Learning Methodologies
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Matt
Learning Methodologies
For all of you who are non-native speakers of Cantonese I would be interested to know what methodology you have used in order to learn the language. I began the learning process by studying Yale romanization, unfortunately it is the only form of pingyam that I am familiar with which makes it somewhat difficult to follow and read other forms. After studying pingyam for approximately two months I had the opportunity to move to Hong Kong where I lived for approximately two years. I feel that the most efficient way to learn a foreign language is to be completelyy submersed in the culture and being "forced" to speak the language on a daily basis. After I had been in Hong Kong for approximately one year, I felt I had a pretty decent grasp of conversational Cantonese. It was only then that I began to study the characters. Please let me know how you began as well as strategies you currently employ to further your studies.
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chan
Re: Learning Methodologies
i started by borrowing cantonese books from the public library... after researching over the net, i started to look for the best book with the best accuracy from a local bookstore... then i started to rent HK drama films in cantonese... afterwards i started to learn the characters along the way... but i still have trouble with the tones... i tried to solve this problem by finding me a penpal from hongkong but unfortunately she's very busy and the time difference is very inconvenient... so yea Matt your right, its always best to learn it by surrounding yourself in a cantonese speaking world or learn it one on one or such from a native speaker thats willing to help you out...
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Matt
Re: Learning Methodologies
Chan,
If you are having trouble with the tones I will forward you some information regarding a book and set of tapes that solely focus on the develop of sounds and tones. Unfortunately I do not have the information in front of me, but will let you know shortly. These are the same books I used when I first began studying Cantonese.
If you are having trouble with the tones I will forward you some information regarding a book and set of tapes that solely focus on the develop of sounds and tones. Unfortunately I do not have the information in front of me, but will let you know shortly. These are the same books I used when I first began studying Cantonese.
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Dylan Sung
Re: Learning Methodologies
Learn the numbers first, because all the tones of Cantonese can be found in the numbers themselves.
To find out more
http://www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk/sapienti/canttone.htm
Dyl.
To find out more
http://www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk/sapienti/canttone.htm
Dyl.
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Jordan
Re: Learning Methodologies
I have been using Cantonese language tapes from Pimsleur. I also have their Mandarin tapes. They recently put out a full length Cantonese course so I purchased that one also. I find them excellent.
I would be curious to know the titles of any books for learning Cantonese that anyone can recommend.
Jordan
I would be curious to know the titles of any books for learning Cantonese that anyone can recommend.
Jordan
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James Campbell
Re: Learning Methodologies
I find the Cantonese books by Sidney Lau very good.
His elementary Cantonese comes in two volumes total 20 lessons.
The intermediate Cantonese comes in two volumes, lessons 21-40.
The advanced Cantonese comes in two volumes, lessons 41-70.
I don't have cassettes, but as a phonologist I don't usually encounter pronunciations problems with Chinese languages.
I like the books because they are very comprehensive, including easy to follow romanization with Cantonese characters included in all texts and exercises. Besides the lengthy dialogues, the best part of the series are the extensive exercises, which unlike many language books that require you to guess the correct answers (and I believe this discourages a lot of self-language learners), all the of exercises are in substitution format with full translations as well. Here I offer an example from lesson 35, page 722:
(b) "As (something) as possible" (Notes 4 & 10)
(i) "As (Adj.) as possible" (Note 10)
S. V. No.
Ngoh5 seung2 maai5 yat1º ga3
我 想買 一架
I.C. (=Adj.) O.
yau5 gam3 daai6 dak1º gam3 daai6 ge3 che1º.
有咁 大 得咁 大 嘅 車。
sai3 sai3
細 細
peng4 peng4
平 平
gwai3 gwai3
貴 貴
leng3 leng3
靚 靚
S. V. No.
Ngoh5 sik6 joh2 leung5 dip6
我 食唨 兩碟
I.C. (=Adj.) O.
Yau5 gam3 haam4 dak1º gam3 haam4 ge3 choi3.
有咁 鹹 得咁 鹹 嘅 菜。
taam5 taam5
淡 淡
laat6 laat6
辣 辣
tim4 tim4
甜 甜
suen1 suen1
酸 酸
I want to buy as big a car as possible.
small
cheap
expensive
beautiful
I've had two side-dishes as salty as possible.
tasteless
hot (in taste)
sweet
sour
Just the contents of Lesson 35 "The Uses of DAK1º 得 (I)" is a good example of how comprehensive the book is. There is a dialogue section with 20 dialogues showing some four different uses of the word dak. Then the vocabulary section has 20 words each with sub-vocabulary totaling 73 items and phrases with an additional 14 reminder vocabulary. Just compiling a dictionary from the vocabulary in all these books would yield a very nice sized Cantonese/English dictionary.
In Part II, there are explanatory notes in very clear English with plenty of examples (covering another 7 pages). After reading through it, you're bound to be an expert.
Part III are the Drill Exercises, which I just cited an example of above, which include Sentence Pattern Drills ("can" referring to physical ability or permission, "can" used in the emphatic way, "can" referring to skillful ability), Adverb of Manner (relating to personal impression, relating to facts, relating to potential mood), adjective suffix "-able" (on its own, used in a sentence), comparison using "dak" ("A exceeds B" type, "A equals B” type, "A is less than B" type), idiomatic phrase patterns using "dak" ("as (something) as I can", "as (something) as possible"). Totally covering 26 pages.
Finally, there are expansion drills, replacement drills, insertion drills (5 kinds), and transformation drills. After that, there are guided conversations and comprehension drills using only characters without romanization (totaling 15 pages).
That's just one lesson from this series! I've seen some Korean textbooks set up with great substitution exercises like the ones presented here in the Cantonese, but as far as I know, this Cantonese course far surpasses any language learning books I've ever seen. I haven't even started studying these books seriously yet, but I've tried one of the lessons, and they're very effective.
I believe language learning should not require you to construct phrases or grammar on your own. It really should be learned through experience, having seen/heard it before, and plenty of similar sentences with certain words replaced and substituted. In this way it doesn't require a lot of thinking, but yet you "osmose" a lot of the language through the repetition of the drills. When it comes time to make your own sentences, you have enough experience with juggling the parts of sentences from your exercises that you should be able to do it without much trouble.
I really recommend this course to anybody, and too bad other language textbooks aren't constructed in the same way. I've studied dozens of languages and seen every kind of method (for example, the Defense Language Institute material is pretty good and written in a similar way), but I haven't seen anything better than this single Sidney Lau's course. I don't have the copies of the elementary volumes, but the intermediate and advanced ones put together comprise more than 1600 pages of learning material. Where else can you find such comprehensive language learning material? After this course, you'll probably be good enough at Cantonese to discuss current events in-depth in a live TV interview. Definitely worth every cent invested.
Now if someday I come back saying I've learned Cantonese, you know where I learned it from. And I'll probably be ready to take on any conversation!
Maybe somebody should take Sidney Lau's example and make similar texts for Hokkien, Hakka, Wu, and of course, Mandarin. I've thought about doing this before.
Check these websites:
[http://avenue.fc2web.com/cantonese.html]
[http://www.eastwindsf.com/cantonese.html]
[http://whitey.net/2books.htm]
[http://humanities.byu.edu/cla/SelectedBib.html]
His elementary Cantonese comes in two volumes total 20 lessons.
The intermediate Cantonese comes in two volumes, lessons 21-40.
The advanced Cantonese comes in two volumes, lessons 41-70.
I don't have cassettes, but as a phonologist I don't usually encounter pronunciations problems with Chinese languages.
I like the books because they are very comprehensive, including easy to follow romanization with Cantonese characters included in all texts and exercises. Besides the lengthy dialogues, the best part of the series are the extensive exercises, which unlike many language books that require you to guess the correct answers (and I believe this discourages a lot of self-language learners), all the of exercises are in substitution format with full translations as well. Here I offer an example from lesson 35, page 722:
(b) "As (something) as possible" (Notes 4 & 10)
(i) "As (Adj.) as possible" (Note 10)
S. V. No.
Ngoh5 seung2 maai5 yat1º ga3
我 想買 一架
I.C. (=Adj.) O.
yau5 gam3 daai6 dak1º gam3 daai6 ge3 che1º.
有咁 大 得咁 大 嘅 車。
sai3 sai3
細 細
peng4 peng4
平 平
gwai3 gwai3
貴 貴
leng3 leng3
靚 靚
S. V. No.
Ngoh5 sik6 joh2 leung5 dip6
我 食唨 兩碟
I.C. (=Adj.) O.
Yau5 gam3 haam4 dak1º gam3 haam4 ge3 choi3.
有咁 鹹 得咁 鹹 嘅 菜。
taam5 taam5
淡 淡
laat6 laat6
辣 辣
tim4 tim4
甜 甜
suen1 suen1
酸 酸
I want to buy as big a car as possible.
small
cheap
expensive
beautiful
I've had two side-dishes as salty as possible.
tasteless
hot (in taste)
sweet
sour
Just the contents of Lesson 35 "The Uses of DAK1º 得 (I)" is a good example of how comprehensive the book is. There is a dialogue section with 20 dialogues showing some four different uses of the word dak. Then the vocabulary section has 20 words each with sub-vocabulary totaling 73 items and phrases with an additional 14 reminder vocabulary. Just compiling a dictionary from the vocabulary in all these books would yield a very nice sized Cantonese/English dictionary.
In Part II, there are explanatory notes in very clear English with plenty of examples (covering another 7 pages). After reading through it, you're bound to be an expert.
Part III are the Drill Exercises, which I just cited an example of above, which include Sentence Pattern Drills ("can" referring to physical ability or permission, "can" used in the emphatic way, "can" referring to skillful ability), Adverb of Manner (relating to personal impression, relating to facts, relating to potential mood), adjective suffix "-able" (on its own, used in a sentence), comparison using "dak" ("A exceeds B" type, "A equals B” type, "A is less than B" type), idiomatic phrase patterns using "dak" ("as (something) as I can", "as (something) as possible"). Totally covering 26 pages.
Finally, there are expansion drills, replacement drills, insertion drills (5 kinds), and transformation drills. After that, there are guided conversations and comprehension drills using only characters without romanization (totaling 15 pages).
That's just one lesson from this series! I've seen some Korean textbooks set up with great substitution exercises like the ones presented here in the Cantonese, but as far as I know, this Cantonese course far surpasses any language learning books I've ever seen. I haven't even started studying these books seriously yet, but I've tried one of the lessons, and they're very effective.
I believe language learning should not require you to construct phrases or grammar on your own. It really should be learned through experience, having seen/heard it before, and plenty of similar sentences with certain words replaced and substituted. In this way it doesn't require a lot of thinking, but yet you "osmose" a lot of the language through the repetition of the drills. When it comes time to make your own sentences, you have enough experience with juggling the parts of sentences from your exercises that you should be able to do it without much trouble.
I really recommend this course to anybody, and too bad other language textbooks aren't constructed in the same way. I've studied dozens of languages and seen every kind of method (for example, the Defense Language Institute material is pretty good and written in a similar way), but I haven't seen anything better than this single Sidney Lau's course. I don't have the copies of the elementary volumes, but the intermediate and advanced ones put together comprise more than 1600 pages of learning material. Where else can you find such comprehensive language learning material? After this course, you'll probably be good enough at Cantonese to discuss current events in-depth in a live TV interview. Definitely worth every cent invested.
Now if someday I come back saying I've learned Cantonese, you know where I learned it from. And I'll probably be ready to take on any conversation!
Maybe somebody should take Sidney Lau's example and make similar texts for Hokkien, Hakka, Wu, and of course, Mandarin. I've thought about doing this before.
Check these websites:
[http://avenue.fc2web.com/cantonese.html]
[http://www.eastwindsf.com/cantonese.html]
[http://whitey.net/2books.htm]
[http://humanities.byu.edu/cla/SelectedBib.html]
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James Campbell
Re: Learning Methodologies
oops, the spacing didn't work out in that sample, so you'll have to use your imagination how it looks in the book.
And those links, here they are again:
http://avenue.fc2web.com/cantonese.html
http://www.eastwindsf.com/cantonese.html
http://whitey.net/2books.htm
http://humanities.byu.edu/cla/SelectedBib.html
And those links, here they are again:
http://avenue.fc2web.com/cantonese.html
http://www.eastwindsf.com/cantonese.html
http://whitey.net/2books.htm
http://humanities.byu.edu/cla/SelectedBib.html
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Jordan
Re: Learning Methodologies
James,
Thank you very much for all that information. That was a response and a half! The web sites were also very interesting. I am going to try and get those Sidney Lau books, I hope they are still in print.
Jordan
Thank you very much for all that information. That was a response and a half! The web sites were also very interesting. I am going to try and get those Sidney Lau books, I hope they are still in print.
Jordan
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rathpy
Ordering Lau's Books
I am trying to buy the Sidney Lau Canonese series from the Hong Kong Commercial Press. (I understand that it is a very large book retailer in Hong Kong). A couple of months ago they quoted me a very good price and delivery on Lau's Dictionary. However they have not been responding to my recent email requests for his series of books. I have sent messages to
order@cp1897.com.hk, service@cp1897.com.hk and retail@commercialpress.com.hk
I would try to phone them, but I can't find the number. Anybody have suggestions for how to get in contact?
Regards,
rathpy
order@cp1897.com.hk, service@cp1897.com.hk and retail@commercialpress.com.hk
I would try to phone them, but I can't find the number. Anybody have suggestions for how to get in contact?
Regards,
rathpy
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matt hayes
Re: Learning Methodologies
Check out Basic Cantonese and Intermediate Cantonese by Virginia Yip and Stephen Matthews, without a doubt the best I've seen. Also check out Cantonese A Comprehensive Grammar by Stephen Matthews, has essentially anything you'd ever want to know about Cantonese grammar.