HSK Exam - Learning Basic Cantonese from Mandarin - Page 2 -

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Learning Basic Cantonese from Mandarin
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atitarev -

Pimsleur, IMHO, is a big waste of money - too expensive, many hours of listening for a small
result. You can buy a book - 1) Colloquial Cantonese or 2) Teach Yourself Cantonese with CD's. It
would take a bit more thinking and analysing but it is much cheaper and better value. All texts
have romanisation and the second one also has Chinese characters. How many hours of a private
tutor can you get for the price of Pimsleur?



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flameproof -



Quote:

Pimsleur, IMHO, is a big waste of money - too expensive,

Who said "buying"?










atitarev -

I know what you mean, flameproof

Still, you have to invest a lot of time. I was lucky to get a ... copy of Pimsleur Mandarin at
about beginning stages. I got bored pretty early and switched to other resources I had. I just
don't approve their methods - listening for hours and hours just to learn a few words? Why not
spend this time listening over and over to a more meaningful and vocabulary richer text (going
through the understanding of it first). If we talk about Mandarin, (New) Practical Chinese Reader,
Integrated Chinese, other textbooks with audio are by far better investment, not just money-wise
but time-wise as well.

Please don't think I am challenging you with my answer, just expressing my opinion about methods.
I don't like, in general audios with lots of bilingual speech but that's me. Pimsleur has just too
much of English in it.

--
On the topic Cantonese through Mandarin - it is just because of diglossia - you don't have to
learn one if you want to learn the other but in Cantonese speaking areas Mandarin is the official
WRITTEN language, i. e. they speak Cantonese but write in Mandarin and you get a mismatch between
words/characters used, their numbers, even word order and number of words. Just my observation,
native speakers will describe this better, of course.










flameproof -

I am not saying Pimsleur is excellent. But cantonese is a language you really have to listen to. I
would say it's impossible to learn from a book.

It's not that Pimsleur is perfect, but there is not to much other material out there which is
usefull.

Now, I told the ChinesePod people to start a site for Cantonese. I hope they will look into it one
day. They do excellent stuff for Mandarin.



Quote:

I don't like, in general audios with lots of bilingual speech but that's me. Pimsleur has just too
much of English in it.

well, it's hard to start with 100% outlandish. Again, I find the ChinesePod method good. In the
early stages they have lots of English, but in the intermediate and upper levels very little, up
to no English.

I hope they branch out to other languages!










atitarev -

Pimsleur or ChinesePod is really good if you spend a lot of time commuting by car and have no time
to sit down and read together with the audio.










tlevine -

I already have Pimsleur Cantonese, and it seemed pretty boring. It seems that there isn't the type
of thing that I want though, so I guess I'll just use that.












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