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# i want advice
on how best to learn.
My wife is chinese and i think it's time i started to learn. I'm crap at self study though
(I helped save b3ta! Nonny Mouse. -- Scared as a Shitting Scorpion, Mon 16 May 2005, 9:14, archived)
# Apparently
its quite hard. I've got a friend who moved to england from hong kong a few years ago, she says she's already forgetting how to speak it (although she was raised english ex pat stylee).

Its all quite tonal, with huge geographical variations as well they tell me.

Maybe you could sign up for a course? Or learn kung fu, thats how I learnt to not be able to say about eight cantonese words...
(I helped save b3ta! Liquid Crystal, Mon 16 May 2005, 9:20, archived)
# kung fu sounds like
uhm painful. Thanks both for advice. ^^
(I helped save b3ta! Nonny Mouse. -- Scared as a Shitting Scorpion, Mon 16 May 2005, 9:22, archived)
# fu is fun
you get to make new friends and learn how to break their arms & legs and choke them to death. Plus if you go long enough you get a snazzy belt
(I helped save b3ta! Liquid Crystal, Mon 16 May 2005, 9:24, archived)
# i do kung fu as well
I have a snazzy blue belt. yay!
(return of r0yksopp, Mon 16 May 2005, 9:28, archived)
# woo for you!
and your belt of blue!
(I helped save b3ta! Liquid Crystal, Mon 16 May 2005, 10:03, archived)
# That doesn't surprise me.
I'm surprsed she could speak ANY Cantonese. Hong Kong expats are, by and large, cunts. There are some exceptions, but the majority are arrogant fuckwits.

Tones are important, but in my experience well overemphasized. Geographic variations within any given Chinese language are minimal - biggest you'll get would be Beijing Mandarin vesus Taiwanese Mandarin. The languages themselves vary immensely and are mutually unintelligible. OP'd have to find out from the wife which language to study.
(Tetsuo, Mon 16 May 2005, 9:48, archived)
# They're actually very nice
quite down to earth and all that. Although she did say that Hong Konglians have issues with the mainlanders.

They also said that apparently the writeen language is the same, but people speak it differently or something. I don't really understand it to be honest.
(I helped save b3ta! Liquid Crystal, Mon 16 May 2005, 10:08, archived)