learn mandarin?

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__...Impossibru.jpg

as a white person learning canto right now, this is the harder than greek. And greek is fucking hard (pluralization is all based on the word and every word is different not on adding an s to the end of words)

im probably gonna switch to mandarin. But judging on my career path right now, I think i'd be ok learning russian or slavic.

No offense but you've lived in HK for so long and yet you're still not fluent? :rukidding:

he's white you racist

I know he's white what's your point?

Yes and my car has a giant vinyl sticker of the Canadian flag on it. :troll:
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I had Rosetta Stone Mandarin and it was pretty solid, I slacked off though and I forgot stuff. The main thing is you need to practice with people, otherwise you're never going to learn.

@ ppl who say cantonese is hard

yes i would imagine how fucking gay it would be to learn this as a second language without any experience in chinese. It's really hard to "learn" cantonese. With the way they teach you it in books and professionally, you'd pretty much learn to speak sentences that are basically mandarin sentences spoken out in the cantonese form. For those who don't understand wtf i'm talking, it means like the letters of our alphabet being spoken in another way. there are still 26 letters in the alphabet, A is still in the beginning of the alphabet, but instead of sounding like "A", you pronounce it differently.

Also if you were to learn cantonese straight from the book, when you speak canto to other cantonese people they'd think youre the biggest fob ever. that is because you don't speak the traditional canto (which is written in serious chinese newspapers), cantonese people speak SLANG cantonese. I doubt there are any professional courses or books which teach slang cantonese. The only real way to learn and master slang cantonese is to hang out with fucking hongers or watch TVB like a little honger you are.

Spend money? Lolz... :whistle:

http://recit.essb.qc.ca/wp-content/u...etta-Stone.jpg

does this actually work?

Yes.

Actually despite being failed I think you have a point here. Conversational Cantonese (what you'd actually want to learn) is entirely different from written Cantonese and that might be one of the reasons it doesn't show up in Rosetta Stone - it'd be kinda hard to teach. Cantonese is my first language and I speak it every day at home, but I'm still shit at it and get called out on it all the time =p

russian? does your career path involve smuggling smoked fish? we must talk
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There are many people out there who are probably interested in this topic. I'd appreciate keeping on topic to keep this thread helpful to others.

In turn, I'll try to post infrequent updates of my experiences. This morning I've registered for a course with Key Language and will start in two weeks time.

Thanks for all helpful comments!

This can be said of any language though. I work with someone who's first language is french (France French not Quebec French) and she gets annoyed with what she calls the 'rigidness' of the way I speak french because it's book learned. ShTo her ear it sounds as artificial and forced as English would if someone was speaking like they were reading an Oxford dictionary all the time.

Listening to French radio and French TV taught me the cadence of the language and more comfortable word use better than a text book ever could - though though early learning experiences really helped me digest what I was listening to to begin with. That's why the Pimsleur method works better too for most people, because it focuses on a more natural audio learning method (though how casual it is depends on the source, some are very conversational while others are more formal).

@ the people who failed my post above, care to elaborate where you disagree with my post?

Either

1) you dont agree with the difficulty i see in cantonese

Or

2) youre butthurt cuz i called you a honger


Come forward, bro

Ive been taking it at Langara every saturday with instructor Betty Tu. She is an awesome instructor. A lot of students transfer to her as her personality is more suited for beginners.

He made a good point actually, and like someone else said, it is like that for most languages. But Cantonese especially. The way he started calling down Hong Kong people like an ignorant cunt is why he earned his fails.

im apologize if i said watching TVB makes you a little honger :smug:

The Key Language course is almost over, just one more class left. I am very happy with the results, it certainly provided me with a foundation to keep building up both the grammar and vocabulary. I would recommend it to people who are considering learning Mandarin.

What is your ethnicity?
And can you give some more details on your results?

Also, do you have a forum where you can practice Mandarin?

I'm a white guy :).

Results... hard to be specific, but I can order a drink at the restaurant, tell my girl that I miss her, welcome people to my home, describe my family, nationality etc. I've learned pinyin enough to be able to learn new words. From just once a week over 2 mo classes, that feels like a decent achievement.

That's pretty impressive.
Congrats on the success.

I've heard nothing but good things about Key Language Training. I know the director personally and she comes from a background of teaching, and is very passionate about what she does. She's fluent in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and French and has licenses to do Mandarin-English, Mandarin-French translations. Sometimes I catch glimpses of her or her teachers classes, and they are always very nice and friendly, and always keep things pretty casual so that you can learn things that you want (lol, i've actually seen a guy ask about what to say to flirt with girls- but it was one of those ABC types so probably not you). I know she even does corporate lessons targeted especially for businesses and/or real estate so that you can do better businesses in Vancouver. Definitely check them out if you are thinking of taking Mandarin classes.

how much did it cost??