How difficult is it for Cantonese speakers to learn Mandarin ?!

[oasis1frog]

Not sure if because of age, I speak Cantonese and can read & write Chinese. At the beginning I gave it 3 months to be able to speak fluent Mandarin, now few years later on & off learning Mandarin still find the progress very slow & difficult. I take my hat off to those non Chinese learners. Just listening to Mandarin radio or watching movies simply don't work, lucky if I can understand 1 or 2 words here & there. I think the missing link is to have someone to speak Mandarin with often, but its difficult if you are not living in China or Taiwan. Just wondering what are the experiences of others ?

[Hofmann]

Can you give more details about your study methods? Besides radio and movies.

[oasis1frog]

Hofmann, pretty much tried everything, including the local weekend Mandarin schools, learning websites (paid & unpaid), movies etc. The problem with the mandarin schools is they all just want to teach pinyin (which I find difficult), with new tools like google translate that you can hear the sounds of chinese words, I don't think pinyin is as mandatory as previously. So the bottom line is the lack of opportunity to speak Mandarin, I know theres italk etc. (may have to use it eventually)

ps. I worked in an office with native mandarin speakers, but it is quicker & easier to communicate in English.

[Flickserve]

You must be in a non-Chinese environment. I live in HK and the vast majority of local Cantonese speakers can understand a significant proportion of Mandarin.

Their verbal skills in Mandarin are very variable from very low to very good.

Since you can already read Chinese, I would expect that with enough time, you would read the subtitles and listen at the same time. Perhaps you have been watching all those period dramas of the Tang Dynasty.

[skylee]

"Read & write Chinese" at what level? I would think that Cantonese speakers who can read and write Chinese at a native level should not have any problem in learning Mandarin if they take a structured approach. Join a course or get a textbook to learn Hanyu Pinyin and the pronunciation, and these are basically all a Cantonese speaker need to learn.

I learnt Mandarin in a semester with weekly 2-hour classes. All the subsequent classes after that first semester were just reinforcement.

[imron]

Hofmann, pretty much tried everything

You know, except for learning pinyin, which I imagine will help you quite a lot.  Is there some particular reason you don't wish to learn it besides finding it difficult?  Like most things, it's difficult until you learn it and then it's easy.

[Hofmann]

You have to learn some way of writing down Mandarin syllables. If not Pinyin then Zhuyin Fuhao or IPA. Pinyin is probably most versatile.

 

If you can read and write fluently (I'm assuming it's vernacular Mandarin and not Classical or Cantonese), learning Pinyin in combination with a popup dictionary should get you far.

[chinesemaster]

 

 

ps. I worked in an office with native mandarin speakers, but it is quicker & easier to communicate in English.

 

Talking with native speakers should be the most effective way to practice speaking. So may I say that you felt a little shy to open your mouth instead of "quicker & easier to communicate in English"?

I understand it's typical that 2nd language learners often feel nervous when speaking. If that is the case, I think you can first boost your confidence by speaking to machine, like Apps with speech recognition. Then after you have the confidence to open your mouth you can start to talk to natives in your office.   That's my two cents.

 

[Flickserve]

Hanyu pinyin isn't that difficult is it? I did learn French and a bit of German as a child and even though those languages use the alphabet, the pronunciation is different to English.

Just go in with the attitude that it's read differently to English. Personally, I find pinyin quite helpful.

[oasis1frog]

Thank you all for your comments. I am learning pinyin (3rd attempt)  from a different teacher and she even makes the process a bit more  enjoyable, for now I only have to learn 21 Initials & 25 Final. ps. Where I study Mandarin theres an old man 94 years old, wish I still have my hearing at that age.

But learning to speak correct Mandarin definitely not as easy as I previously thought !

[Flickserve]

Common misconceptions:

'oh, Mandarin is easier for foreigners so you will be able to pick it up quickly'.

'You know Cantonese? Mandarin is easier'

Unfortunately, you still have to work at it during the initial stages. Approach it as a new language where you can borrow some principles of another language helps considerably. Being a Cantonese speaker helps in some aspects and is a hinderance in others - consistent first tone is hard to acheive whereas picking up parts of the grammar will be more intuitive. Mixing up Mandarin and Cantonese tones is very common and more consistent and accurate pronunciation depends on how much you work on the basics.

In the end, you have to re-examine and properly define your goals and aims. Are you just trying to learn for a bit of communication? Are you wanting to get to a good conversational level? Do you want understand most of the 'Voice of China'? Do you want to understand the news? Do you want a good accent or are you happy with a mediocre accent?

The fact that you had Mandarin speaking work colleagues and picked up little in the way listening skills says a lot. It demonstrates you very much underestimated the work one has to put in.

**edit** I just overhead a Cantonese colleague giving instructions in Mandarin. Doesn't sound great but gets the job done. YMMV

[yymmcc112233]

It is not very hard for Cantonese to learn mandarin. Actually, though mandarin speakers think that cantonese is weird in grammar sometimes, they can still understand what you are saying if you put your cantonese accent into characters. That is, you won't spend much time on grammar and what you should do is just to learn how to speak in manderin and a few different usage in writing.

[Flickserve]

It is not very hard for Cantonese to learn mandarin. Actually, though mandarin speakers think that cantonese is weird in grammar sometimes, they can still understand what you are saying if you put your cantonese accent into characters. That is, you won't spend much time on grammar and what you should do is just to learn how to speak in manderin and a few different usage in writing.

it is hard if you haven't learnt how to read or write Chinese previously. It is hard if cantonese is a second language.

Otherwise, I would have found it much easier to learn Mandarin. ;)

After one year, I can read to NCPR 1 and make simple sentences. I don't think I can hold my own conversation. I certainly cannot follow listening to short movies in mandarin.

I listen to Mandarin radio about 45 mins per day (for the past year). I listen to Mandarin songs. Soemtimes watch some movies or Voice of China.

Crucially, I don't encounter native Mandarin speakers in daily work. The closest Mandarin I can hear in daily life is a dialect called Cantorin. This is basically a HK person trying to speak Mandarin with Cantonese tones and putting in some Cantonese words for good measure.

But most HKers are quite honest in that they admit to not speaking good Chinese. I have seen some older HK people flat out refuse to speak Mandarin and get a younger person to help them talk to a Mandarin native speaker where I work. Seems totally wierd to me to see that. I guess the older people don't want to lose face speaking Mandarin badly.

Like I wrote before, some things are easier, some things are harder. Some grammar points are easier for me to pick up even though I haven't had any formal Chinese grammar lessons before. Incorporating them into speech patterns is harder. I still can't get used to 是。。。的。

[yymmcc112233]

Some HK people don't like mandarin speakers and they only speak Cantonese.

[skylee]

Some HK people don't like mandarin speakers and they only speak Cantonese.

Care to share your thought on what you think is the reason?

Personally I only dislike Mandarin speakers from Mainland China who speak Mandarin in HK. I don't mind Mandarin speakers from Taiwan at all. I think Mandarin is not the issue here. Mainland China is.