Got rid of NCPR

[Flickserve]

Donated my NCPR vol 1-3 to the charity bookshop 

 

I only got up to a few lessons of vol 2 but it just wasnt for me. Now, not using any textbook. 

[Shelley]

Cool, wonder who is going to wonder in and find them? Someone with no intention of learning Chinese and decides to take the challenge? Or a student of Chinese with not too much money who will consider themselves lucky?

 

Well done. 

[agewisdom]

2 hours ago, Flickserve said:

I only got up to a few lessons of vol 2 but it just wasnt for me. Now, not using any textbook. 

 

What's your backup plan then? ?

[Flickserve]

35 minutes ago, agewisdom said:

What's your backup plan then? 

 

I hadn't looked at it for ages so it was just gathering dust. I am a bit organic. I like to talk to people and ask them questions. 

 

This is what I found useful, but don't do enough of:

A) listening to mp3 recordings repeatedly and matching it up with the script. At my level, just a few minutes of a conversation helps a lot. 

B) forced to listen to clients and interact with them. I ask colleagues (I am in Hong Kong) how to say xyz. I then forget and ask them again! 

C) shadow easy sentences. This just works my pronunciation, tones, intonation and listening. 

 

I don't really read that much. Partly it's laziness and partly a way to force me to place emphasis on listening skills. 

[agewisdom]

Thanks for sharing your methods. Good to know. Hopefully these methods will help you improve.

 

The only area I see a gap is in the writing and recognition of characters, but maybe it might be wise to leave that for later.

[Flickserve]

3 hours ago, agewisdom said:

The only area I see a gap is in the writing and recognition of characters, but maybe it might be wise to leave that for later

 

Yes. That’s the gap. However, I can recognise enough characters to make sentences and use Pleco so it’s not really up there as a priority. 

[agewisdom]

47 minutes ago, Flickserve said:

Yes. That’s the gap. However, I can recognise enough characters to make sentences and use Pleco so it’s not really up there as a priority. 

 

Surprising you are able to retain recognition of characters without using flashcards and an SRS system. For me, it's all too easy to forget

[Flickserve]

Reading and writing are very different skills. I can do pinyin and recognise the characters because I went through the process with Cantonese.

 

for characters, I started off learning John deFrancis books - the red one called I think Basic Chinese Reader. I learnt the first 5-600 characters of by rote and copied them out to remember. Because, they were supposed to be so common, when I looked at Chinese texts I would try to see if the words were there (of course not understanding anything of the article). Not very systematic.

 

The next stage came when I had to move to Hong Kong for work. In order not to starve, before flying out, I took a dim sum order sheet from a restaurant in ChinaTown, studied the food characters with the sound and wrote them out repetitively many times each day after work for about four weeks.  Potential starvation by not being able to read a menu is a wonderful motivator.

 

After that, it was a gradual accumulation of traditional characters matching up daily Cantonese sounds to written characters. Finding a karaoke song with fairly easy characters is good practice. 

[889]

In terms of character recognition, that you're in a place like Hong Kong or the Mainland where characters are all about you makes an enormous difference. Just keep your eyes open and read. Especially these days when you can carry a phone and quickly check characters you don't know or photograph interesting stuff to look at later.

[agewisdom]

On 12/19/2018 at 8:10 PM, Flickserve said:

Reading and writing are very different skills. I can do pinyin and recognise the characters because I went through the process with Cantonese.

 

Ah Cantonese. I actually prefer spoken Cantonese compared to Mandarin. However, after I started learning Mandarin, it's really surprising how phrases which I assumed were the same in Mandarin and Cantonese was actually different.

 

Example:  看一看  (Take a look)

I always thought that:

1. kan yi kan (Mandarin) was the same as dai yat dai

 

BUT

2. It turns out that the Cantonese phrase is 'hon jat hon'

 

Which is totally weird to me. Any idea what good books or website to learn more on basic Cantonese or the discrepancy with Mandarin?

 

[889]

There are textbooks around for Chinese speakers learning Cantonese, and while I can't say for sure since I haven't used them, I assume they discuss easily-confused phrases in Mandarin and Cantonese.

[agewisdom]

1 hour ago, 889 said:

There are textbooks around for Chinese speakers learning Cantonese, and while I can't say for sure since I haven't used them, I assume they discuss easily-confused phrases in Mandarin and Cantonese.

 

Makes sense. Care to share any of the good ones here? Thanks.

[Mannng]

I also started with NCPR and found it pretty useless. The "fancy" font they use for the hanzi is also very difficult for beginners... when I look back now it is not a problem, but when I was a beginner I found it really difficult.

 

[889]

As I said, I've never used them, just seen them on shelves. (My only Cantonese text is Lau's Elementary Cantonese, and it's in pristine almost-never-opened -never-used condition.) But in large bookstores in HK and the Mainland you should have no problem finding Cantonese texts in Chinese, and like everyone else, you can spend all day there thumbing through and reading them if you wish.

[agewisdom]

1 minute ago, 889 said:

But in large bookstores in HK and the Mainland you should have no problem finding Cantonese texts in Chinese, and like everyone else, you can spend all day there thumbing through and reading them if you wish.

 

Too bad, I don't live in either of those countries. But never mind, when I need them, I'll get around posting here for some help. Thanks.

[Flickserve]

2 hours ago, agewisdom said:

Example:  看一看  (Take a look)

I always thought that:

1. kan yi kan (Mandarin) was the same as dai yat dai

 

Yes. Correct. 睇一睇 is the spoken form.

 

 

[agewisdom]

10 minutes ago, Flickserve said:

Yes. Correct. 睇一睇 is the spoken form.

 

Hmmm... That's exactly it! Is there a lot of these differences between Mandarin and Cantonese? I thought having a universal character based language would solve these dialect issues. How would one know exactly the differences? Is there a link on this somewhere here in the forums or on the Internet?

[Flickserve]

11 hours ago, agewisdom said:

I thought having a universal character based language would solve these dialect issues

 

It does. Chinese is written as standard Chinese. 

 

Mandarin 看一看

Cantonese spoken 睇一睇 (can find this written in messaging apps indicating casual conversation)

Chinese written form 看一看 （reading it out as hon yat hon - formal documents, story books, writing formal reports by Cantonese speakers)

 

[Flickserve]

14 hours ago, agewisdom said:

Which is totally weird to me. Any idea what good books or website to learn more on basic Cantonese or the discrepancy with Mandarin?

 

 

I remember there is a huge list of Cantonese sentences around on the internet. I can’t remember how I found it nor where it is now. 

[agewisdom]

2 hours ago, Flickserve said:

Cantonese spoken 睇一睇 (can find this written in messaging apps indicating casual conversation) 

Chinese written form 看一看 （reading it out as hon yat hon - formal documents, story books, writing formal reports by Cantonese speakers) 

 

Why is there a discrepancy? Honestly curious about this.