Tag: cantonese

More movies

I forgot to write up the two Hong Kong movies I watched on the last KLM flight I took a couple of months ago. They were “Double Tap” starring Leslie Cheung and Alex Fong, and “I Love Hong Kong”, with Sandra Ng and Tony Leung (Big Tony). They were both kinda bad, though Double Tap was watchable, especially in hindsight, seeing as it stars Leslie as a seriously depressed maniac. He plays Rick, a gun expert who develops a penchant for killing after shooting a crazed cop, while Alex Fong plays the policeman who has to track him down and stop him.

The movie was going well until the end, which was too simplistic. Basically the men shot each other, but Alex’s wife had taught him breathing techniques to prolong his life when shot, so he lived and Leslie died. See, that’s too simplistic right? Bit of a disappointment there.

“I Love Hong Kong” was just bad. The idea was good, about a man who moves back into a housing project with his family after losing everything. The movie is supposed to show how they adjust to life in a poor area and how they transform it eventually but 1. It takes them very little time to adjust completely, so there’s no tension there. 2. All the real transformation is carried out by the man’s shady friend, played by Eric Tsang. The family might as well not have moved back. 3. All problems are quickly and easily resolved, making you wonder if they were really problems at all. 4. The ending features a spectacularly cheesy singing sequence that made me cringe in my seat and change the channel. Way to go.

Watching Cantonese movies on flights really helps the time pass quickly, while letting me learn a bit in the process. Every time I watch a movie after studying for a while, I find I understand more and more of what’s being said without relying on the subs. I’m still not entirely ready to go sub-free, but I’m getting there.

Going My Way

Nothing interesting’s going on with me, I’m still plodding faithfully along. I gave up on books for now to focus on internet resources. I was lucky enough to come across Milan’s Cantonese blog with several Cantonese monologues recorded by his wife, a native Cantonese speaker. They’ve made excellent sacrifices to my Cantonese SRS deck, MWA HA HA HA HA! I’m happy with how much I’ve learned from them so far, but I’m also encouraged by how much I already understand. I can’t call myself a beginner any more, maybe more like a lower-intermediate learner. I can get the gist of most things I listen to, and even understand quite a bit of some topics. As for the news, once they have those Mandarin subtitles up, it’s all over for them. Needless to say, I enjoy watching the news quite a bit.

Or more like I enjoyed it, because the ATV stream I used to watch regularly suddenly went down a few nights ago. I’m heart-broken sad Now I have to find a new source of terrible dramas and annoying tourism shows and endless mahjong tournaments and pro-Beijing news to watch. It was fun to have ATV streaming away whether I watched it or not, and I learned a ton of new characters and compounds from the news broadcasts. But it does no good to lament the past, just got to keep moving forward. I’m sure I’ll find something else eventually.

WTF, no fair!

I’ve been doing my SRS reps and all, but I didn’t listen to any Cantonese radio or TV for two or three days. All of sudden I barely understand anything any more! It’s only been a few days, why is the effect so sudden?! I’m sure if I listen to it again for a day or two I’ll be okay, but this is a lesson to me that I’m nowhere near full comprehension. I can’t afford to slack off at all.

I’m thinking of picking up a drama, since I always tune in to ATV when they’re showing either Putonghua news or some drama that doesn’t come with Mandarin subtitles. Also it sucks. There’s this guy who keeps screaming this girl’s name non-stop. It sounds like Gu-long, Gu-long. 30 minutes of Gu-long, Gu-long, Gu-long, Gu-long, Gu-long, Gu-long every single episode made me sick, which is probably why I rebelled. Right now I’m listening to a morning radio show on RTHK2 (no, I don’t think it’s 晨光第一線) while working on some papers.

And on, on we go.

All going well

I’ve been meaning to post for a while, but I always find some reason not to. As planned, I finished Teach Yourself Cantonese at the end of February, and I’ve been working on Colloquial Cantonese while listening to Cantonese radio and watching Canto TV, i.e. the ATV live stream. I guess part of the reason I haven’t posted in a while is that I felt I had to write a review of both books, but nobody reads this blog anyway so I don’t know what I was worried about.

Teach Yourself Cantonese was a pretty decent book, it taught me a lot of high-level vocabulary by the end, and it used hanzi all the way through so I could enter things into my SRS. Colloquial Cantonese is a near-total waste of money. It barely teaches anything over 15 worthless lessons, and barely teaches any characters at all. The one great thing I learned from the whole book is how to understand weather reports. And those Hong Kongers love their weather reports, they’re always going on about it. Now I can understand when they’re talking about clear skies, or relative humidity, or advising people to wear more clothing because it will be cold.

I was just listening to an announcer going on about it on RTHK 2 just now, and I was so chuffed when I understood every single word that I came over here to post about it. 😀 Up next I’m going to mine the Lonely Planet Cantonese guide for more sentences while continuing to grab vocabulary from Cantonese news broadcasts. I learn about 20 new compounds from each news broadcast, just by following the Mandarin subs closely while listening to their words. It’s hard to explain, but if you’ve studied Japanese and a bit of Mandarin before, it shouldn’t be too hard. I get the gist of each news item mainly because of that prior background. Here’s what I’ve learned today:

接力  zip3 lik6 –  relay
走勢  zau2 sai3  –  tendency
出現  ceot1 jin6  –  to appear; to emerge; to arise
動作  dung6 zok3  –  action; movement
表明  biu2 ming4  –  to clarify
要求  jiu1 kau4  –  request
估計  gu2 gai3  –  to estimate
投資者  tau4 zi1 ze2  –  investor
完全  jyun4 cyun4 –  completely
薪金  san1 gam1 –  salary; wage; pay
討論  tou2 leon6 –  to discuss; to talk over; to debate; discussion; talk; debate
休息  jau1 sik1 –  to rest; to take a break; recess; a rest; a break
答案  daap3 on3 –  [n] answer
出發  ceot1 faat3 –  to set off (on a journey)
海水  hoi2 seoi2 –  [n] seawater
質疑  zat1 ji4 –  call into question (truth or validity)
功能  gung1 nang4  –  function
重開  cung4 hoi1 –  to reopen
範圍  faan6 wai4 –  range, scope, limit
輻射  fuk1 se6 –  radiation, irradiation
反擊  faan2 gik1 –  to hit back

Two more radio programs

This time for Japanese. I scribbled them down on my noticeboard, but I forgot to note which programs they were. Knowing myself, they’re almost certainly music programs, most likely Japanese 60s, 70s and 80s classics, because that’s what I listen to the most. Anyway, they’re both on Sankakuyama FM, Wednesdays at 8pm GMT and Fridays at 9pm GMT. I used to really like Sankakuyama FM because they had a great mix of music and talk, and because their stream was fairly low quality it could stream on my slow connection without a hitch.

Unfortunately the other day I started listening and there was this right-wing guy on spouting all this racist crap about Koreans and Russians and how they think they’re better than everyone else, and that kind of pissed me off. I know Japan’s been having trouble with Russia lately, but to cast aspersion in all Russians because of that is the height of ignorance. So yeah, I’ve been souring on them a bit lately, but I still listen when that idiot isn’t on.

Cantonese is going well, I’m up to Lesson 23 of Teach Yourself Cantonese! And I finally learned to say “computer” and “fax machine” (actually I’d already learned them elsewhere, but let’s pretend I hadn’t), but not “internet” or “e-mail”. I’ve been going at a pretty good pace, but yesterday I wasn’t up to it and skipped a day of review. Yikes, 180+ items backed up in my SRS! I’m still catching up even now.