Tag: cantonese

JLPT is over!

Phew!

When I posted last time about taking the JLPT level N1, I never thought the day would actually come. I have a habit of signing up for stuff and then going “Oh crap!” as the day approaches. I didn’t start studying till pretty late in November, but I was surprised at how much I knew already and how little was “new” to me. The majority of new things I learned were rarely used kanji for common words, like 頓て for やがて. The exam itself was no big deal, I finished with time to spare. The new N1 supposedly tests more advanced skills, which is why there’s less straightforward quizzing and more reading comprehension.

The best tip I can give anyone who wants to take it is: Work on your Reading Skills. The texts aren’t hard, but there’s a lot to read and not that much time. If you keep reading, your reading speed will grow and you should be able to finish everything. Otherwise you’ll be crawling along in a helpless panic, which you really don’t want to go through. As for the listening section, the pace is actually quite slow and they speak in clear, deliberate tones. You shouldn’t have any problems with it if you’ve been watching shows in Japanese for a while.

And that was it! I’m pretty sure I’ll pass, “I had a good feeling!” I’m just glad it’s over with! One of the criticisms of the JLPT is that you study your ass off for the test, pass, and never use half the stuff you learned again. Well, I’m not going to let that happen. That’s what my SRS is for, chock full of anything I found remotely useful. I made a separate deck for the JLPT stuff, even. If I can learn new vocabulary and constructs from the exam, then whether I pass or not, it’s worth it.

Now that that’s out of the way, it’s back to Cantonese! I finally figured out how to split audio files using Audacity (ah, the magic of Google!). It’s easier than I’d thought, and lots of fun too. I sit down and take a few minutes to chop up the file before adding the lesson to my SRS, and then everything goes smooooothly. I also discovered that my university has Yip’s “Intermediate Cantonese Grammar” or whatever that book is called, available as an e-book. I’ll leave that alone for now, but that’s my next step after I finish the book I’m working on. Why let free materials pass me by?

And that’s all that’s going on with me so far! I feel like a huge weight fell off my shoulders, lol!

Slowly but surely

Right now I’m in the process of entering my Teach Yourself Cantonese book dialogues into surusu. It’s slow going because I’m really not used to typing in Cantonese, but I’m already up to chapter 7 and going great. Entering the dialogues really helps me remember the vocabulary and the grammatical structure without feeling like I’m cramming unnecessarily. I think I’ll do this with any other textbook I pick up, though I really feel I should jump right into real texts once I’m done with this book. Well, we’ll see.

What I’d really like is to cut up the audio and include that as well, but I’m hopeless at making Audacity do anything I want, and too lazy to download any other audio editing software, so…yeah.

Only other thing to report is a site I found, dramacrazy.net, where I can stream Japanese/Korean/Chinese dramas, movies and anime at will. In the past I didn’t bother with such sites because my internet was a slow piece of crap, but now I’ve switched ISPs, I can play around a bit more. Following my failed experiment with Last Friends a while ago, I don’t feel like watching any J-dramas, but I love Cantonese period dramas, so I’m going to be working my way through them in a while.

Oh yeah, I signed up to writ the JLPT level N1 in December! Just for the fun of it, really. Bragging rights and all that, “all my friends have one, why can’t I?” etc etc. Unfortunately I haven’t started studying for it yet, I keep telling myself I’ll do it from November. Will I really? Hahahaha…

Cantonese movies!

I had two flights on Emirates Airlines over the weekend, so since I was trapped in that uncomfortable metal box for almost 15 hours total, I decided to spend it studying. So I chose to watch the Cantonese in-flight entertainment and listen to Cantopop on the music station. September is Jacky Cheung month! And there was Sam Hui and Anita Mui as well! They also have an awesome Japanese selection as well, 15 hours wasn’t enough to listen to most of it. The movies I watched were both pretty bad though.

The first one was “Future X-Cops” (未來警察 in Cantonese) starring Andy Lau. What a horrible film. The premise is like Terminator mixed with all the other Back-to-the-Future kind of films, except it’s all over the place and doesn’t even make much sense. Basically Andy’s wife gets killed in 2080 trying to foil an attempt on a Professor’s life. Afterwards he’s sent back in time to protect that Professor as a kid because the assassins have gone back to try and kill him. There are so many problems with the premise that I don’t even know where to start, but it’s all good because the story takes second place to the horrible, horrible effects, bad acting and lame attempts at comedy. I really like Andy Lau, but if he thinks this is a good movie he needs to retire, like, yesterday.

The second movie was called “Beauty on Duty.” Clever name for a rather dumb movie. It’s a Hong Kong remake of Sandra Bullock’s “Miss Congeniality”, not exactly the best movie in the world to begin with. The writers decided to give it a mo lei tau spin, so it’s a silly, hokey hodgepodge of misadventures: electronic crocodiles, ‘Genetic Self-Control Disposition’, running around with a dead body, etc. That sort of thing. Eventually the bad guys are foiled with no loss of life and everything ends happily ever after. I suppose.

There was a third movie running called “Hot Summer Days”, but after the fail that was the first two, I decided to stick to music and napping instead. After all, learning a language isn’t about forcing yourself to do things you normally wouldn’t. It’s about having fun. Right?

First post in a long time

I’m embarrassed to admit I’d forgotten all about this blog (^^;;) until Khatz posted a comment I made long ago on his blog.

I just got a question about how it feels to juggle Japanese and Cantonese, so I’ll try and post a progress report below:

Because I spent a lot of time (several years) trying to get good at Japanese and I’m loath to lose all that, I’ve been spending more time keeping Japanese up to par than learning Cantonese. Given the choice I’d rather watch a Japanese drama than a Cantonese one or listen to Japanese music. I’ve been branching out more and more, but not too far. But recently I’ve been getting more confident that I’m good enough in Japanese that I won’t forget it so easily, even if I stop for a while. I won’t say I have “native” fluency in it or anything ‘cos that’s a lie, but I’m having a harder and harder time coming across vocabulary I don’t know and I don’t remember the last time I heard something in a show/movie I didn’t understand (I need to watch more complex stuff, seriously), so I must be doing something right.

From next month onwards, I’d like to get even more serious with my Cantonese. I’ve worked through most of the example sentences with audio at Cantonese.sheik.uk, and I’m on chapter 10 of Teach Yourself Cantonese. Not bad, but not that good considering I’ve had a year to get that far. However putting pressure on yourself is the surest way to stop enjoying a language, so I’m treating it as a fun journey. I’ll get there when I get there. As long as I can understand what George Lam is singing by 2050, I’m cool 😀

There’s also the issue that there’s far less comprehensible learning material available on the internet in Cantonese than there is in Japanese. Lots of people learn Japanese so the community is really supportive and you can get stuff at all stages. Complete beginner, semi-intermediate, intermediate, advanced, native, it’s all good. At any given time there are thousands of people learning along with you, and many of them have blogs and forums to take part in. Plus Japanese is just Japanese, you know? You don’t have to juggle between Simplified and Traditional or find a video that says “Chinese” and then it turns out to be “Mandarin”, etc.

Whining won’t get me anywhere though, I’ve just got to keep on moving. A year ago everything on RTHK radio was a complete blur, but now I’m starting to get the general idea of some conversations: “Oh, they talking about hospitals”, “Oh, they’re complaining about transportation (I think)”, etc. Hopefully I’ll have something even more exciting to report a year from today.

So that’s it!

 

Infernal Affairs movie review

Quick Review
I watched this famous Hong Kong film starring Tony Leung and Andy Lau last weekend. Tony stars as Yan, a police mole deep within a triad gang. Andy stars as Lau, a gang mole high up in the police service. After a botched gang cocaine trade, both higher ups charge their moles with finding the identity of the other group’s mole. And so a deadly game of cat-and-mouse begins.

First, spoilers for the ending. Quick! Look away! Yan dies, Lau gets away with everything.

The acting is brilliant, the music is really good. Lights, action, cinematography, everything about Infernal Affairs is brilliant except one thing…the plot. The characters are really too stupid for words. What bothered me the most?

1. Lau managing to get all sorts of information to his triad boss during a stakeout, with the rest of the police force sitting right by him. Eventually it’s revealed that the guy right next with him was in the triad too, which is why he got away with it, but at the time it really pissed me off.
2. Yan picking up his phone after Inspector Wong died. The first thing he should have done was trash that thing and hope the number couldn’t be traced to him. Better hope he had a special phone only for Wong affairs.
3. Yan trusting Lau immediately and going along with him, all while knowing of the existence of a triad mole within the police. Dumbass.
4. Yan having solid evidence of Lau being the triad’s mole and choosing to blackmail him with it instead of turning it straight into the police. THIS DID NOT MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL! Did he have a deathwish? I can only conclude he had a deathwish.
5. Yan confronting Lau face-to-face before making arrangements to have the evidence sent to the police. This allowed Lau to get clean away with everything once Yan has been killed by a bad cop. What An Idiot!

The ‘Lau Wins’ ending evidently went down pretty badly because eventually they trotted the same actors out for Infernal Affairs 3 (Infernal Affairs 2 apparently does not deserve to be mentioned) where Lau eventually pays for his sins. Yah, whatever. Infernal Affairs was really gripping, but now that it’s over I don’t think I want to watch it again. But I was impressed by both Andy and Tony, so I’ll be looking for more films by them in the future.