Hello everyone, I am glad to get known friends here. I am Janett from Northern China , I can't speak or understand Cantonese even though I have lived and worked in this city for several years, , Somehow I feel Cantonese is more difficult than English ! Does any friend have similar feeling as mine?

原帖由 Janett 于 2009-11-18 20:24 发表
Hello everyone, I am glad to get known friends here. I am Janett from Northern China , I can't speak or understand Cantonese even though I have lived and worked in this city for several years, :cool ...

Are you kidding me? Cantonese is more difficult to learn than English? My colleague, a smart lady, mastered Cantonese in only half a year's learning! Amazing? Not really! There is no secret in learning it, just imitate it, speak it, and use it, and gradually, the dialect tongue is yours!

Can you believe that, not long ago, twenty or thirty years ago, teachers in local schools used Cantonese instead of Mandarin in class rooms as a teaching language?!

Remember that! Both Mandarin and Cantonese are the dialects of Chinese though Mandarin is labelled an official mark. Around one hundred million people on this planet can speak Cantonese!

yaeh, i share the same thing that the LZ said.

原帖由 老K 于 2009-11-19 08:41 发表




Are you kidding me? Cantonese is more difficult to learn than English? My colleague, a smart lady, mastered Cantonese in only half a year's learning! Amazing? Not really! There is no secret in ...

I beg to differ, Lao K. Technically, I think Chinese language (and its dialects) is one of the most difficult languages to learn, let alone master.

It is one of the oldest language on earth and is very complex in terms of writing and pronunciation. Mandarin (or PuTongHua) is relatively easier than Cantonese because the former has 4 intonation and whereas the latter has 6. This is not really the difficult part. I think the difficult part is learning how to viewthread.

In English, the sound of the word "complex" can be guessed from the combination of the letters (and there are only 26 letters to memorize); but if you have never seen the characters "复杂" before, you will never be able to guess how to pronounce it without any guidance from a good dictionary or a teacher. The difficulty increases with different dialects like Cantonese which does not follow the grammatical rules of the mainstream Chinese language down to the dot.

Unless you are a native to the language (mother tongue) or constantly exposed to the language environment, it is rather difficult to master the language. Of course, the last statement applies to both English and Chinese. I am just saying the learning Chinese is a teennie weenie more difficult than English.