Not entirely sure where the summer went; work has a bad habit of getting in the way and, to be honest, I’ve been more than a little lax in learning Cantonese. Anyway, now the new job’s settling down (a little), I thought I might try and turn my attention back again.

Looks like Anki have finally released a mobile version of their client for the iPhone. I had been using the Study Arcade app for a while, but am pleased Anki have finally gotten round to releasing their own version. The only issue, really, is the fact that it is a paid for app on the iPhone. Check it out here : Anki Mobile.

And once you’ve downloaded that, of course, there are Cantonese decks out there! If you use Anki have a search for the ‘Hanzi’ deck – this is my attempt to get the characters from ‘Remembering Traditional Hanzi‘ with Cantonese pronunciations. Off the top of my head, I think I’ve got the first 22 or so chapters in there.

Thanks to vote stuffing and various other nefarious activities, Lingq have reset the voting for which language should be added to their site next. The voting period hasn’t been extended so it’s still set for June 1st but all prior votes have been cancelled. So, if you voted for Cantonese last time, you’ll need to vote again :

Vote Cantonese

EDIT : looks like we missed out. Korean won in the end with over 50% of the vote. Cantonese managed to come in a distant third behind Dutch.

Just came across this on the Global Maverick blog about the release of Hanzi Quick Cards on iTunes. I haven’t managed to use it in anger myself yet, but he is offering twenty free copies to his blog readers. Have a look over here for details or take a look on the AppStore itself. It looks like it’s a pretty basic flashcard type app with both simplified and traditional characters – not sure on the romanisation yet, but looks like another addition to learning Chinese on your iPhone.

I would say I’m little more than an advanced beginner with Cantonese (even after the years – I just don’t get to practise at all). I’ve managed to get through Pimsleur (very good for getting confidence up although the vocabulary is limited), FSI (free and very comprehensive), Teach Yourself (a little dull) amongst others and am starting to move onto the more intermediate materials from Greenwood Press (who can also deliver to the UK). The following is the vocabulary I’m learning from the first chapter of ‘About Hong Kong’ by Betty Hung :

Read the rest of this entry »

Looks like there’s a new tool available to help with Cantonese audio material. Rhinospike is a recently launched website that allows you to post readings that you’d like a native speaker to record. They’ve already added Cantonese to their considerable list of languages, and it’s already attracted a few recordings (which range from pretty simple one liners to much more advanced recordings).

Anything that adds to Cantonese material available out there for the learner can only be a good thing, and I must admit I do like the fact it allows you to post the readings you want rather than sticking to existing learner’s texts. I guess this way you can get audio material on topics that actually interest you, and then input those to your favourite SRS system. But enough of me, head on over here to sign up.

Looks like LingQ are going to be adding new languages to their website in the near future. However, they’ve decided to let us decide for ourselves which will be added first and have posted an online survey here which will run until June 1st. Obviously, I’m voting for Cantonese which has made a good start (especially since it got noticed on Adam’s site) – and I’m hoping you do the same. Any additions to materials for Cantonese are welcome and I’ve heard nothing but good things about Steve’s LingQ site.

Hopefully, we will manage to get Cantonese on LingQ in the near future and we can try it for ourselves!

OK, I’ll admit, despite working within IT for the past 14 years or so I am slowly developing into something of a Luddite. I mean, I understand all of this stuff on a technical level, it’s just it passes me by a little on a personal level. I don’t tweet, thankfully, and am utterly bemused by Facebook and the other rather faddish websites (Friends Reunited anyone?) But, before this descends into a rant and I work myself into a frenzy of stocking frame destruction (no? have a look here), you may have noticed that I’ve ignored this recent degeneration of mine and am posting on a blog site that belongs to me (in so much as anything like this belongs, of course).

The reason, or my excuse, has been prompted by hitting a brick wall whilst learning Cantonese. There’s not much in the way of decent materials available to learn this language (unlike Mandarin and, no, I realise it could be more useful but I’m not learning that instead) and it’s been getting a little difficult to keep track of where I am. So, whilst finishing the internet one evening, I came across a post on learning languages that said I should keep a blog about it. So here it is. And other stuff I do and am interested in, of course,  because, well, there are other things I do.

Oh, and the title’s not how long it takes to learn Cantonese, it’s from one of my favourite books.