… yes I know I have an accent and made some tone mistakes, but hey, I don’t actively learn it anymore nor practice much

EDIT: I deleted the link from facebook because someone said they couldn’t understand 1 word I said What a blow to my confidence!

I know tons of foreigners that think that if they kept listening to Cantonese, they will eventually pick it up - no matter if its the radio and it all sounds like gibberish.

I have probably done around 80% input (listening) to about 20% output (speaking). This means, you don’t speak your way to fluency…. you listen your way to fluency. You can’t output what you haven’t inputted.

In my journey to learn Cantonese as fast as possible, I have learnt the most important principle in learning languages - You need to understand the input, which is one of Stephen Krashen’s principles of 2nd language acquisition.

• Repetitive listening to content that doesn’t make sense will not mean you will eventually get it.
• Listening to incomprehensible content very loud and clear will not mean you will understand it better
• Listening to incomprehensible content super slow over and over will not make you understand it better

So how can you understand the input? Take a look at Stephen Krashen as he explains the most important factor in learning languages.

The fastest way to learn Cantonese is by

• Learning as much vocab as possible. You can’t speak what you haven’t learnt, and you can’t guess your way through conversations as you’ll just look stupid when you do the wrong thing.
• Forget the grammar. You will notice it naturally after huge input. You’ll simply notice that’s the way they do it.
• Understand what you are listening. My method is to translate each “new” word into Jyutping, then into English and listen over-and-over to the Cantonese until it becomes natural.
• Learn the tone number with every new word and memorise it. Otherwise, you’ll sound like a broken record.

To the know-it-all foreigners and to to locals that preach Cantonese has no grammar, the big news is that CANTONESE HAS GRAMMAR. Though for all learners, I suggest you don’t learn it until you are quite good. You don’t need to learn it because you’ll never speak smoothly when sentences need to be filtered through a wall of grammar rules. You’ll start figuring out that time and verbs go in certain places. You’ll notice the ending particles after you listen to them being said in context.

I hate when people tell me “your Cantonese is very good” but say it in English. Finally, all my built up frustration over the years can be explained by this video…

A while back, someone on the Cantonese learning forum described:

There are two Hong Kong’s.

Hong Kong (香港,香講) and Hong (m) Kong (香唔港, 香唔講).

“Heung Gong” (香港,香講) is “the HK that speaks to you in Cantonese”. You’ll make friends and speak Cantonese with them. Heung Gong (HK) people mostly live in Kowloon, the New Territories, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

“Heung (m) Gong” (香唔港, 香唔講) or H(m)K is the HK that won’t speak in Cantonese to you.

Heung (m) Gong (HmK), is mainly located in certain parts of Central and in the offices of foreign capital firms. HmK’ers generally speak Cantonese among themselves. You’ll hear them joke, smile, laugh, greet and talk in Cantonese. But not to you.

They’ll speak “about” Cantonese in English. But not “in” Cantonese to you. To everyone else, yes, but not to you.

Some when they speak “in” English “about” Cantonese, will claim they’re speaking “in” Cantonese. You’ll notice it after a few experiences. Don’t get fooled.

“Heung Gong” (香講) people will accept you, speak Cantonese to you and welcome you. It’s heaven. Many can’t speak English and have no interest in English at all. They’ll talk “in” Cantonese. There’s no problem, no insults, no exclusion.

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.

Hope you can understand… just talking out of my head without any rehearsal. I know I sound very foreign, but at least I tried.

Over 2 years I’ve read thousands of forum posts on people’s experiences in learning languages and methods they’ve used to improve their spoken skills. Many people have given various suggestions which I’ve tried. The number one advice is to simply listen and imitate what you hear. Now this method not only doesn’t work for me, it actually hinders me.

Imitating new words without analysing its tones and romanization actually hinders my pronuncation. I tried once-upon-a-time to simply listen and copy, and ended up speaking some rubbish bastardised dribble that people can’t understand. What I thought I heard actually ends up being totally opposite to what the real tone and romanization were. Maybe I get it right then and there, but the next day I can’t remember how the words sounded like. If I proactively study a word I get better results, I’ll explain why…

EVERY word I learn goes through this process:

1) Learn words by Listening: Perhaps via watching Television, my wife telling me a new word, I ask how to say a new word.

2) Get its meaning: I hate people teaching me a new word in Cantonese. I honestly never remember or understand the explanations. Either the explanations contain 3-4 new words or the meaning isn’t clear for me which I will then never remember. I prefer direct Cantonese to English translations for every word! The times when there is no suitable English word, I prefer an English explanation. This is where it becomes tricky… many people have given me ridiculous English meanings which I needed to correct by using the Cantodict dictionary. I have learnt every word purely by doing a translation into English. This does not mean I think in English or translate everything I hear into English. Only new words I learn I prefer to be acquired via English as the meaning is much clearer and I remember far better. The other way is to provide a Cantonese synonym which I’ve already learnt and produces the same results.

3) Get the tones and Jyutping: I use the Cantodict dictionary in which I guess the 拼音 ping3 jam1 or have a native speaker type the characters which I then look up the correct tones and romanization. I’m also lucky because my wife knows all the tones in Cantonese and I can easily ask her what a particular word’s tone is.

4) Get a few pratical examples: I hate learning a word and then using it incorrectly, so I ask my wife or forum members to provide a few examples.

5) Use the words: I sometimes have sane conversations with myself to improve fluency of new words, but I also purposely throw in new words in every conversation where applicable so to build its automaticity. Then I’ll try them out with my wife or colleagues.

This is how I’ve learnt ~10,000 Cantonese words and I can think 100% in Cantonese! I hope this helps those that email me asking.

I sent an email to Steve Kaufmann mentioning how I enjoyed him speaking in different languages and then posting the podcasts onto his blog. I asked him if he could make more podcasts in different languages as he speaks 9 languages fluently. Steve continues to motivate me each day as the once impossible seems so obtainable.

It not only impresses me to hear him speaking in so many languages, but reminds me that my goals will one day be achieved with continued commitment.

You may hear Steve’s response below in multiple languages:

Download - 13:51min

I can’t wait until the day I can speak as fluent as Ho Kwok Wing. I seem to be speaking better day by day, though reaching Ho Kwok Wing’s level of fluency and vocabulary seem so unreachable.

I have come to realise that having a native-like accent and intonation would be unachievable. Even though we all possess different language abilities, I have always tried to compare my potential with Ho Kwok Wing. We both have a similar Australian accent when speaking English and started Cantonese as an adult.

I saw Ho Kwok Wing in Her Fatal Ways 4 (表姐，妳好嘢!) the other day on Cable-TV, and I was amazed that his fluency and pronunciation was the exact same 13 years ago as today.

I once asked Ho Kwok Wing in Whampoa Gardens how long it took him to speak Cantonese well. He indicated that he only needed 1 year in Hong Kong, though I don’t know what he thought speaking Cantonese well meant.

My motivation and inspiration come from the daily improvements I have already achieved, and the goal to speak as well as Ho Kwok Wing.

PART 1: 8:21min	PART 2: 10:17min