Troubles of a Cantonese Speaker Learning Mandarin

For the tones, I wonder if it would help to get hold of that chart which shows, if a Mandarin word is this tone then the Cantonese word is probably that tone, and vice versa. It's just a rule of thumb, but it helps a lot to show some pattern in the madness of those tone differences. Maybe someone knows the URL and can post it here for you. If not, I can probably dig it out in a couple of days. (I've replaced my hard disk and still working from backups, very slow.)

Cantonese speakers speaking in Mandarin tend to mispronounce the initial n as l. they also mispronounce -iu as "-eew" (as in the EEW! GROSS!) . I have a lot of Canto. friends. They always ask:li (你)是菲律賓人嗎?

Oh yes, the initial n vs. l mispronounciation. I think it's the lazy southern tongue. I hadn't realized that I had been pronouncing words for so many years! I'm quite interested in that Mandarin/Cantonese tone chart, though. That seems like something that would help me.

The question is: why do you want to learn Mandarin Chinese for?

Dennis - Good question. I've always been motivated to learn Chinese in general to maintain my roots. With respect to Mandarin - well, it *IS* the official language of China which, is increasingly an global economic power. It couldn't hurt to know Mandarin in the business world. Secondly, I felt a bit embarrassed and excluded when I traveled to China but couldn't understand a word they were saying. Also, I've noticed that the number Mandarin speakers are exceeding the number of Cantonese speakers in the Toronto area where I live. Whenever I obtain a service from a Chinese provider, I'm finding that the actual workers are mainland Chinese only speak Mandarin, don't speak Cantonese and, unfortunately, can't speak English either. It frustrated me the most when I went to medical clinic in a Chinese plaza. I couldn't communicate with the x-ray technician...

Dennis - Good question. I've always been motivated to learn Chinese in general to maintain my roots. With respect to Mandarin - well, it *IS* the official language of China which, is increasingly an global economic power. It couldn't hurt to know Mandarin in the business world. Answer: Your roots are not Chinese nor Mandarin. Your roots are the culture and language of your parents. So your roots that specific Cantonese dialect and that dialect Culture. Secondly, I felt a bit embarrassed and excluded when I traveled to China but couldn't understand a word they were saying. Answer: Ni shi Huaqiao, bu shi Zhongguoren. You are an Overseas Chinese, not Chinese. Therefore you don,t speak a Chinese language You can not speak Mandarin, Hakka ,Wu, Cantonese, Mongol, Tibetan etc. (Leaving all the languages aside that you want and have learned yourself) you only speak the language of your country which is English (and French) and the language that you learned from your parents that is based on the Cantonese Language. Also, I've noticed that the number Mandarin speakers are exceeding the number of Cantonese speakers in the Toronto area where I live. Whenever I obtain a service from a Chinese provider, I'm finding that the actual workers are mainland Chinese only speak Mandarin, don't speak Cantonese and, unfortunately, can't speak English either. It frustrated me the most when I went to medical clinic in a Chinese plaza. I couldn't communicate with the x-ray technician... Answer: Even if you spoke Mandarin fluently do you want to communicate with them. They are Chinese, born and raised in China. You are Canadian ( yes with a Chinese background, but still)

To break the tone barrier, I recommend Pimsleur. Some of this stuff just needs to be baked in or implanted.

Dennis - Your points are well taken. Don't get me wrong. I'm very proud of my Cantonese heritage and even more proud to be Canadian. My interest in learning Mandarin is sincere although I realize that the likelihood of attaining the proficiency of a native speaker is low. Having spoken to some other Cantonese, I don't believe that I am alone in having these difficulties.

Hello lilywhytelegs. I've been writing to you a lot in recent days! I'd like to share my own personal perspective on this with you, just in case there's something useful in there for you: I suspect you and I may have some things in common: (i) Mandarin was NEVER one of the languages in my home environment; and (ii) although I may have spoken Cantonese from an early age, this was never as a first language, furthermore it was largely confined to a home setting, and -- finally -- my use of Cantonese growing up did not include the written form of the language. My first language is English, my true second language is French. To be honest, I only acquired the ability to read Chinese after Nov 2006, when I started studying Mandarin with CPOD. Even though Mandarin Chinese was my official "second language" in school for 11 years. When I started with CPOD, I had a somewhat spotty ability to comprehend the Intermediate lessons, but could barely read the transcripts for that level. Although I was good at hanyu pinyin, my Mandarin was so weak that I couldn't have told you the correct hanyu pinyin for most of the words because I didn't know what the "correct" pronunciation was supposed to be. For what it's worth, lilywhytelegs, I think that CPOD is working for me only because the approach enables me to learn Mandarin as a foreign language. Much of what you know of Cantonese may not be any help to you in learning Mandarin because the syntax is so different. If one does not already read and write Cantonese at a reasonably high level, this is not readily apparent. Many of the particles which are absolutely indispensable in spoken Cantonese, do not have a counterpart in Mandarin. After I got comfortable with Mandarin via CPOD, I started learning to read and write Cantonese. By that time, my reading ability in Mandarin was strong enough for me to note the differences between the two languages/ dialects, so I was able to -- in effect -- learn Cantonese "through" Mandarin. Now it is very clear to me that I would never have been able to learn Mandarin "through" Cantonese because my knowledge of Cantonese was never deep enough for that in the first place. Studying Mandarin as a "foreign language" was also helpful to me at another level, in that it freed me from a lot of emotional baggage (vis-a-vis "real" Chinese people), and also from linguistic baggage from my Cantonese. The emotional baggage is hard to get rid of; if I failed to grasp some Mandarin point by deduction, on the strength of my knowledge of Cantonese, I felt stupid. But as somebody who is enjoying learning how to read both languages, they are not cognate enough for this to happen efficiently or naturally, unless we are concentrating on Classical Chinese. All the best! All the best!

Auntie - Thanks for sharing your thoughts. You are such a wonderful resource with rich experiences. I think you hit the nail on the head with our common threads. I've often heard that it is easier for a "foreigner" to learn Mandarin than for a Cantonese speaker. I guess I have to get over this mental barrier of being Chinese and treat it as Mandarin as a second language. (or third language, fourth language as the case may be.) How did you manage to change your mindset? The emotional baggage is difficult to ditch.