Starting Cantonese negatively impacting your Mandarin?

[Guest realmayo]

Rather than hijack the original thread where @Tomsima's comment appeared I made a new thread: this is what he wrote:

 

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I have studied Cantonese seriously for the last two years or so. Sadly I have found it really affects my Mandarin, which I use professionally on a daily basis, particularly affecting pronunciation and speech speed. As Cantonese is interest-guided and I have almost no opportunity to use it (yet, at least) Ive been forced put it on the back burner.

 

Is this a common problem? I'm really keen to dabble in Hokkien, and I've always wanted to have a proper go at Cantonese too. Is there any way to avoid running into Mandarin problems? Tomsima, now that you've stopped studying Canto, were you to just speak it for an hour once or twice a week, do you think you would you still have the same Mando problems? I'd like to hope ? it's active studying, rather than usage, that is most likely to interfere.....

[cncorrect]

I can’t speak Cantonese. As a native speaker, I don’t think it will negatively impact my Chinese. Cantonese preserves some ancient pronunciations. The poems more than a thousand years ago, e.g., poetries of the Tang Dynasty, can be read aloud more forcefully with Cantonese. 

 

But I feel difficult to distinguish any dialects of English.
 

[Tomsima]

I think you've got it right, it's active study that interferes, and it doesn't actually impact my speaking ability in either language when in a monolingual environment (like a speaking class with a teacher where I'm only speaking Cantonese). But when under pressure, my brain starts to doubt and mix tones up in particular. This actually also happens when I'm in Hubei and everyone is speaking dialect, it causes hesitation in my standard Mandarin. I don't think it happens with native speakers, which gives me hope that with long term exposure and practice it should be possible to separate Chinese dialects/languages and speak each with confidence. I would imagine Michael from Glossika would be a very reliable referent for this question, though I don't know if he's about on these forums these days?

[Moshen]

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But I feel difficult to distinguish any dialects of English.

 

Really?  If you saw a movie, you wouldn't be able to tell whether the characters were American or British?  Generally English learners learn either one or the other and then have trouble with the other one.

 

Certain British accents are so foreign to me (I'm American) I can hardly understand them.  There was a BBC TV announcer who clipped her words so fiercely I could scarcely understand a single sentence.  It was like trying to grab at words that disappeared before your brain could catch hold of them.

 

And once I was in the US South - someplace like Alabama - and I could not understand a waitress who was asking me, did I want "rahss" with that?  It was very funny, because my Chinese husband understood her immediately: did I want "rice" with that?

[cncorrect]

On 12/24/2023 at 3:32 AM, Moshen said:

Really?  If you saw a movie, you wouldn't be able to tell whether the characters were American or British?  Generally English learners learn either one or the other and then have trouble with the other one.

I can notice there's a difference between the accents in a movie. It usually has a story context. I have never been abroad and rarely hear real people speak English in China. I doubt that some of my English pronunciations are incorrect. I have used different textbooks over the years. Some of them give me British phonetic symbols, while others give me American phonetic symbols. I can't remember which one is British and which one is American. Realmayo may be in a similar situation.

 

I went to Beijing in January this year and saw a doctor. He asked me: '哪儿不好'? The sentence structure and accent were rarely used in my life experience, so I needed some time to comprehend. At the moment, the doctor became impatient and assumed that there were some problems with my intelligence. But I never questioned his professionalism.

[Jan Finster]

On 12/23/2023 at 8:32 PM, Moshen said:

Certain British accents are so foreign to me (I'm American) I can hardly understand them.  There was a BBC TV announcer who clipped her words so fiercely I could scarcely understand a single sentence.  It was like trying to grab at words that disappeared before your brain could catch hold of them.

 

And once I was in the US South - someplace like Alabama - and I could not understand a waitress who was asking me, did I want "rahss" with that?  It was very funny, because my Chinese husband understood her immediately: did I want "rice" with that?

This is apparently quite common and it is baffling to me as an ESL speaker. When I worked in Essex we had a new colleague from Glasgow (Scotland) and my English colleagues would not understand a word he was saying. Me and other foreigners had no problems. We just thought he sounded funny. 

[Jim]

Lots of American acquaintances I've met here have trouble understanding me if I don't take care to speak more slowly and in a standard accent, and I've never thought my natural one is particularly strong. Turn of phrase probably doesn't help.

[CulturalClimber]

From what others have said, it seems like actively studying multiple Chinese dialects/languages at once could potentially cause some confusion, especially with pronunciation and tones. But just occasionally practicing or exposing yourself to another dialect likely wouldn't be a problem. I'd say go ahead and give Hokkien or Cantonese a try - an hour here and there is unlikely to negatively impact your Mandarin. And it would be great exposure. Have fun exploring new languages!

[carlo]

I began learning Cantonese after spending ten years immersed in a Mandarin-speaking environment. My friends in HK would say (and sometimes still say) that I speak like a mainlander, ie tend to forget the native Cantonese expression and end up sounding like a school kid reading from a book. That's probably why learning Canto hasn't affected my Mandarin at all. I also learned the basics of a dialect of Wu (Changzhou) -- can follow basic conversations and say a few things, though opportunities to use it at this time in my life are almost zero.

 

There are also many positive things that come from learning more variants of Chinese, at the very least a greater appreciation of the variety and depth of Chinese culture.

[Dawei3]

On 12/23/2023 at 8:42 AM, cncorrect said:

As a native speaker, I don’t think it will negatively impact my Chinese.

This is the key.  As a native English speaker, learning some Dutch and German, i.e., 2 other Germanic languages, had no influence on my English.  In contrast, learning Dutch influenced my German.  While at a conference in Chicago, I tried to speak to a German woman and she said strongly with a mix of curiousity:  "You speak German with a Dutch accent!!!"   (I'm American).

 

I completely understood her comment - I hadn't practiced German in years, but I was actively learning Dutch at the time.  While Tomsima mentioned mixing up tones, with Dutch & German, I sometimes mix up pronunciation since some words are similar (and in my brain, I can't quite remember - what is the Dutch or what is the German pronunciation of that word???)

 

Learning a 2nd language can influence one's native language if you live in the 2nd language environment.  A close English friend who has lived the Netherlands & France for many many years (and learned to speak both) now has a fascinating accent.  His accent is not a French or Dutch or English, but a mix of them.  Living & working in these environments definitely influenced his native language.  

[nicklinjm]

Just wanted to chip in my own experience to this conversation. For a bit of background info, I learned putonghua in my early 20s and then used it daily for work for several years afterwards (working in Shanghai). Then in my 30s, I was posted to Hong Kong, so spent 2-3 yrs doing weekly Canto lessons with a teacher to the point where I can chat with work colleagues, etc. My experience is that, like other posters, the Mandarin 'colours' my Cantonese, it is too easy to forget the native Canto word and fall back on the Mando word, so that locals often comment 'you speak like out of a book' 'you speak like a newsreader', etc. However, I have not experienced the opposite, my Canto does not affect my Mandarin at all (except for a tendency to say "wo zou xian" instead of "wo xian zou"!) - but I guess that may be because my active learning periods were 10 years apart. YMMV, IMHO, etc.

[Takeshi]

I studied Mandarin first and learnt Cantonese after. At first, I heavily relied on Mandarin to "generate" Cantonese, and this often ended up generating bad Cantonese. Now my Cantonese is much better than my Mandarin, and I use Cantonese to generate Mandarin. Most people praise(?) my Mandarin by saying I don't sound like a foreigner, but I sound like a Guangdongren. My Mandarin is heavily Cantonese accented and I don't really care.

 

Also note that I have pretty much stopped using Mandarin in daily life, while I have been using Cantonese extensively. That's also that.

 

I have studied Hokkien and Hakka a bit. Neither has affected my Cantonese or Mandarin at all, but studying Hakka definitely confused my Hokkien a lot. I feel like my brain stores Hokkien and Hakka in the same place; after I learnt Hakka and had been using Hakka for a while, every time I wanted to speak Hokkien, I'd think up of Hakka words by accident. I think it's because I'm at a beginner level in both languages (I learnt Hokkien first, and about 10 years before Hakka)

[Lu]

On 5/8/2024 at 5:03 PM, Takeshi said:

but studying Hakka definitely confused my Hokkien a lot. I feel like my brain stores Hokkien and Hakka in the same place; after I learnt Hakka and had been using Hakka for a while, every time I wanted to speak Hokkien, I'd think up of Hakka words by accident.

I have this with Mandarin and French: I studied French in secondary school and still speak it a little, but when I want to speak French I get Mandarin sentences in my head and I have to translate each word into French. There is an interesting study to be done which languages do this kind of interference, and perhaps even why. (Or perhaps someone has already studied this.)