Hello Steve,

I was wondering if you could please make a blog post outlining how you learnt Cantonese.  I've heard that you didn't take formal lessons but just simply listened to a lot of Cantonese.

However, after being in Hong Kong and watching TVB/ATV all day for 15 hours per day, I can't see how simply listening to TV has improved my cantonese. I get my wife to make MP3 recordings and listen to them over-and-over. However, watching TV hasn't done much for me.

I know you've lived in Hong Kong for 5 years, but you studied Mandarin.  Could you please document on your blog (if you can remember) how you learnt your languages.

Did you follow the same method for each language, or different methods depending on the language?

Thanks

Milan.

Here is my answer to Milan, who has a very interesting blogsite of his own.

I lived in Hong Kong from 1968 to 1970. I spent the first year studying Mandarin and the second year working as a Canadian Government Trade Commissioner dealing with China trade. This meant regular trips to China. My focus was on Mandarin. I knew a few words of Cantonese, my wife whom I met in Hong Kong spoke Cantonese, but not with me.

Up until the year 2000 or so I made no effort to learn Cantonese. I was held back by a lack of interest and the fear of the legendary "nine tones" of Cantonese. Then I decided I would learn it. I went looking for books and CDs in the stores here in Vancouver. As I usually do, I bought several different "methods" from Teach Yourself Cantonese, Colloquial Cantonese and another one which I do not remember the name of. This last one was not very good for learning because it just consisted of unrelated phrases, which is usually less useful than learning from dialogues or fuller contexts. However, this book made it clear that Cantonese really had only 6 tones. This was a psychological breakthrough for me. I felt that nine tones was impossible, but six tones was possible. In fact when I studied Cantonese I just ignored the tones. It is not posible to remember the tones of each individual word. I relied on repetitive listening and imitating. I realized that I would get many tones wrong, but I did not let it bother me. In time I would get better.

At first I paid a friend of mine who was a commentator on local Cantonese radio to read the newspaper with me. I though if I just was able to read the newspaper in Cantonese I would soon learn how to speak. This did not work and I gave it up. I find it stressful to have a teacher. I prefer to learn on my own and then speak to people when I am ready.

Thereafter I just listened to these CDs over and over, referring to the books from time to time. I had a big advantage in that I could read Chinese characters. I knew the meaning of what I was reading even though I was not sure how to pronounce the characters in Cantonese. All I had to do was to get used to how certain Mandarin sounds changed in Cantonese. One other important thing was that I started to like the sounds of Cantonese, whereas before I had considered Cantonese an ugly language. "L'appetit vient en mangeant" as they say in French. Often you have to give yourself the chance to get into something in order to like it. It is very important to like the language you are studying.

Soon I could start listening to radio. There was one commentator on local Cantonese radio whose voice and opinions (as far as I could tell) I really liked. I listened to him. I recorded his programs and listened over and over. Unfortunately I did not have a transcript so this slowed me down. However, I continued to listen to my easier content at the same time as I was trying to understand the radio. I probably listened and read Cantonese 1-2 hours a day, in the car, while running etc.

The whole process took about 6 months until I could phone in to Cantonese radio talk shows and give my opinions on different subjects, which I still do from time to time.

Learning Cantonese was different than learning other languages since I already had most of the vocabulary from Mandarin but just did not know how to pronounce the words in Cantonese. The Cantonese colloquialisms also need to be learned. However, I do not need to know all the slang, and did not really bother. I still use Cantonese mostly to listen to radio talk shows, and occasionally when I meet Cantonese people casually.