Learning Cantonese

Yay!!!

After months and months in Guangdong, I have begun to pick up on Cantonese phrases. In class, my students will sometimes discuss amongst themselves answers in Cantonese before relinquishing those answers to me -- and every once in a while I can confirm or correct their answers before they give me a translation. I asked some of my students to teach me some basics, and I loved the little bit I learned from them so much that I wanted to find a way to learn more Cantonese and practice it without constantly asking them to be my tutors and translators.

Last night, I found this site called Learn Chinese EZ ~ and I worked through about half of the free lessons last night (at, like, 1am) and the other half this afternoon. The similarities between Mandarin and Cantonese make memorizing the phrases a lot easier for me now than it would have been a few years ago, and hearing the tones every day makes it easier to me to distinguish and copy them. I am on a learning high right now, and bouncing around in my elated state sharing my newly acquired knowledge with every poor soul that crosses my path. ("Travis! Carrie! Listen to the difference between the Mandarin and Cantonese ways of saying Monday/Sunday/I understand/one/two/Is that your car?/Please give that back/I am rich./Really?!!!")

Anyhow, I can't wait to get the entire set of lessons (it's normally only $10 for downloadable audio tracks and transcripts) and surprise my students (well, surprise the ones who don't read my blog) with what I learn!

I'd be especially thrilled to learn with someone, so if any of you want to join me (wink wink nudge nudge, Serge), this is a great time to start!