Cantonese: The 2013 Goals and Progress Thread

[querido]

My tutor always tells me not to say either sorry or thank you. I still do, but it must be something a little more serious! :-)

[Michaelyus]

As for me, I've learned the more Cantonese version 唔怪[之]得 for standard Mandarin 怪不得 [although I've heard 怪唔得 quite a fair bit myself], while having 打邊爐 (with lexically-motivated tone change in my pronunciation) with some friends.

[querido]

Thanks Michaelyus. I was just telling abcdefg "no need to say sorry".

[abcdefg]

Got it.

[querido]

1. I'm switching back to simplified characters only, as it is not necessary to change this now. For example, FSI has no characters and all of the materials I mentioned in post #17 part 3 are in simplified. Although I would like to learn them someday, now was the worst time to start! What was I thinking?! :-) By the way, with regard to Cantonese learning materials it looks like Mandarin <> Cantonese in simplified is by far the biggest market.

 

2. I've accepted that I need not learn written Cantonese. I guess that means I should not, as I have so much else to learn now. This is what my tutor said all along. So, for now we plan to try to proceed FSI style with just audio and Romanization.

 

3. I'll have to preserve and strengthen my Mandarin if I intend to use the Mandarin <> Cantonese materials. I'm very happy to keep my Mandarin studies open.

 

I hope these issues are finally settled. :-)

 

Edit one week later: All of the above reveals that I still don't understand what I'm doing. I haven't been able to set up a program that I fully believe in.

[querido]

I'm sorry to disappoint the thread but I didn't do anything this month but go on a long vacation. My tutor will also be away for another six weeks too.

 

As soon as I settle on a methodology that works with regard to everything I've said so far (1. I ensure that I can use words in conversation before adding too many more 2. I avoid looking at written Cantonese 3. I preserve and extend my Standard Written Chinese and my Mandarin, etc.), I will certainly share it with you! :-)

[Beardan]

I have been learning Cantonese for 2 years. Ive got to say i pretty much ignored the tones for the first year. It seemed too hard. But after about a year i gained some confidence and now am more comfortable with speaking in tones. I can get by with basic conversation now but my greatest problem is lack of speaking as at home i will generally only speak English with my wife (who can speak Cantonese). I found a HK'er on skype i am now practicing with. I hope to speak well after around 3 years of study!

[querido]

Good luck Beardan! I hope to see you in the 2014 thread which I might start if no one else does.
 
***

I'll finish the 2013 thread for myself now.

 

1) Good news:
"I hope to prove as I go that I can really use the words" < check

"hopefully never again let flashcarding dominate my study time" < check, so far
"nail down the pronunciation and tones" < ok, but not fast enough yet
"have a working daily conversational vocabulary of, hmm, I don't know, a couple of hundred words." < check!
 
2) Bad news:

a. I don't want to let my Mandarin fade away

b. I don't want to give up on Cantonese

c. I can't find the strength to study both at once (although I haven't actually tried yet)

 

I've been stuck going around in circles for weeks. I don't expect anyone to be able to help me with this but I don't mind if you have comments.

 

Let's see -

If I limit my Cantonese to spoken only (according to the best advice I've received),

with a practical number of useful exceptions like the written forms of "taxi", "bus", etc.,

with the vocabulary limited to, say, 3000 useful words which I can really use (not aiming for the entire language),

then it doesn't look impossible, given my progress so far.

 

As with Mandarin it's difficult to set aside other toys, but the best of what I already have should be more than enough:

CantoneseClass101

FSI

the two Mandarin<>Cantonese books for Mandarin speakers I mentioned above

the Routledge grammar series.

Most of their vocabularies overlap and probably add up to a reasonable number.

 

I promise to stop crying and agonizing over this now. Thank you for reading. See you next year!

[abcdefg]

I'm in Guangdong again and, as usual, the language here absolutely drives me nuts.

 

Am visiting Taishan 台山 and Kaiping 开平, both small towns. So many of the locals speak Mandarin as a second language and they speak it very poorly. The combination of their shoddy second-language Mandarin and my shoddy second-language Mandarin is usually disastrous. Have to say everything at least two times and sometimes write it on my hand.

 

This area does have a lot of people who lived some years overseas and have returned here for their "sunset years." They often know English and at times they see me struggling and help out. In some parts of Guangdong that I frequent, such as Zhuhai and Shenzhen, lots of immigrants from other parts of China speak standard Putonghua and I have no trouble.

 

But the hilly backwaters of Guangdong are always a major linguistic challenge.

 

Tonight I ordered 炒饭 and instead of something made with rice, a nice plate of 炒粉 was delivered. No complaints, since it was tasty too. But it is very reminiscent of my early China days when it was Standard Operating Procedure to order a glass cola and be surprised by the arrival on my table of anything from milk to tea.

[Meng Lelan]

Tonight I ordered 炒饭 and instead of something made with rice, a nice plate of 炒粉 was delivered.

 

Heh. I think I would have just resorted to writing out what I wanted. 

[abcdefg]

Good thought, Lelan, but I was ordering  hotel room service over the phone.

[Meng Lelan]

Wow I am impressed. I can't do that over the phone. Wait. I can't use a phone. Oh, never mind that.  Wait. Room service?!?!?  But that's not like you, the way you are always mingling with the masses!

[abcdefg]

Yes, it was a rather decadent move, but I was tired after a long day of touring. Not a major splurge at 28 Yuan, delivered. Hit the spot.

 

--------------------------

 

Apologies, Querido, for getting off the topic of your thread. I will stop.

[querido]

Hi abcdefg and Meng Lelan!

My tutor's husband is from Panyu, only 20mi/30km from the center of Guangzhou, but my tutor says his Cantonese isn't Guangzhou "standard". Both his Cantonese and his Mandarin are very difficult for me. Interestingly, when he speaks English it's very clear! (So I know he cares about his pronunciation.) Maybe Panyu was a little more backwater-ish 60+ years ago.

It's still eerie and beautiful to me to communicate with him in writing. It reminds me of playing chess in Madrid (before I ever studied Spanish) with someone who either didn't speak English or chose not to. I love this feeling. But if I learn to speak Cantonese it is this guy I most hope won't think I'm a poseur or dilettante or something. He's just enough older than I that I can still find that feeling inside myself of needing to prove myself to an elder or a teacher, which served me well my whole life.

[querido]

You two can go off topic any time. *I* won't fuss at you. :-)

[abcdefg]

#34 --

But if I learn to speak Cantonese it is this guy I most hope won't think I'm a poseur or dilettante or something.

 

I understand what you mean by this. Personally I felt like I had "arrived" when I became able to dine socially with the headmaster of my school like two old friends. She knows no English, or at least pretends not to.

 

Yet we shared good food and good times. I am older than her in years, but she is senior to me in many other ways. We became close enough that she could tell me things about her life as a young woman coming of age during the Cultural Revolution. One of my favorite people in all of China!

[querido]

To abcdefg #36:
I once had a Mandarin teacher who told us the story of how she and her fellow university students survived being pulled out of school to work on a collective farm, growing rice. They gave them rice, chickens and pigs, etc., and required that they survive - year by year - in some isolated place. Authorities would come in trucks to exchange produce for supplies, etc., and that was her new life. She finally finished school in the U.S., many years later.
Despite all of that labor, or maybe because of it in some ways, her hands and arms and posture were impossibly graceful. What a person to know!  My life was soft and easy while her character was forged to steel. It's sobering.

[abcdefg]

I agree. Such things are sobering.