Finally, I have persuaded my wife to go to Mandarin class. She had her first class last Thursday. OK, this was not her first attempt, but at least I regard this as a new beginning. There is always hope.

Coming back from the class that night, my wife started firing all kinds of pronunication questions at me. The biggest challenge for a Cantonese speaker to learn Mandarin, or Mandarin speaker learning Cantonese, is to figure out how different characters sound in the other language. We are talking about thousands of Chinese characters here.

In one question, she asked, “How do you say 鞋[haai4](shoe) in Mandarin?”. I replied [xie2]. “It is so different! How am I supposed to deduce it?!” Well, my answer is, you are not supposed to.

Many people have the misconception that with some deduction rules, you can pretty much map the Cantonese sounds to Mandarin, and vice versa, perhaps with some exceptions. The fact is, the number of exceptions is so huge that you might as well throw away the deduction rules.

Here you can find a conversation table between Cantonese and Mandarin pronunciations. Let’s see how we would pronounce the Cantonese sound [ban] in Mandarin. Accordingly to the table, it could be [bin], … or [ben], … or [pin], … or [bing]. Thanks for the advise!

When people ask me how to say a Chinese character in Mandarin, I do not look up or recall from memory any conversation table or deduction rule. I simply try to recall the sound from memory. If I cannot do it directly, I try to associate it with a word or even a phrase. If I cannot recall it still, I will look up the dictionary, not any conversation table or deduction rule.

For example, my wife asked me the pronunication of the character 節 [zit3]. I recalled directly from memory that it should be [jie]. But then I couldn’t remember the exact tone. So I tried to think of a word that contain the character, for example “節目” (program). Then I tried to recall the Mandarin radio I used to listen to a lot, and all the times the word “program” was mentioned. I tried to say the word aloud a few times, trying it with different tones. It turned out to sound most correct to me in the 2nd tone.

How did I manage to memorize all the pronunciations? Some readers might still remember the post about my determination to learn the Mandarin pronunciations using SRS. Here is the update, I failed … utterly. In fact, it lasted for only 2 weeks or so. SRS has been very effective to me in learning French and Spanish vocabulary, but when it comes to Mandarin pronunciations, it just does not work. Learning the meanings of some vocabulary is one thing, memorizing how each character sounds in a completely different thing. I later learned that the most effective way is to listen to a lot of Mandarin content, and let the sounds sink into my mind along with the associated context. One day, I will subconsciously recall the sound when it is needed.

Many language learners plan to learn Mandarin and then somehow ‘convert’ their Mandarin into Cantonese (or vice versa). Consider many Romantic languages are closely related, I never heard of anyone who has learned one Romantic language and somehow use rules to convert it to another Romantic language. Similarly, one simply has to learn Mandarin and Cantonese as individual languages. Don’t forget there are also different grammatical rules and usages.

Not only is the “conversion” approach inefficient, it is simply wrong.

As I have said in a previous post, many people expect everything free from the Internet, but yet they are willing to spend hundreds of dollars on books and materials on language learning.

Some publishers out there are therefore more than happy to take advantage of these people. They are confident that they can convince the general public into believing that they can really learn a language in … well … no time! Go into a book store and it will not be difficult to find books with titles like “Learn this language in 3 Weeks” or “Speak that language fluently in a day”. What amazes me more is that there are really people who would buy into this nonsense!

Still remember this fellow? Tim Ferriss posted in his blog a while ago an article “How to Learn Any Language in 1 Hour“, which ended up attracting thousands of readers. No, he did not mean to take it seriously. He was only trying out an experiment to show that a post without any meaningful content can still generate enormous hits. All you need is an attractive title.

Wake up people! No one can learn to speak a language completely from scratch in such a short time. Don’t be fooled by people who want to make money from us. Occasionally, I have heard people acquiring a language in 3-6 months, but only with intense concentration and effort in totally immersed environments. Often the languages they learn are somewhat related to their native languages. No, this fellow did not learn Icelandic in 1 week. Watch the clip closely. No matter how hard the editors try to conceal the fact, the fellow simply could not speak the language. Uttering a few rehearsed sentences does not mean much really.

Is there any language out there that is easy enough to learn in a short time? Well yes, there is one (if you consider it a real language) - Esperanto. I have heard people claiming that they learned to speak it in a week or so. To me the language is simply a joke. “We cannot speak English well, and we feel inferior”, say the Esperantists. “So, let’s make up a language and speak it so that it is ‘foreign’ to everyone, just to be fair!” Sorry, after a century or so, people don’t really buy into this initiative. Esperanto never takes off.

Esperanto only gives people a false sense of satisfaction so that they think they can really pick up a language very quickly. But then why don’t we go for even simpler ones, such as Toki Pona, which only consists of 120 words in its vocabulary. Everybody can really learn it in … no time!

Talking about constructed languages, I often need to learn many of them at work, sometimes several new ones in a single project, and I need to do it in … no time. Yes, they are called programming languages.

Do you really want to learn a language quick? Make one up yourself, then learn it in … no time.

Enough of my rant. Let’s hear what Koichi from Tofugu has to say on this topic.

My blog has moved … to my own domain!

This moment should have come sooner. I was just to lazy to move. Now, I have my own space. The feeling of 寄人離下 (being under somebody) is no more.

If you subscribed to my blog using the “proper” way (namely, by clicking the “subscribe” button), you should be fine. For those who have bookmarked my blog, you will have to update the link. Bloggers who are kind enough to include me in their blogrolls, please also update the link.

I have also update my long-obsolete blogroll. If you find your blog missing, please kindly let me know. My “resources” page is still old, and is going to be old for a little longer. Hopefully, I am going to update it very soon.

Man! The air of freedom is sooooo nice!

Over the weekend, another free on-line service was gone, not only the “free” part, but also the service itself.

Skypecast was launched in 2006 to host public conference calls up to 100 people at a time. It was since being established as a meeting place for many to get to know others and talk about anything. The service was also widely used by people seeking out language practices. English was by far the most popular language. One could often see skypecasts with titles such as “Let’s practice English”, and “Improve your English”. As a counter measure to keep learners out, it was not uncommon to find skypecasts with subtitles “Fluent English only please”.

Sadly, due to the virtually non-existence of any king of moderation, the service was very much abused by its users. There were people hanging around trying to harassing other users. Personally, I think it is better for Skypecast to go than stay.

Skype already has another service in place, a public chatroom service which provides better moderation. In addition, Skype provides another paid service called Skype Prime, and it is still in Beta. (what is not?)

At a first glance, Skype Prime looks like a good tool to hook up language tutors and students. As mentioned in my previous post, I support the business model in which tutors would charge their students and let the middle men take some commission. However, when I check out how much commission Skype is charging … 30%! Why would anyone want to use a service that charges a 30% commission?

Of course, tutors are smart enough to let the students to absorb the commission overhead. I quickly browsed through the “Language lessons and Translations” section, and I found “advisors” charging for fees as mush as $2 per minute.

If I were a serious student, I would poke around some language forums and look for a tutor. If I were a tutor, I would do the same to look for potential students.

Today, I received 3 separate e-mails from ChinesePod, SpanishPod, and FrenchPod, all delivering the same announcement. Currently, everybody can have access to all their lessons. Starting from next month, people with free-membership will have access to newbie lessons only.

This change does not really affect me much, for I have decided to go “natural” a few months ago and quited listening to learner’s materials such as language lessons. But then I would expect in the next few days, the Praxis servers will be bombarded by people trying to get their last “free lunches”.

When I look at the language learning market, it always amazes me how people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for language books, tools, and classes, but they expect everything free from the Internet. One thing I have found from the online language learning communities in the past year-or-so is that, free stuff has no good quality. Contents or services that are of good quality that are free are either being paid for by someone else already, or they are going out of business very soon.

A particular “free lunch” mentality spreading across the online language learning communities is the concept of “free tutoring” services. All free online language exchange communities are for you to practice what you have learned, not to be tutored. You may fire up conversations with many native speakers, but don’t expect them to be committed in tutoring you all along your language learning journey.

I recently came into contact with eduFire, an online paid service which hooks up language learners with native-speaking tutors. The tutors would decide the tuition fees, the learners would choose his/her tutors, and eduFire would take a small portion of the fees for its service. While I cannot guarantee the success of this business, I believe it has a healthy business model to last.

I have been impressed by the quality of the Praxis production since the early days of ChinesePod. Her later sister “Pods” only continue to raise the bar even higher. I think they have all the right to start charging users. After all, it starts from $5 US a month!

Incidentally, I read from the LingQ forum another day, that someone complained about the inconvenience with his a free-membership limitations. Come on, the basic membership only costs $10 US per month! He complained that he could not afford it. Well then, I had nothing to say.

There is no need to grumble when the free lunch is gone. In the end, I think it all comes down to a single question: Does the service actually worth it?