posted by Advanced on October 5, 2008 | 7 comments
Hi guys. We're trying to gauge the degree of interest people might have in Cantonese podcasts.
There are quite a few options out there - regular Cantonese-English lessons, lessons aiming at teaching Cantonese to mandarin speakers (no English). Everything from a weekly/biweekly show to possibly even setting up a completely separate site for Cantonese learners.
Thoughts?
if you're interested in Cantonese, please let us know in this thread.
Love it love it love it!!! Next time when I visit Karen's parents I can try my Cantonese. Hooray!!!What do you call the feeling that when your translator goes to toilet for a minute and leaves you alone to a nice friend with a big smile on his face but doesn't speak your language? That miniute feels like forever!
you're in a quiet minority to date, leanne. will see what we can do though. :)
Fine... :( :PPeople got to see the opportunities in southern China. And for a lot of Manderine speakers, it's a bonus to be able to speak Cantonese. Also, the majority of overseas Chinese are Cantonese.
Cantonese: Yes. Yes yes yes. There's such a dearth of materials out there, and all the textbooks I've gotten here come with these weird plastic boxes that have some kind of shiny string in them, instead of CDs.
How about Taiwanese podcasts? Wasn't it once the official language of Southern China? Also there are a significantly larger number of speakers of Taiwanese than Cantonese. Not to mention we could all start rapping along with Machi Didi. Oh wait that last one is probably a reason not to.
It would be good to have a recording crew in Taiwan.... Our next step here is getting out of beta. We still have a few things we need to tighten up on the backend before we can take that step. Then we'll be looking much more concretely at what dialects/languages to support next, and exactly how to go about that.Supporting a remote team is a definite possibility, so if anyone knows someone who might be interested, I'd encourage them to put us in touch.
isn't Karen in Australia right now? I never knew her as well as you guys, and if we do something Taiwanese I think we should do it from the island.
It'd be nice to know a few phrases in Cantonese.By Taiwanese you guys mean like hokkien/闽南话? Or like the effeminate southern accents they use? :P
Yes, I would LOVE podcasts for Cantonese. Im studying Cantonese mainly, I dabble a bit in Mandarin but Im not really that interested in learning it.
There are a few podcasts for Cantonese already (Naked Cantonese, Cantonesepod from Chinese Central) but neither of them are really structured enough.
What I would love to see is a Popup Cantonese podcast with all the different podcasts you already have for Mandarin. i.e. elementary, intermediate, advanced etc. Also Film Friday is a must for Cantonese, there are so many great Hong Kong films!! (Stephen Chow is my favourite :))
I think having other dialects would be great as well, theres a few Hakka speakers where I live so it would nice to learn a bit of Hakka too.
@Roxane,We'll try our best if we do 泡泡粤语(Popup Cantonese) :). Although myself is freaked out by the nine tones of it.Can you share your experience in studing Cantonese with us here? Some friends of mine said they learned Cantonese by listening to the pop music...--Echoecho@popupchinese.com
Neil Murray on December 3, 2008 | reply
From my point of view it would be great to have Cantonese podcasts pitched at the intermediate level. This seems to be where there is the least amount of structured learning materials.
Very helpful if you could produce something.
Neil
Cantonese podcasts would be great and tremendously useful to many people learnong the language.
bonita.delmonte on December 3, 2008 | reply
I've love to learn some Cantonese as well. Hong Kong is such a great place it would be really nice to be able to speak more than mandarin when I'm down there.I've heard that if you know either mandarin or cantonese you can get passable in the other language in about six months. but there's nothing out there to really people non-Chinese speakers straddle that gap right now.
Popup Cantonese sounds like an awesome idea! Its sounds like a great way to learn Cantonese the easy way, learning intermediate is too much text not enough listening in my point of view.
加零一諗頭!舉埋腳贊成!
Its also a good idea to extend to other rare and common chinese dialects:)
@Ayan - we're interested and are looking at a few options. will keep you guys abreast of developments. our best way of doing this is really to support people who are already in other parts of China rather than setting up the recording facilities ourselves. If anyone knows of people who are already out there and interested in doing this sort of thing, please encourage them to get in touch.
@Ayan,原来我们这里真是藏龙卧虎呢 :)请教一下：“加零一諗頭!舉埋腳贊成!”什么意思—— I can only understand "赞成" here.--Echoecho@popupchinese.com
Would love to see cantonese podcasts! Seem to be a real lack of material for upper intermediate > lower advanced levels.
I'm pretty late, but I would love to see Cantonese podcasts. There is a real serious lack of structured material to learn the language, as well as a true lack of narrated text (both narrations of standard written material in Cantonese, and of material written in colloquial Cantonese).
Indeed! I lived in Guangdong for 11 months, and while my Mandarin improved (became useful), whenever anyone didn't want for me to understand the conversation, they would switch to Cantonese. Which I can sometimes decode, but more often not. I would like to hear the Cantonese lessons in Mandarin, personally, maybe with a sprinkling of English . . .
i think it's an awesome idea! It would be really helpful if it catered to those who already speak cantonese but just want to improve their vocabulary than just the beginners. ^_^
cool that you speak Cantonese. I really wish I did... :( We're moving closer to something, although there are still issues with costs versus income. It looks as if we won't be able to set up a team in Hong Kong in the short term , but we may be able to do something from here in Beijing.
I'm interested in Shanghainese! That might be stepping on the toes of another podcast that teaches Chinese though... ;)
Cantonese Podcast - GREAT IDEA, saw an ad for a Cantonese app on Itunes, was disappointed it was only for the Iphone & not my Ipod. Im a beginning Cantonese learner interested in Cantonese lessons in English
jason.of.the.wongs on February 4, 2009 | reply
are you guys still looking for cantonese/english speakers for the show?
@jason - we're still looking. give Echo a call if you're in Beijing and interested: 13581709309.
borneoherbs on February 14, 2009 | reply
leanne...the majority of overseas chinese are from fujian, not cantonese.. sister.. anyway this is a great idea, popup粤语 with lessons on chow sing chi's childish jokes. and while we're at it, why not add popup台语 and have toneandcolor submit his best crack at wubai's songs. marvelous! btw, if you could add both min-nan and cantonese at adsotrans, now that would make this site truly awesome
Cantonese Podcast is a great idea - Im living in Hong Kong and trying to learn more Cantonese, but there is not a lot of material out there at the moment. Is it looking like you will go ahead with a Cantonese podcast?
@lvot - there are a lot of things in the works, Cantonese is one of them. We're aiming to have an introductory series and see what the reception is like, although I can guarantee that we won't have anything ready to show before mid-April at the earliest.
I would be very interested in intermediate to advanced level Cantonese. Instructions with a mix of English and Mandarin would help reinforce Mandarin.
pevinsghost on June 10, 2009 | reply
Ironically Ive been to Hong Kong a dozen times, I probably wont be going back, but NOW Im trying to learn Cantonese. My wifes Chinese, and while she grew up in the US, her family is all more comfortable speaking Cantonese, so its important to us that our daughter speaks it too. Theres so much out there for Mandarin, and its easy to find written English-Cantonese dictionaries, but with a tonal language hearing is the only real way to learn and theres hardly anything available.
@pevinsghost,
really? Cantonese has 9 different tones. but it's really not so hard to learn.
personally, i can understand cantonese, just because i have watched very long korean TV series in cantonese. it's like magic! can you imagine, once you arrive in guangdong, you can understand them precisely?
if you can speak chinese, cantonese is not so hard. grammar is similar, words are the same, and tones have a rule to follow.
anyway, it's a chinese dialect.
加油！
Yes please! Cantonese is essential for getting around Chinatowns in the United States.
useful.guy on July 28, 2009 | reply
我也覺得泡泡中文應該開粵語版。粵語在美國、香港和加拿大是很常用的。現在沒有任何像泡泡中文這麼高質量的粵語播客，所以這對泡泡中文來說是個很好的機會。
再說，有些人覺得粵語有點難學，但是我想跟大家分享一些學習粵語的經驗。我一開始學習粵語也這麼覺得，但是開始學了才發現粵語並沒有我想像得那麼難學。所謂的“9”個聲調，實際上只有6個，因為第7、第8、第9聲跟第1、第3、第6聲發音一模一樣。另外，如果你會說普通話，廣東話真是學起來很容易。很多字或是發音一樣，或是有很容易學到的規律。粵語也有一個比較標準的寫法，而且很多漫畫、雜誌、網站（看過粵語的維基百科嗎？）都用這些粵語字。最後，粵語文化很豐富；有許多粵語電影、電視劇和歌曲，總可以幫你學習學習。
I also think that Popup Chinese should start a Cantonese version. Cantonese is very prevalent in America, Canada and Hong Kong, and because theres currently no high-quality podcast for Cantonese, this is quite an opportunity for Popup Chinese.
Also, some people think that Cantonese is very hard to learn but Id like to dispel some of those myths by sharing my own experiences in studying Cantonese. When I started studying Cantonese, I too thought that it would be extremely difficult, but I realized, almost as soon as I started learning the language, that this was not the case. First of all, regarding the fabled 9 tones of Cantonese, in actually therere only 6. Tones 7, 8, 9 are the same as 1, 3, 6, and you only get the 9 tones if you use the Classical Chinese counting system which distinguishes more than just tone. Also, if you know Mandarin, learning Cantonese is even easier. A lot of the words either sound exactly the same or have some simple rules that take you from the Mandarin sounds to the Cantonese ones. Cantonese (unlike Shanghaihua or Hangzhouhua) also has a very standardized and well-developed writing system and many comic books, magazines and websites all use these characters (have you checked out the Wikipedia in Cantonese?). Finally, Cantonese culture is extremely rich, and there are tonnes of Cantonese movies, TV shows and songs to help you learn.
Learning via comparison of Mandarin and Cantonese seems as natural tasting a tangerine and then a cantaloupe. It's 2010 by now the time is ripe. Where's the fruit of your pursuits??? Hai bin do ah....
Glad to see hands up for Cantonese podcasts. I'm sure the they're on the way.
喺边度啊~ Hai bin do ah... "Where (are they)...?"
@xperson,Thanks for following up on this. We are actively working on other languages and hope to have good news to share by midsummer. Part of the work in our recent site upgrade has been stripping/reworking the backend parts of our system that were mandarin-specific so that our system supports arbitrary language pairs, and not just Chinese ones.We're still tweaking things, but now that this is mostly done, the main obstacle for us in launching new products is more the business side of things than anything else. That said, given as we aren't backed by venture capital or any sort of government support, and are still largely invisible in traditional channels like iTunes and Google, we need to grow at our own pace. If you'd like to speed things up, the easiest way to help us is to link to us online, tell a friend or two, review us on iTunes and otherwise help us spread the word.That said, it seems likely that when we do launch additional languages, we'll put up the materials on separate dedicated platforms rather than hosting the extra materials here in the Popup Chinese archives. We wouldn't want to have mandarin learners come here and inadvertantly pick up a cantonese lesson, or vice versa.
One of my Cantonese speaking friends once joked that even if you are having a normal Cantonese conversation with a good friend, to an outsider it sounds like an argument. Would you concur Lanzi? :-)
I picked up a little Cantonese from a friend from Hong Kong many years ago. I'd be interested in seeing how PUC tackles teaching Cantonese.
@蓝大卫，
I really want to give a reply to your comment before Lanzi does -- I totally agree with your friend :)
When I was a teenager, Hong Kong singers were very popular with us. One of my friends listened to hundreds of Cantonese songs. I was so surprised that she could understand the lyrics. She told me to listen to more songs then I would understand Cantonese as well. Unfortunately, I still don't understand any Cantonese words after so many years. It's been hard for me to like those songs since I can't tell what the lyrics are.
--Echo
echo@popupchinese.com
@蓝大卫 I think to the untrained ear, regular mandarin can sound like a screaming match between two people. But I will agree with you that Cantonese is spoken at a very high decibel level. My girlfriend has parents and family from Shantou, Guangdong, and I always enjoy hearing stories about the raucous phone conversations between her Dad in the states, and Grandpa back in the homeland. But then again Shantouhua is a whole other beast in itself from what I hear.Before I began learning Chinese, I was exposed to this culturally ignorant gem from SouthParkThe Chinese Mafia
@蓝大卫Fun observation. However I don't have the right to agree or disagree since I'm not an outsider. When Cantonese talk, I understand what they are saying. To me, they sound like what they're supposed to sound like. News reporters sound like reporting news. Lovers sound romantic. Rude people sound rude:)@EchoI didn't know you had that impression on Cantonese. I'll hide next time I need to answer my family's phonecall:)But when you watch Wong Kar Wai's movies, Steven Chow's movies or Jacky Chan's movies (probably not Jacky Chan's. Too many arguments.), when Tony Leung's talking to Maggie Cheung, do they sound like arguments?
@paglino9Shantouhua(汕头话), aka Chaoshanhua（潮汕话）,and Kejiahua (客家话) both sound like Hokkien(闽南话) to me. They're fun to listen to. It's like hearing Cantonese with accents. That reminds me of the Brad Pitt character in The Inglorious Bastards. Do Tennessee people really speak like that?The South Park impression on Chinglish is so not true. We do NOT say "shitty beef" or "shitty shrimp". I ‘sink' we say the ‘s’sound just fine!