AHHH in dire need of help

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  1. #1

    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    Montreal
    Posts
    1

    Angry AHHH in dire need of help

    hey guys, im trying to learn cantonese right now....the thing is that....i live in god awful Montreal and its practically impossible to find a teacher...so im doing that audio and book thing but its not really helping that much........so if there are any suggestions as to how i would pick up the pace to learning the language, please tell me! im vietnamese so the pronounciations and stuff are really easy...


  2. #2

    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    Chapel Hill, NC
    Posts
    7

    Cantonese Resources

    It really depends on which book+recording combos you're using. I've found the Pimsleur 30 lesson set is good to lay down some initial groundwork for building a functional vocabulary and grammar but you still will need some dictionaries so you'll know when you're mispronouncing things: for example, some consonant sounds in Cantonese are different than in English (take the "j" and "ch" sounds which correspond more toward "ds" and "ts"). Once you've done that, it's pretty neat how much you'll recognize when messing around with the FSI courses or whatever you're using.

    When it comes to learning a language, there is no real "easy, fast" way outside of living and breathing it. Make sure you're exposed to it for a decent amount of time each day and that it's an interactive experience. Believe it or not, I've found that Asian restaurants can often be an excellent source for finding language partners as often the people working there want to learn English too!

    Materials I can suggest to you which have proved useful for me:

    (*) Pimsleur Comprehensive Cantonese I
    (*) Basic Cantonese/Intermediate Cantonese by Matthews and Yip
    (*) FSI Basic Cantonese volumes I and II
    (*) English-Cantonese Dictionary by Chinese University Press
    (*) Chinese-English Dictionary (by the same)
    (*) The Right Word in Cantonese by Kwan
    (*) A Glossary of Common Colloquial Cantonese Expressions by the CUP again.
    (*) Critical Language Series: Basic Cantonese (CDROM) by the Univ of Arizona Press. Go to http://clp.arizona.edu/cls/can/
    (*) Watch a lot of Stephen Chiau, Johnnie To, and Wong Jing movies. After a while, you'd be amazed how much dialogue you can follow in siu2 lam4 zuk1 kau4. =)

    The CDROM is a 20 lesson course which supposedly covers 2 semesters worth of material so it's worth a shot. It is a *lot* of material and works on both Windows and Mac, and I've managed to get it to work under Linux. I like it a lot, but as I said, it will require a considerable amount of sweat equity on your part.

    I do plan on going to CUHK next week when I'm in HK and will check out what materials they have for sale. As they do run a Chinese language school, they probably have some excellent in-house written teaching materials, tapes, workbooks, etc so I'm going to swoop upon them like a swarm of locusts.

    By the way, for those who don't have a tonal language under their belt...
    http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-can/

    ...that website is excellent and I mined all the wave files off it with a script so that I can get pronunciations of syllables I've never heard before when a Cantonese speaker is not available. Somehow I don't think they intended people to do it, but it's nice being able to make my laptop dictate Cantonese to me at the coffee shop.

    Good Luck!
    -Tony


  3. #3

    Join Date
    May 2004
    Posts
    473

    Come on, Montreal is hardly god-awful!

    In addition to what Tony recommends, watch Canto movies, listen to cantopop (, and hang around Chinatown and try to get a Cantonese speaking circle of friends to help you out.


  4. #4

    Join Date
    Jan 2003
    Location
    Back in Toronto now - after 10 1/2 years in HK
    Posts
    945

    Hungerz, I have a Cantonese-speaking Malaysian friend who is long-time resident of Montreal. Works in the university right downtown (you know which one!). Says most of the students in his department are from China. Good chance at least some of them would know Cantonese. Send me PM if you'd like me to put you in touch - you just may get lucky.

    BTW, I'm one with "fly" on opinion about Montreal. An understatement, if any.