Popular or Official?

TweetWe often choose a language to learn based on its usefulness. But how can we actually measure it? Last week, I was involved in a rather fierce discussion in a language forum. Someone was planning to move to Toronto and wanted to learn some Chinese. He was wondering which language he should pick, Mandarin or [...]

How Babies Learn Tones

TweetIf babies are not afraid of learning tonal languages, why should we? How do babies learn tonal languages? Obviously, they don’t learn from a list of possible tones, associate each word with one, and then try to memorize everything. Babies learn by echoing what they hear. They imitate what is said to them, both the [...]

Feeling Embarrassed to Speak

TweetIn a thread from a Cantonese Learner’s forum posted a few days ago, several learners expressed their fears and frustrations when attempting to practice their learning language in public. Here are some excerpts: “If … there is a big line behind me … I feel paranoid that people behind me are getting angry.” “I once [...]

Getting the Cantonese ‘z’ Sound Right

TweetThere has been a discussion in a Cantonese learner’s forum about the pronunciation of the Cantonese Jyutping ‘z’ sound. There is indeed an obvious difference between this sound and the English ‘j’ sound. To complicate things a bit more, there is yet another sound which kind of sits between the 2 sounds. This is the [...]

Indian Kid Learning Cantonese

TweetMy wife told me an incident last night. She has a 2.5 year-old kid in her daycare, whose father is from India, and mother from Singapore. He has been with my wife for about half a year, and my wife has been teaching him simple Cantonese words. Yesterday, the kid’s father told my wife that [...]

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