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.

Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan caught the attention of the international media back in 2006, when he accepted the flag at the closing ceremonies of the Turin Winter Olympics. He is Canada’s first disabled mayor and also the first quadriplegic mayor of a North American city.

The mayor was paralysed after a tragic skiing accident when he was 19. Apart from many other achievements in life, he is also well-known for his linguistic ability. The Tourism Vancouver website contains some multilingual video messages from Mayor Sullivan speaking English, French, Punjabi, Cantonese, Mandarin, and French.

The major does not like to be confined in a wheelchair either. Here is him going hiking:

[googlevideo=http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=1567733309606421135]

In the following video clip posted only recently, the mayor shared his thoughts in Cantonese on a legendary Hong Kong actress, a resident of Vancouver, who passed away a few week ago. I was touched when I saw the disabled major, who can barely use of his feet and hands, signing his name in traditional Chinese.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYJTTfrnTRw]

Transcript and translation of the clip are available here.

Today, I have accidentally discovered an innovative way to practice conversations. This approach has the following advantages:

1. It is free
2. It is purposeful (you don’t carry out a conversation just for the sake of carrying out a conversation)
3. There is potentially unlimited number of topics to talk about
4. You can converse with different partners all the time
5. The other party is always interested in talking to you
6. There is no need to actively seek out for partners. They will come to you.

A few days ago, I tried to post an classified ad online. I posted my ads on some popular classifieds websites such as the Craig’s List and Kijiji. Then I thought it might be a good idea to target some specific communities. So yesterday I tried 51.ca, probably the most popular one for the Canadian Mandarin-speaking communities. I always avoid revealing my personal information except my email address. But this one, unlike the others, made the contact phone number a mandatory field. So I put in my mobile phone number, thinking that nothing bad could happen.

To my surprise, I received 2 cold calls this morning, one from an air-duct cleaner and the other from a banker. They started right off in Mandarin. Apparently, they got my number from the Mandarin classifieds website. Where else?! Unfortunately, I had to cut short the conversations because I was at work. Otherwise, I would be more than happy to practice my Mandarin with them.

After this experience, I was thinking if I could develop a systematic way to set-up and engage in conversational practices using this channel. Here are some points I have in mind:

• Find some decent classifieds websites for a specific language community
• Post an ad or reply to one
• For local communities, try to find some bargains or sell your junks
• For international communities, look for outsourceable services such as translation and proof-reading
• Insist on contact by phone only
• Use Skype In/Out if international calls are required

Of course, this approach only works provided you can communicate in the target language in some sense, though you can still be far from fluent. Somehow when we talk business, we can usually communicate more than words can express.

After more than a year of waiting, the data finally came out last week. Statistics Canada released the language-related statistics of the 2006 census.

Here are the top 20 languages “spoken most often at home” in Toronto, my home town, and their corresponding head-counts and percentages:

1. English - 2746480 (55.31%)
2. Italian - 185760 (3.74%)
3. Chinese, n.o.s. - 172040 (3.46%)
4. Cantonese - 166655 (3.36%)
5. Panjabi (Punjabi) - 132745 (2.67%)
6. Spanish - 108380 (2.18%)
7. Portuguese - 108185 (2.18%)
8. Tagalog (Pilipino, Filipino) - 100420 (2.02%)
9. Urdu - 98575 (1.99%)
10. Tamil - 93590 (1.88%)
11. Polish - 80090 (1.61%)
12. Russian - 65210 (1.31%)
13. Persian (Farsi) - 63975 (1.29%)
14. Mandarin - 62850 (1.27%)
15. French - 58590 (1.18%)
16. Arabic - 56155 (1.13%)
17. Gujarati - 54160 (1.09%)
18. Korean - 47750 (0.96%)
19. Greek - 46305 (0.93%)
20. Vietnamese - 45325 (0.91%)

Here is an interesting point about the Chinese-speakers. The “Chinese n.o.s.” category includes responses of ‘Chinese’ as well as all Chinese languages other than Cantonese, Mandarin, Taiwanese, Chaochow (Teochow), Fukien, Hakka and Shanghainese. This number just too big for the minor Chinese dialect speakers. Therefore, we would expect most people in this category probably speak a major dialect. Somehow they just put down “Chinese” instead of the specific dialect in the census.

Who would do this? My speculation is that those who can speak Mandarin together with another dialect would have a tendency to do so. On the other hand, those who can speak only one Chinese dialect would more likely put down the dialect instead of ‘Chinese’.

If my speculation is correct, then there are in fact many more people who speak Mandarin than what is shown in the data.

No matter what, if we add up all the people in the ‘Chinese n.o.s.’ category together with those in the Cantonese and Mandarin categories, they make up about 8% of the Toronto population. This is about 1 in 12 Torontonians. This is quite a significant portion, considered only 6 out of those 12 speaks English as their mother-tongue.

The Australians voted for a new prime minister this past Saturday. Kevin Rudd will become the 26th Prime Minister of Australia in about 2-weeks time. I don’t know much about the Australian politics, but one thing Mr. Rudd has caught my attention (and probably of many others too) is his fluency in Mandarin.

Of course, the Australians voted for him not simply because he can speak Mandarin. But no doubt, it has become one great advantage for him in the time when countries around the world want to improve their relationships with China.

This YouTube video shows Mr. Rudd interviewed by the Chinese State TV Station just before the election. His Mandarin is absolutely impressive. The Chinese host tried to switch back to English during the interview a few times, but Mr. Rudd insisted to keep speaking in Mandarin.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN42pk7eozk]

Mr. Rudd mentioned how he worked hard on his Mandarin while at the university. Once again, this testimony refutes the theory of “minimal effort language acquisition“.

I have noticed my Mandarin has deteriorated in the past few months. I was too concentrated on my French. Some of my Mandarin-speaking colleagues had their contracts terminated recently, and I did not bother to find other colleagues to speak Mandarin. About 2 weeks ago, I came across a Mandarin-speaking parent while picking up my daughter from school. When I tried to speak Mandarin with her, my tongue was just tided up.

After watching the video, I feel ashamed of being a Chinese but yet can’t speak Mandarin as good as a non-Chinese. It is certainly a good reminder for me to work hard on my Mandarin again. I am going to refill my iPod with more Mandarin stuff now. Thanks, Mr Prime Minister, for your inspiration.