Tue 16 Oct 2007
New mission - learning to read
Posted by 馬先生 under Cantonese
When I first started to learn Cantonese and even up to a few days ago, I thought that reading and writing Chinese would be a total waste of my time. Speaking Cantonese fluently is all that I needed and I would be happy. Besides street signs are written in both English and Chinese.
I was only kidding myself as I continually found it difficult to build my vocabulary to the advanced level without characters and relying 100% on Cantodict Parser to translate everything to Jyutping. I still wanted to build my spoken fluency first, then maybe tackle characters next year or the year after.
Yesterday, I found a school very close to my workplace, Hong Kong Language Learning Centre. I walked in and spoke in English, “I want to learn some Cantonese”. She asked if I was interested in their Beginner Level 1 Spoken class. Being modest, I replied that maybe Intermediate classes would suit me since I already knew a little. After a short conversation she pointed out a few things about my Cantonese:
- Pronunciation needs a little more work which gets worse when I speak fast
- I speak quite fluently but difficult at times because I speak too fast
- In general my tones are good but fall apart when speaking too fast
So simply speaking, I speak too fast and need to slow down. When I finally slowed down, I sounded quite good and she had no problems in communicating with me.
She suggested that I am better than some of their Advanced - Level 2 students and probably even Level 3. I took a look at their course materials for these levels and I found that I knew more than 80% or 90% of the new vocabulary. I’m quite paranoid of non-native foreign accents and bad habits affecting my Cantonese, that I decided to choose the Reading and Writing Beginner Level 1 class instead. She explained that the students could already speak fluently.
Luckily the term commenced last night, I signed up and started the class that day - quite cheap $2300HKD for 10 lessons (2 hours each). There were 2 other students in the class, surprisingly they were both native Hong Kong Cantonese speakers and victims of parents who thought English was superior to Chinese. These students grew up and studied half their life in Hong Kong (International school) before moving to Canada during primary school. Worried I might drown in the constant flow of advanced spoken Cantonese, I amazed myself and could understand 95% of what the teacher was saying.
I have never intentionally learnt to read, but I have accumulated a few hundred characters through daily exposure of street signs, sub-titles, and Cantodict. Our first lesson was quite interesting as I learnt the Cantonese names of the 12 strokes and learnt the stroke orders, character rules and some meanings for some characters.
We practiced to write following characters: 一二三四五六七八九十口月日水王玉山木田魚火明女子好人中不年有我你您他她們是美個高國
I’ve decided to learn how to read as fast as possible! I know Steve Kaufmann learnt to read a newspaper fluently in 6 months, so I’m sure its not as impossible as I once was lead to believe.
October 17th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
馬蘭先生,加油呀!!你咁叻,實學得好快嘅!!
October 18th, 2007 at 3:32 am
Welcome to the chinese literary world!!
Like you, I initially didn’t want to read chinese and came to realise that I had to. Thereafter I started learning and ended up writing ’cause it’s the best way for those pesky characters to sink deep and well into the mind. Now guess what? I love reading and writing chinese whenever I can. Maybe you’ll be joining me soon haha.
October 26th, 2007 at 3:21 am
Hi Milan
Let me just say that you are an inspiration to me, i’m coming next year to work in Hk and because of you i’m really inspired to learn as much cantonese as you did and as you’re learning now. I would love to spend all my free time trying to learn Cantonese only, but my English is not that perfect(i’m a portuguese and spanish speaker), and i want to work on it too…maybe it’s my problem and i shouldn’t be so perfectionist. Anyway, just want to give you my sincere congratulations for this wonderful site of yours. It’s not only a great cantonese material source but also an encouragment to hard work and power of will…Keep up that wonderful work of yours! And please, sorry if there’s any typographical error in this reply!
Best Regards
November 14th, 2007 at 8:54 am
I think that it’s great that you finally took the plunge and started learning how to read and write Chinese.I find it so much easier to learn vocabulary when I can associate the word i’m learning with a character.When I can do that, the word is no longer just a random sound , but something concrete.
But anyway,after 1 month or so how much progress have you made?
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Congratulations Milan…I think it is amazing that your Cantonese is as good as it is, in such a short period of time.
I started learning how to read and write in Chinese for the same reasons you described. I’m a year into it, studying about an hour a day, and I am still not very fluent…but considering that you are surrounded by Chinese on a daily basis… I think it will go much faster for you.