Chinese Craving

This follows the comments to my last post, about having Chinese family and yet not being able to understand any Chinese. I've been thinking quite a bit about learning a little Chinese again, probably Cantonese, as my family speak Cantonese more often than Mandarin. I say again as, during university I pestered my Cantonese speaking friends to teach me as much as they could. However, I was terrible at it... really horrendous.

Another of my friends is also interested in studying Cantonese and we've even got some Learn Cantonese audio CDs. Will we actually put them to use?

A while back I said that I'd only start learning Chinese after getting to a relatively high level of Japanese. Now, I'm starting to wonder what to do... Hmm.

Comments

[saffronsaris]

Try blogging in Chinese as well. You don't have to write in perfect sentences, but it helps with the learning.
Works for me.

[TC]

I teach my co-workers Cantonese from time to time and they found it useful to learn something they could put to use right away, like ordering dim sum at the restaurant. You don't need to worry about being not polite enough and the server will almost always be happy to see you ordering so eagerly.

[Darren]

Blogging in Chinese? I can't even say 'my name is' in Chinese so I think blogging will have to wait for the future!

Yeah, as Lee kindly pointed out, I do know sei jui no hou (sorry, I don't know how to romanise it perfectly) as well as a few dim sum. But I get shy in restaurants and probably wouldn't try it... unless I were in China. The same goes for my Japanese.

[quik]

Try your Chinese in Won Keis, shouldn't be shy in there, the staff certainly don't care

[Darren]

Yeah, well, to be honest, I haven't been to Wong Kei's in a while and I don't see that changing any time soon...

[TC]

Ngao (cow/beef) is almost the toughest Cantonese word to pronounce correctly. People I taught always just give up and say Beef Chow Fun (with Black Bean Sauce implied). :-) One very popular dish indeed.

[Darren]

That is a great dish, in fact, one of my favourites. I think I could have a fairly decent stab at the pronunciation, but I won't know until I try it out for real in a Chinese restaurant.