CantonesePod?

Dear silentnoise, I'm afraid I don't think this is on the cards. But do please form your own opinion; the reasons "for" were ventilated pretty vigorously here:

http://blog.praxislanguage.com/2007/06/13/other-praxis-languages/#comments

I believe that Auntysue has a CPOD-sponsored sub-forum just for Cantomaniacs...

tvan says 5 hours ago Auntie68, what is a Cantonese character?  I've heard that there are some spoken words in various dialects that have no characters, but wasn't aware of a dialect having its own characters.

I believe it's usually just Traditional characters for Cantonese, you can get Cantonese based IMEs that use alternative romanisation that's more like the Cantonese pronunciation.

PLEASE DO! I can't even find a decent book still in print from which to learn cantonese, pimsleur is my only board of call at the moment.

Even releasing a podcast twice a week would be sufficient and or only letting paying members listen. Plus as stated in aunties links, you could just take the current cpod lessons and catonesify them.

It's coming....

Jenny mentioned Shanghainesepod. That sounds cool, love the way Shanghainese sounds!

And I read that it's slowly being diluted by mainstream Mandarin.. so it'd be a good idea to spread Shanghainese to keep the dialect intact!

Hello all. What I am finding very exciting about the Chinese language these days is that the PRC's Central Government (our friend who is fondly nicknamed “中央") appears to be more relaxed about letting dialects flourish now that the position of Putonghua is so much more secure across the nation. And because Singapore takes the lead from China in everything concerning Chinese language policy, now I get to watch TV programmes in Cantonese on cable!

Clay, are you saying that CPOD is working on some kind of CantoPod? Whooo-hoooo!!! I really hope that you will at least try. I think there are only about 100 词语 in everyday colloquial Cantonese which are radically different from the syntax of Mandarin. Yay!

I would love to see Cantonese--even if it's a particular series/set of ChinesePod (ie. a once-a-week lesson)--to let those of us interested have a chance and use CPod's gorgeous setup!

clay says

7 hours ago

 

It's coming....

Amazing! I am really suprised. It will be worth any wait im sure.

Clay I'm really glad to hear that Cantonese is coming. And I'm really pleased to see others' enthusiasm for Cantonese.  I love Mandarin and I love the ChinesePod way of learning, but I agree with tzeuk that Pimsleur at the moment is my only decent way of learning some basic Cantonese as there really isn't any good books or materials on the net that I've come across for learning Cantonese. I'm so happy to hear that CantonesePod may be in the pipeline, or even a weekly Cantonese lesson here on CP as I love the way Praxis teaches languages.

Cantonese all the way! :D Clay, thanks for the spoiler! :P

On the subject of other languages, I found two Polish learning podcasts today:

One Minute Polish

Bloggy Polish

Haven't decided which is the better of the two yet.

I used Mandarin in Hong Kong and didn't have any problems being understood, but I couldn't understand what other people were saying. I am also very interested in Cantonese though; it connects you with the diaspora in ways that Mandarin cannot. Does anyone know of existing online resources for it?

Hi sushan. Here is an online resource that I find useful:

http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk

One plus is that they use a fairly standard romanization system -- jyutping.

At this point I'd like to invite CPOD to consider using simplified Cantonese characters as well in their Cantonese lessons.

Although just about EVERYTHING in Hong Kong is in traditional characters, providing simplified Cantonese characters is extremely valuable in a "bridging course" because it makes it that much easier for the student to learn from similarities and differences between the two dialects:

For example, in colloquial Cantonese, "tomorrow" is 听日, and "yesterday" is 琴日.

IMHO, providing the simplified characters too will help the student to focus on Cantonese syntax and vocabulary, without being too distracted by differences which are merely a question of "simplified vs traditional". My written Cantonese just took off when I tried a bridging course (out of print) published in China in the 1990s. The material, which includes audio, was developed by Jinan University and it uses simplified characters.

My attitude is probably shaped by my Singaporean education, which is based on the 识繁写简 philosophy, ie we don't have any psychological baggage concerning an average person's ability to recognize traditional characters despite being taught using simplified characters only.

CPOD, I really do hope that you will consider this. I really want your CantoPOD to be a success, and am willing to mail a copy of my course materials to you in Shanghai because I think that the brief notes provided in English and simplified Mandarin Chinese concerning the "core" Cantonese words are so clear and helpful that anybody in the CPOD office will be able to understand them. And it will save you some "heavy lifting" because it identifies the key syntactical/vocab differences...

Aunite68

We are going to be doing Cantonese as an Extra show which will be published once a week.  Like the other extra shows, it will consist of just audio, so romanization or the language and characters will not play a role.  It' going to be a fun and quick way to learn some usefull phrases in Cantonese.

I'm thrilled! Thanks, Clay! And I promise you that I'll do my amateur best to supply some of the characters somewhere in the Comments... it's high time I learned how to type Cantonese characters. Only hope this is supported, I'm a Mac user.

Again, thanks.

auntie68,

that would be great, and feel free to email me if you have any suggestions or comments.  You seem to be our resident Cantonese expert!

This is great news. I am still longing for a high-quality daily Cantonese podcast, but a weekly show is a great start :).

By the way, what flavor of Cantonese will this show be about? Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong is sometimes quite different from Cantonese spoken in Mainland China.

Hi Clay! Who's going to host the Canto-podcasts? Just curious. :)

Sebastian: I think we should stick to HK 廣東話，since that's what most 華僑 use.

我要紹鋤晒廣東話。（我要繼續學習廣東話。）

Auntie68, what is a Cantonese character?  I've heard that there are some spoken words in various dialects that have no characters, but wasn't aware of a dialect having its own characters.

Having spent a lot of time in Taiwan, I've picked up a handful of useful Taiwanese expressions from friends.  If you think chinese people are happy when you can say something in mandarin, just wait to see their face when you can say something in their local dialect.  I'm not really interested in seriously studing Taiwanese/Shanghainese/etc..., but having an occasional lesson in those dialects would be really fun.

BTW - I just got back from China and spent the last few days of my trip in Guangzhou.  I expected to hear a LOT of Cantonese, but I really didn't run into that much.  It certainly was not as much as I heard when I was Hong Kong.  (that was in the late 90s though, and I hear there's much more Mandarin in HK now too)  I'm quite curious, though, as to how prevalent Cantonese is in daily use.  I wasn't in the business/tourist areas of Guangzhou, and I was expecting not to be able to understand what people around me were saying.