Tue 7 Jul 2009
Pretty happy with my Cantonese Today
Posted by 馬先生 under Learning
Today I presented a 2 hour presentation in 100% Cantonese, even the technical vocabulary to a Mainland outsourcing company. I had to study tons of technical computer vocabulary before the meeting and get fluent in professional sounding Cantonese like (鑒於上述我所講嘅原因 / gaam3 jyu1 soeng6 seot6 ngo5 so2 gong2 ge3 jyun4 jan1 / in light of the above mentioned reasons).
Today’s meeting went for 5 hours and I could understand nearly everything without needing to second guess or think. I guess I can say my progress after today’s meeting can be considered huge and quite amazing (not being up myself in anyway). One year ago I don’t think I could handle today’s meeting at all. I also found that I sounded pretty clear if I spoke slowly and articulate all my compounds.
What I had to get used to was to have English Powerpoint slides, but speak in Cantonese. Still I have a long way to go as I lack tons of professional and advanced sentence structures, but I’ll keep learning until people will mistake me for a native.
Hong Kong
July 12th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Well done! You have put in the work and are now reaping the rewards. This sounds a lot like my level of Japanese language (I am not native but can do long presentations etc) .
Cantonese is a really cool language. Of all the big asian languages (mandarin, japanese, korean, cantonese) cantonese is probably the most orientalised and talked up for being impossible but you seem to have really mastered it.
I’ve started learning mandarin and bits of cantonese and was wondering how you practice tones. Any advice?
I appreciate you probably get asked this all the time but do you read cantonese?. I remember a while ago you said you could speak but couldn’t read. Is that the same now. My problem is the opposite, I can read and understand the general meaning but cannot speak at all.
james
July 12th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Hi James. I still can’t read much, but to quickly learn tones I use the Cantonese Dictionary at http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/scripts/wordsearch.php?level=0 and the translator http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/parser/. These will give you the tones for every compound and character. To memorise tones, initially I just associated a number with every word and drilled them in through listening to the word over and over.
When I speak I used to instantly recall the number simultaneously, and as I kept using the words I no longer needed to and all comes out naturally without thinking.
July 12th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Hello again,
If you want to really master chinese characters (i.e. remember them and never forget) I highly recommend James Heisig’s ‘Remembering the Hanzi’. It was a system originally used to memorize the 2000 or so Chinese characters used in Japanese and to do it quickly, in fact just a few weeks.
You are probably doubting the plausibility of this but search for it in amazon or google. If you stick to the method you could master 3000/4000 chinese characters in a month or two.
Many people suggest that the method does not work. However I used this method and memorized 2000 or so characters in 2 months. I now read Japanese books/newspapers and never have to use a dictionary (well after teaching myself the language rules pronunciation etc). Since you already know all cantonese apart from writing your progress would be much faster than mine.
I would highly recommend this as becoming literate in Japanese so quickly has been probably the greatest thing I ever did. I now have memorized around 5000 characters and hoping to be literate in chinese soon.
Good luck
james
July 14th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Hello
I am very interested in your blog.
You have a lot of experiences and abundant learning materials.
By the way, I want to ask a question.
I am from Korea and I am very familiar with
chinese characters since Korean and Chinese characters are very related.
For Asian learners, reading Cantonese seems easier than speaking Cantonese.
As a language enthusiast, what do you think of it? Do you believe there is a different approach to learn Cantonese?
Thank you for listening
July 14th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Hi 眞, seeing that I basically failed at reading and writing, I am not really the best person to ask. So from my point of view, it was easy to learn to listen due to my environment of being in Hong Kong, but hard to read. You can blame my lack of reading skills due to my lack of dedication. Just no motivation to sit at home and memorise every character.
July 24th, 2009 at 5:38 am
Wow, way to go. My cantonese is pretty basic. I don’t think I will ever learn to speak like a native. It’s impossible. My entire goal is to be able to understand dramas/cartoons in Cantonese with ease and be able to easily communicate with other in cantonese. As far as making technical presentations….. nah. I guess my goal is to speak like a 7-8 year old native speaker. At that age, you can understand most TV things that aren’t too deep or political and can understand cartoons and dramas just fine.
July 25th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Dear 馬先生 ^_^
This is 眞 again .
I become a big fan of you and your website
I have another question about learning Cantonese. (I am not sure if i can write here).
I have learned for Mandarin for several years(more than 4 years), so my Mandarine is much better than Cantonese. Most of my local friends in Hong Kong say: please don’t study Cantonese. Learn Mandarine. It is very practical and useful both in bussiness and daily life. They insist “learning mandarine helps me study cantonese as well” *_*
However, I found that learning two languages at the same time is not a good idea.
Always, my previous memory of Mandarin tones and simplifed characters discourages me….
I would like to hear your opinion
Thanks !
I want to
July 25th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Hi 眞. I wouldn’t listen to people when they say to learn Mandarin instead of Cantonese.
Do you want to be a business person in china?
I’ve never heard Mandarin in daily life in HK, so I don’t think its useful. The only use of Mandarin I can think in Hong Kong is if you are working in a sales job, customer service, support, or IT project with Mainland team.
I tried learning Mandarin and cantonese together and failed. Just not enough time and motivation to do both in 1 day. Better to nail 1 thing than to fail at both.
Thanks
July 27th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Hey Milan,
Just wanting to let you know that you have done a great job in learning cantonese! Your site also happens to be really helpful, especially the monologues…you should really put out more
As, a fellow Australian trying to improve my cantonese I just wanted to say your doing an amazing job. My cantonese and mandarin are a bit half half, but i’ll hope that changes soon.
All the best,
Patrick