Ahh...you're in trouble there..unless you have a lot of free time...? Been in Chinese school since I was 4, every Sunday for 4 hours, and I'm 16 now and am taking my Chinese A2 this year..and I'm unlikely to get a passing grade...despite my A* GCSE...(God they were easy...=]) My brother says that Mandarin is okay(He's taking lessons at his uni)...but he already knew the traditional characters...(even I can guess most Simplified ones!)... Madarin is just the 'proper' way of speaking...Like they speak how they write basically...I think... So I guess...Good Luck! I'm so unhelpful....lol
i can speak cantonise..but cant read or write...luckily my gf she is chinese educated. she will read n write for me
it's very rewarding to be able to understand chinese. by knowing chinese u can browse alot more websites =)
lol I knw how to speak Cantonese but Dont know how to read and write much , tho i know some words .. SOME! I learnt when I was lik 4 but I forgotten most stuff.
Marry a chick thats Canto . All day everyday speak to her . Listen to songs with Canto Pin Yin so you can match the sound with the phrases . and eat more Omega3 . your gonna need it to remember everything! =(
I've started to learn more Cantonese since May. Today, I listen mostly to Cantonese (lately Mandarin) music adn watch mostely HK-shows. I've definitly learn more Cantonese, but my Cantonese was pretty lousy before, but now I can understand a conversation quite well. As I try to pick up some Cantonese I also tried to learn some character, so I now I recognize about 50 characthers. If you want to learn mandarin try to learn Cantonese first. I heard that it's easier to learn cantonese before mandarin.
Hi all and Merry Christmas I just joined the forum. I speak fluent Cantonese and can understand 50% of the mandarin when spoken in a tv series or if i have a conversation with someone. I'm a ABC but my parents only speaks canto at home and watch chinese TV or listen to chinese Music. Reading and writing I can right like really basic elementary lvl and of course first thing I learned was to how to write my own name in chinese.
learning it will take a very very long time. i myself wanted to learn but im 24 now and i can only speak cantonese (not exceptionally well) a perfect time to start learning is if ur very young, preferrably in preschool so that words will sink in.
i just like most people that cant read chinese or write but i can speak very well. because my mom rent TVB movies and i put the chinese sub on so i can learn little by little. but i remember that my mom said that no matter how good u r at chinese, nobody can ever learn all of it.
you often learn a lot of chinese words on tv series because they have subtitles and you can hear what they say while the subtles show. But the problem is cantonse speech is different from what is wrote. But mandarin could be easy to learn but you have to learn a lot of chinese grammar first.
haha.. i was in the same situtation as yours few years ago.. but now, i definitely improved and can get the rough idea of the stuff i read online (in Cantonese). the only way i learnt how to write/read Cantonese, was to watch HK series.. lol, i see what they say, then i see the subtitles. i learnt alot of words from doing that =D
the only problem with that is with tvb series they use a lot of slang so the subtitles aren't always the same as what they say so u may learn the wrong word or not learn the word at all.
umm this mite help u in the near future its a translator. im not perfect at chinese like speaking canto. but gud enuff to get me by. hmm heres the link http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr
