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- In Memoriam
Leslie Cheung
1956-2003
Our Leslie, beautiful like a flower.
I love you today and always--
a part of my heart beats for you alone,
tonight and forever.
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Learning to Read (Menu) Chinese
Wednesday, Feb 24, 2010 10:36AM / Members only
The one thing that traditionally casts fear into the hearts of foreigner learns of Chinese is, not surprisingly, the writing system with its thousands of complex-seeming characters (well, that, and the tones :-)). The conventional wisdom for students of Cantonese is to concentrate on gaining fluency in the spoken language and to worry about becoming literate later, much later, preferably when you have mastered spoken Cantonese and have moved on to learning Mandarin. For this reason, I resisted beginning to learn Chinese characters, until now, that is.In preparation for my trip to Hong Kong, I bought this great book by James D. McCawley, The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters. McCawley was a professor of Chinese language at the University of Chicago and wrote this book for lovers of Chinese food who are not necessarily students of the language. His goal is to teach people to read a menu written entirely in Chinese, or at least understand enough to be able to have some confidence in what you are ordering. He also decodes the way Chinese menus are traditionally organized. Since I'm a serious "foodie" and want to be able to eat when I see/smell something that looks good and be able to have sense of what I am actually eating, I am giving this method a try. Let us just say that I am highly motivated.
So far, I have created about 75 flash cards to teach myself to recognize the most useful Chinese characters I am most likely to find on a menu. Below is a random sample.
As I seem to be able to learn the characters without extraordinary effort, I am going to add additional characters pertaining to different types of tea (another passion of mine) and additional food items.I discovered a great website that has various search functions for Chinese characters, moving from written Chinese or Pinyan to English, and back. They even give Cantonese romanization of the characters in 2 different systems, with pronunciation! On-line Chinese dictionary When you print out one of the pages, this is what you get.
I got out my trusty scissors, a glue stick and index cards and set to work creating 2-sided flash cards.
I possess an almost photographic memory for images (which was invaluable in art history) and so, perhaps, it is not surprising that I am learning to recognize characters with surprising speed. This is actually much easier for me than spoken Cantonese. I have begun recognizing many of the radicals that are used in the "food" and "cooking" characters and even the variations used in various positions in composite characters. The system actually makes a great deal of sense to me, which is a relief.After my return from Hong Kong, I plan to begin learning how to write the 800 or so basic characters and then learn how to read and write actual sentences. In Hong Kong, I am hoping to find some good books for foreigners teaching just this, where I have noticed there are a number of language schools dedicated to teaching foreigners Cantonese and Mandarin. What is traditionally the great stumbling block for foreigners--learning how to read and write--may turn out to be easier for me than most. Wouldn't that be sweet! -
What's been happening
Monday, Feb 8, 2010 9:32AM / Members only
So, not much to share in recent days. The weather has been bad to awful for the past 10 days, and this has kept me housebound a lot more than usual. I even missed 3 days of work last week because of the weather. It stopped being fun after day 2.I have been spending a lot of time getting ready for the trip to Hong Kong in late March. I realized that I was going to be traveling from one climate, very early spring, to a totally different climate, what would pass for late spring-early summer when I arrive in HK. So, I've been shopping for some clothes and various and sundry items that I know I will need for the trip (like bifocal sunglasses that have readers built into them for reading maps, guidebooks and directions without having to whip out the readers and remove the sunglasses). All you youngsters have no idea how irritating it is to no longer be able to read/see anything without reading glasses!I have also been reading up on the food in Hong Kong. One book is just about the food scene there, and another book teaches you how to decipher a menu that is totally in Chinese. So...I've been learning the pertinent Chinese characters for all manner of meat, fish and fowl, various ways to cut and prepare the dishes, etc., as they show up on your typical Chinese menu. If I see a place that has food that appeals to me, I don't want the language barrier to stop me from ordering something interesting. My ability to speak Canto is still fairly rudimentary, so I probably won't be able to chat with the waiter/waitress about what is on the menu like I could in France or Spain (at least not this trip), so I want to be able to at least point to something on the menu and confirm that it is fish, pork, tofu, etc. (I do know those words in Canto.)And speaking of Cantonese--I've instituted a moratorium on forging ahead in my Cantonese course until after the trip. From now until then, it is all review, review, review. I need to consolidate everything that I have supposedly learned in the past 2 years and have as much as possible in long-term memory with easy recall for the trip to Hong Kong. Realistically, without daily use in an immersion setting, you tend to forget about 50% of what you leaned initially, so some of the review is, in fact, relearning. But that is okay. I have learned enough other languages to understand how I acquire languages and what it takes to develop a high level of recall. Mostly, repetition, repetition, repetition. This is the unglamorous part of learning a language and it always seems to take up much more time the the "fun bits". But I have been indulging in some entertaining review--hubby and I are watching yet another 40 episode swordplay series.
Well, I guess that about covers it. Mostly just doing a lot of grunt work and things that wouldn't be of interest to normal folks. The language study part, in particular, has a tendency to put people into a trance in 5 seconds, so I talk about it very little. The shopping isn't much better and the food, well, unless you are really into Cantonese/Chinese food, again, instant Sominex. But you can bet that these same people will be interested in all the stories I'll have to tell upon returning from my trip.
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Two For Leslie
Monday, Feb 1, 2010 2:09PM / Members only
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Past, Present and Future of Hong Kong cinema
Saturday, Jan 30, 2010 2:39AM / Members only
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Someday I might actually really learn Cantonese
Tuesday, Jan 26, 2010 10:15AM / Members only
Not much going on, apart from trip preparations. For those interested in such, I'm giving a blow-by-blow on Facebook. AnD fans are spared.
I think I've experienced another breakthrough with Cantonese. About time is all I can say. I've been slogging away for close to 2 years now, and that last plateau was more akin to a deep trough that I was stuck in for about 6 months. I guess, if you keep at it long enough, any language is bound to yield at some point and things that just didn't make sense (or that you couldn't remember no matter how many different ways you tried to get them into your long-term memory) suddenly make a great deal of sense (and you can remember them from one day to the next). After more than a year, on a whim I decided to review the last few chapters of the Pimsleur audio course: the chapters that never made sense because they were introducing grammar concepts, but no explanation of those concepts. In the meantime, I've learned a great deal about those same grammar concepts from another course (the old tried and true Foreign Service Institute Cantonese course available free on the internet). Now, going back to the audio course, it is all falling into place. Also, 2 weeks of intensive audio work is yielding great benefits in terms of understanding more and more movies and television series in Canto. The funny thing is my husband, after listening to Canto for 2 years now (despite his best efforts not to), is specifically asking for the Canto soundtrack on the latest Mainland series we are watching, even though more than half of the actors are speaking Mando in this one. He said he liked the way the actors who dubbed the thing into Canto delivered their lines more than the actors originally speaking Mando. If even the uninitiated can hear how much more expressive Canto is, you have to wonder why it hasn't caught on as the language of choice for everyday oral communication in China. Just be sure, Mandarin speakers, when you lynch me, you hang me high!
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