unless you just want to listen to what it sounds like.

Is this the type of Hakka your bf speaks?

[Ah-Bin]

I have the Shanghainese version of this book. It's a phrasebook with pretty bad romanisation. Nothing more, and there's not even second person in the dialogue. So I'd advice caution for buying this type of books unless you just want to listen to what it sounds like.

I think I bought it too, years ago. The tapes were terrible

There is a 大家來學客話 (note the different title) that uses Church romanisation, but it is for Taiwanese Hakka. I found it useful, but it has no sound files.

I think it was 2000 characters, arranged according to pinyin so you can look them up if you know them in Mandarin.

[Ah-Bin]

It was actually 2500 characters. It also has a section on special Hakka terms that have no direct translation in Mandarin, as well as the Mandarin to Hakka/Teochiu/Cantonese dictionary.

[antonxie]

I run an fb group dedicated on using hakka and another one to writing hakka. If you are interested here are the links:

More on actually using hakka and shooting the breeze in hakka.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/hakkaverse

More on deeper question relating to how to write hakka using kanji and other questions.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/writehakka

Hope it may entertain your questions.

ax