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VN learns Cantonese! VN 学广东话

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vox nihili:
Hey all! 大家好！

Decided to start a new thread here to chronicle my adventures with Cantonese and keep myself a bit more accountable.

How I'm learning

My major resource is Complete Cantonese. I used the Serbian version of the book to learn Serbian about 8 years ago now and found that quite helpful, so have decided to use this again. I like the approach they take; for instance, they stop translating the dialogues after a few units, forcing you to go through the process of translating them yourself. As the language is becoming more complex, I'm seeing how the book puts things together a hell of a lot better.

Somewhat disappointingly, the book doesn't encourage you to learn to write. It does include tradition character translations of the dialogues, but the rest of the book is rendered in the Yale system for Cantonese. I was more familiar with 粵拼 initially but have found the Yale system reasonably simple to keep up with.

Beyond the book, I'm trying to find some Cantonese music and have a reasonable library I'm happy with. I also sometimes listen to SBS Cantonese just to get the vibe of the language, something I've found has helped in the past.

To help with writing I've been using Pleco a lot, which is a great app if you speak any Mandarin or indeed Cantonese. I've also been using a stroke order app, which has been helping not so much with stroke order, which I'm ok with already, but to help set out the characters in a more legible, rather than trying to copy new characters from what's been typed. I'm learning to write simplified characters because traditional is fucked.

I've made a book of my own with all of the characters I know, with their Yale, jyutping and, of course, their traditional forms (as the book has traditional characters instead). I've also got papers flying everywhere with stuff I've written out, be they exercises or the dialogues. I've also made a simplified copy of the dialogues, which the Surface Pro I'm using has been really great for because I can just write out the characters rather than trying to faff about with typing Cantonese another way. There is actually a keyboard available for iPhones that allows you to use a modified version of the Yale system to type Cantonese, which is helpful, but it's still not very good.

Where I'm at

I've been going since mid-November, although I took all of December off. So in total I've probably only spent a week on it; however, I'm fairly happy with my progress so far. I'm up to unit 7 of 24. THe end goal is to finish all 24 units by the end of the uni holidays, which are now a bit more normal.

My major concern is writing, which is just not going to stick as quickly as speaking. Some of the more niche vocabulary is hard to stick, as well as some of the grammar, which isn't really well explained in the book. Indeed, I think the book is underexplaining some of the grammar on purpose, to try to get you to figure it out yourself. Cantonese is just so foreign, with the syntax being really whack and hard to piece together. It's another system of logic that probably does just need a bit of repetition to be able to properly tap into.

lacitam:
Ay! Very nice you're learning Cantonese!

Cantonese is such a beautiful language, even though it sounds like everyone is screaming when they speak the language lol

Just a question, are you interested in the Hong Kong side of Cantonese or the Guangzhou side? (There aren't any differences between them, however Hong Kong canto has 'cooler' slangs)

If you want to listen to good canto music, look up these artists
- Pakho Chau
- Beyond
- Eason Chan
These are all famous Hong Kong band/artists. (Message me if you want to know iconic canto songs)

Please PM if you need any help with Cantonese. I was born and raised in Hong Kong and am more than happy to help you get better ;D

And yes, traditional chinese is fucked.

LifeisaConstantStruggle:
cantonese songs are the most poetic imo, and it's great to see someone learning the language in Australia!

aspiringantelope:
lei yi miu hoi yak goh gong dong wah conversation??
（你要不开一个广东话（粤语）conversation)
omg it's so cringey typing in cantonese because there's like no written language for it.

Joseph41:
Awesome. vox - really interested in your progress. Please update regularly if you can!

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