It totally amazes me that a website like this would use written Cantonese in the audios. Anyone who has already lived in Hong Kong, as I myself have, would know that no one - ignorant or educated, rich or poor -talks like this. I recognize the difficulty that it is to '' translate'' written Cantonese into colloquial or vernacular Cantonese. But this is absolutely indispensable. Instead of writing the text in standard Chinese it should be written in Cantonese, for the very fact that this is a Cantonese course.Not even in the news do they talk like that... Anyone one who in real life talked like this would sound like a robot and be looked at strangely by native speakers, who would wonder : Where did he learned his Cantonese? Not to mention the fact that people learning in this fashion would definitely don't understand a lot of words that they ''know'', that is, the words they know in written Chinese but have no clue what its correspondent in vernacular Cantonese is.
Any Cantonese didatic book is in vernacular Cantonese : Teach Yourself by Professor Hugh Baker, Colloquial Series, you name it...
I'm just totally perplexed by this... People who have not lived in Hong Kong or don't know much about Cantonse perhaps might think I'm overreacting, but trust me, it makes a lot of difference...
Comments
Hide香港
我在香港找房子的時候,沿著地鐵線每一站每一站的下車找。到將軍澳寶林站下車的時候,在開闊的人行道,(確實是開闊,這個在香港幾乎不可能出現的詞,路上面還偶爾可以看見奔馳的單車少年)穿著人字拖短褲,踱著頻率是其他地方四分一步子,拖著情侶手的將軍澳人立刻讓我覺得,這就是我要住的地方!香港分為十八區,大家平時都會說,我是新界人,我是大圍人,比講什麼黨派的人更加旗幟鮮明,所以我好驕傲以後可以講自己係將軍澳人。將軍澳人到底是些什麼人呢?
將軍澳人一般不是特別特別的有錢,所以生活氣氛好濃。商場裡物廉價美,都像會過日子的小媳婦,不富裕卻什麼也不缺,井井有條,看起來還有幾分滋潤,不信,你單看那花生,就有鹽焗,蒜蓉,水煮,爆炒各種味道各種做法。學校附近的商場一般有那麼一堆小食店,滿足貪嘴的孩子。塗滿花生醬的格仔餅,朱古力味的雞蛋仔,濃濃咖哩汁撈麵,在落課放學的時候散發出難以逃脫的誘惑。穿著厚厚灰色校服的男孩女孩們在小烤箱旁邊乖乖排隊,穿著短的讓路過師奶們不放心的小褲子的女孩們則在烤肉店前不羈的大聲說笑。那個略胖,笑哈哈的年過四十,老不正經的烤肉師傅,會同各個年級的女孩女人們調笑,惹的她們或者哈哈大笑或者不好意思的擰過頭去。
Hi Chris,
This is written form. Let me translate into spoken form so that you can better understand. You will not see 的 [dik1] as a possessive particle in spoken Cantonese but carrying other meanings.
Written form: 我在香港找房子的時候,沿著地鐵線每一站每一站的下車找。
Spoken form: 我喺香港搵樓嗰陣,沿住地鐵線逐站逐站咁落車搵。
[ngo5 hai2 hoeng1 gong2 wan2 lau2 go2 zan6, jyun4 zyu6 dei6 tit3 sin3 zuk6 zaam6 zuk6 zaam6 gam2 lok6 ce1 wan2.]
Written form is only used in writing and NEVER EVER spoken. Rest assured, just learn the spoken form.
Arnold
Team CantoneseClass101.com
what does dik1 mean in "ngo5 zoi6 hoeng1 gong2 zaau2 fong4 zi2 dik1 si4 hau6 , jyun4 zoek3 dei6 tit3 sin3 mui5 jat1 zaam6 mui5 jat1 zaam6 dik1 haa6 ce1 zaau2"
Hello robert groulx,
You are very welcome. 😇
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
Good luck with your language studies.
Kind regards,
利凡特
Team CantoneseClass101.com
thanks for the lesson
my favorite phrase is 所以我好驕傲以後可以講自己係將軍澳人。
robert
Hi John H,
Thank you very much for your comment!
We agree with you and aim to rearrange the lessons in the next update. We have received many comments about the spoken Cantonese and written standard Chinese, thank you for understanding!
Olivia
Team CantoneseClass101.com
I would appreciate an addition to this and other lessons written in "pu tung wa". How about either reading the lesson in spoken Cantonese over the written standard Chinese (this, in fact, is what I see when I watch HK TV-Cantonese is spoken, with standard written Chinese along the bottom of the screen), or rewriting the lessons to reflect the spoken language-as in the first five lessons in this series. Although we need to learn to read also, this presentation is more confusing than helpful. Lessons in standard written Chinese belong in their own lesson plan, marked as such. Translations are often very loose. For example, in this lesson "zeng zeng jau tiu" is translated as "comfortable" while in the vocabulary it is "in perfect order". And "zi joen" is supposedly "exotic". When I look up the characters in a dictionary, the flavor of the words is more like "enrichening" When I look up "exotic" in the Cantonese dictionary on the site, it returns no results. Without being able to readily look up the literal meanings of words, one can't get a good feeling for how the Cantonese view the world. My opinion of the main educative value of foreign language study is that, no matter what, one is forced to think differently. Lastly, the best example of this comes from one of the Intermediate lessons. A phrase was translated as "once bitten, twice shy", while it was explained in the lesson that the literal translation was "after being bitten by a snake, then even the well rope is frightening" (or something like that)- a very vivid image, and a delightful turn of phrase. Thanks for listening to my opinion!
Hi Aaron H.Chu,
Thank you for pointing that out, it's fixed now :sweat_smile:
Olivia
Team CantoneseClass101.com
"穿著厚厚灰色校服的男孩女孩們在小烤箱旁邊乖乖排隊,那些抽著煙的壞男孩子,穿著短得讓路過師奶們不放心的小褲子的女孩們則在烤肉店前不羈的大聲說笑。"
the narrator missed reading "那些抽著煙的壞男孩子"
Hi Julie,
You are right! We're sorry for the mistake! :oops:
it should be pronounced as "bun6", same as ‘叛’ . Thanks for noticing it!
Cheers,
Olivia =)
Please can you check the pronounciation of 胖 in '那個略胖'. It is pronounced as pong3 but shouldn't it be pronounced as '叛' instead? Thanks
Hi justin,
Thank you for reporting the problem. An error seems to have occur tracking the audios. The tech team is working on it. Should be fixed soon.:smile:
When I go to "Line-By-Line Audio Transcript" and click the 3rd play button it causes the 2nd play button to click... and it seems the play buttons all play the wrong audio. Sorry I'm just on a free trial but jumping around it seems a lot of play buttons in different lessons play the wrong thing entirely.
Hi Marcelo,
Thanks for the comments.As I think Nicole has mentioned in an earlier comment on this blog series, the first series has entries mostly written in more formal written Cantonese, not the colloquial Cantonese you'll hear on the streets. You'll find that more in the dialogues right now.
This doesn't mean we don't consider colloquial Cantonese important. Our second blog series is much more colloquial and casual, so if you're looking for that sort of material, it won't be long until it is out. In the meantime, thanks for the comments -- it is always useful to get feedback like this because it helps us push closer towards what people want.
As far as formatting goes - we've limited control over this in the short-term because this platform is designed to support a number of language pairs. But we try to pay attention to the issues we have so that we can fix them and make the site more flexible as we push the platform forward. So just because something isn't possible today doesn't mean we'll get there. Thanks for the feedback.
Best,
--david
Just continuing...
What is up with the format of the text? Putting all of the characters separate from the transliteration? Are you even serious? Why not just split the text in parts putting together characters + transliterarion + translation, as in this format :
放假你會做啲乜嘢呢?
fong3 gaa3 nei5 wui5 zou6 di1 mat1 je5 ne1?
what do you do on vacations?
It is WAY more difficult and tiring if you all of these separate, and you end up wasting a lot of time looking up which character correspond to which word in jyutping and not knowing directly what the sentence means.
This seems so obvious to me. It's just common sense. Anyone who is a Cantonese learner would agree with me. The impression that I have is that the site was developped just by native speakers who have no idea what is like to try to learn Cantonese as a foreigner...
It totally amazes me that a website like this would use written Cantonese in the audios. Anyone who has already lived in Hong Kong, as I myself have, would know that no one - ignorant or educated, rich or poor -talks like this. I recognize the difficulty that it is to '' translate'' written Cantonese into colloquial or vernacular Cantonese. But this is absolutely indispensable. Instead of writing the text in standard Chinese it should be written in Cantonese, for the very fact that this is a Cantonese course.Not even in the news do they talk like that... Anyone one who in real life talked like this would sound like a robot and be looked at strangely by native speakers, who would wonder : Where did he learned his Cantonese? Not to mention the fact that people learning in this fashion would definitely don't understand a lot of words that they ''know'', that is, the words they know in written Chinese but have no clue what its correspondent in vernacular Cantonese is.
Any Cantonese didatic book is in vernacular Cantonese : Teach Yourself by Professor Hugh Baker, Colloquial Series, you name it...
I'm just totally perplexed by this... People who have not lived in Hong Kong or don't know much about Cantonse perhaps might think I'm overreacting, but trust me, it makes a lot of difference...
@Victoria @michael
We're developing more and more lessons for different levels of learners and will have series of elementary and intermediate next year. As for the Advanced Audio Blogs, we launched it along with the Absolute Beginners and the Survival Phrases because there're quite an amount of learners that speaks Cantonese to some level and demand advanced materials to progress.
The blogs are written both in written Cantonese and colloquial Cantonese. The audio is strictly recorded based on what's written, in order to make it easier for learners to match it with the scripts, although in daily life when speaking, rarely is standard Chinese used, unless one's reading out a text. Written Cantonese in the other hand is mostly in standard Chinese. That's why we have some of the blogs in standard Chinese.
Hope it answers your questions. Thank you very much for your comments. :grin:
@Misha Gwailou
We've fixed it. 多謝你留言!
唔得下载复习录音:???:
I am curious why this _audio_ blog is in standard/written Chinese, rather than colloquial Cantonese. Or at least, why it is not presented as such. I suppose at some point advanced learners of Cantonese will need to learn standard Chinese as well in order to better understand magazines, books, and other writings, but that would seem to be beyond the scope of a website such as this, particularly given the lack of decent intermediate or advanced content to begin with.
Nice lesson. Just wondering though, what is the point of these Advanced Audio Blogs? Don't get me wrong, I think they're great, but I'm curious as to the reason you guys decided to create this idea of an Advanced Audio Blog.