I think I'm in the exact same situation as you are. Wow! Except I took chinese school for 8 years, but I still can't read or write much. I'm CBC too, and Have been speaking canto for all my life. In fact, it was my first language. However, when I listen to myself in recordings, I notice that there is an Englishy accent rubbed into my pronunciation of words somewhere. I don't know why, but I just don't sound like an HK'er. I speak 95% fluently, but I lose that last 5% to that weird Englishy accent thing. I dunno why, but I can just hear the difference. However, I've only had 1 friend tell me that I have an accent. The rest think I was born in HK, until I tell them I was born in Canada. Hmm...how to improve? Well I guess you can join the Honger groups at your school. However, make sure that you continue to try to speak English to the people you can, because when one thing improves, something else might decline. You wouldn't want to have a huge chinese accent when speaking English right?
Talking with parents can be great, and yet it can be a censored nightmare. You can never learn those kind of words from your parent, and discussion of certain things may be difficult. I learned more about how to describe sexual matters in Cantonese from TVB rather than from my parents. LOL... Ralph
I must say it isn't easy. I've been living in a Canto household for 18 years... speaking canto at home and around friends (who are all also CBC like myself). I am still told that I have an accent, although minimal by people in HK. However, so does their English =P Anyways, I think the key to is hang around more native Canto speakers. To learn slang and expressions, watching the TVB dramas work well too!
When you learn from mom and dad, you'll eventually wind up sounding just like mom or dad. Though the years, watching friends, and even my own kids, I've come to realize that, their accents aside, they sound rather similar to the people that they constantly speak to. It's great if your folks speak excellent Cantonese. However, if one's parents came out of some village where the Canto is bent already all to hell to begin with; well guess what? That's gonna all you, too, simply because you won't know any better. Like you and many of the others here have stated, while TVB and parents are a great source, exposure to a wide variety of native Canto speakers is what's gonna make you one too. Just like the language programs, one has to use one's mouth, that is, speak. Parrot back what you hearing. While it may sound really idiotic in the beginning, after a fashion, one starts to sound like those things that we're parroting. This is exactly the same method that children use to learn to speak. And sure, you'll laugh at their mistakes, but as they keep doing it, they get better and better. Pretty soon they're rambling away in a language that they just newly heard a few months before. -^_^ And again, condition oneself into thinking in Canto only. At first, it's a pain as you will search for the right word. But pretty soon, one can easily become a bilingual thinker and that makes speaking so much easier. -lol Ralph
im currently talking in canto as much as i can now.... i need to practice because some people say my chinese sounds too Jook Sing......
^^;; what is jook sing? but i agree, talking does do a lot. Personally, i learn everything (slang and old fashioned cantonese) thru tvb shows. I'm a tv junkie, and at this point, i say things that sometimes my parents don't know. So I would say that watching it definately helped. But of course, one must adjust the old fashioned lingo to the new age. However, there are words one may still use. For example, I've used words like "fu cheen" (excuse my ping yin), since it really just means one who looks at something too typically or with no depth. At least I'm pretty sure thatz what it means. Another part of learning is making mistakes, so when I do say things out of context or what not, my mom does correct me, and I try to remember for next time.
That's the phonetic in Canto meaning Overseas Born Chinese (eg ABC, CBC, etc), the opposite of Jook Cock, meaning Native Born Chinese. -rockon Ralph
What's really interesting is that over the years since HK opened its gates to mainlanders, the sheer influx of non native Cantonese speakers has seriously diluted the original HK sound of Canto. The diction and syntax is completely different, and with so many people doing it, it just begins to seem normal. I can remember back in the early 1970's, the Canto sound in HK was almost pure. Ralph
