Learn Cantonese - ChinesePod

[AuntySue]

Hi fellow Cantonese addicts!
Sorry about my unexplained departure. I've been, as we say, crook as a brown dog (= real sick) then spent the past month in hospital, operation yesterday, expecting release in a couple of weeks followed by a month or two rehabilitation.

Then (or sooner I hope) I'm right back into the Cantonese study! Yeh!

So please hang around, keep working amongh yourselves, and wait for me to get back. It'll be nice to spend some more time with good friends and brain food at last.

I had to do a quick escape act to get to this computer, dunno if/when I can do it again, but there will be computer access once I'm home again. Please wait for me, and don't stop studying yourselves. I'm hearing a bit of Cantonese in hospital (way down in Sydney) which has been very cheering. I hope you guys are having fun with it too.

Seeya all soon!

[Sebastian-HK]

Hope you'll get well soon! I am attending two Cantonese classes with very high workload at the moment and gathering lots of good material. Hope I will have time to revive my a-phrase-a-day thread soon.

[muzza]

All the best for a full recovery Aunty Sue. It will be good to have you posting again as we ran out of steam while you were away.

Regards, Neil

[hkboy]

Glad to see that! I had actually forgotten where this forum was. I finally found it again.

[AuntySue]

Wake up guys, I'm back!

Well they finally let me out of hospital this weekend, but I'm still being pumped full of drugs that prevent my short-term memory from working, and that'll keep going on for a few more months.

Without short-term memory, there's no way to lay down new learning, drats. So here I am at home with time to spare, but unable to study Cantonese productively. I might try the phrase a day thing anyway. Surely a whole day repeating one phrase hundreds of times has to do something? We'll see.

Some observations on forgetting, and on using what you already know. In hospital I ran into a few Cantonese speaking patients and visitors, who in some cases spoke no English. With the luxury of ample time, I was able to say things I don't really know how to say, by finding inventive ways to use the few words I did remember. For example, instead of asking if she'd mind opening my water bottle top because my hands were too weak and the cap is tight etc etc, I simply asked "please, can you?" and held the bottle at the top. Worked like a charm. But I'd spent half an hour agonising over the words before accepting that a simpler method was not "cheating" but rather "communicating".

When learning a language I too often make it hard for myself by fixating on the words I don't know rather than finding more uses for the words I do know. Lesson learned. I got my water, the "it's a talking dog!" look, and a new friend.

I can retrieve stuff I've already learned in the past, with a bit of effort. What comes easiest is the sound of the words, perfect tones and all. Although I've spent a lot of time reading and writing the characters, now after a gap in learning I can't recall any character completely. Oh yeah, maybe it has this thing on the top and a squiggly on the bottom but the rest of the shape is a blank in my memory. I'd recognise it if I saw it, but can't write it. How can one formerly solid memory (the character shape) deteriorate so much, while another (the sound/tone/meaning) is retrieved in tact like an inseparable bundle? Perhaps while learning I should have formed stronger links between the character shape and the sound, to get the full deal on recall. Perhaps it's only when we observe some failure (like this) that we can work out the better ways to learn stuff.