Pimsleur Cantonese Chinese - 5 Audio CDs
Brand New : . 5 CDs
This Basic program contains 5 hours of audio-only, effective language learning with real-life spoken practice sessions.
HEAR IT, LEARN IT, SPEAK IT
The pimsleur foreign language education technique is a language learning manner designed by Dr Paul Pimsleur. The system is structured on four main ideas : anticipation, graduated time memory, central vocabulary, with organic learning. The Pimsleur system is an audio-based method, in which the listener builds sentences or repeats from memory along with a recording. Language programs usually entail a student to say again after an instructor, which Pimsleur argued was a passive means of remembering. Dr pimsleur developed a "problem and comeback" system, where a student was prompted to transform a saying into the target language, which was then established. This method makes a more active way of learning, requiring the learner to reason before replying. Pimsleur said the tenet of anticipation mirrored real-life speech in which a speaker must bring to mind a saying quickly.
The Dr paul pimsleur technique focuses on teaching generally used words in order to lead to a inclusive appreciation of a "central vocabulary". However, word-frequency text analyses point to that a comparatively small fundamental vocabulary accounts for the best part of words spoken in a particular language. For instance, in English, a set of 2000 words composes about 80% of the whole printed words. Thus, an appreciation of these 2000 words would cause around an 80% word comprehension rate.
About Cantonese Chinese
Standard Cantonese is a variant of Cantonese (Yue) Chinese . Historically, Cantonese was the most common form of Chinese spoken by overseas Chinese communities in the Western world, although that situation has changed with the increasing importance of Mandarin in the Chinese-speaking world as well as immigration to the West from other countries as well as other parts of China.It is spoken natively in and around the cities of Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau in Southern China. Standard Cantonese is the de facto official Chinese spoken language of Hong Kong and Macau, and a lingua franca of Guangdong province and some neighbouring areas. It is also spoken by many overseas Chinese of Guangdong, Hong Kong or Macau origin in Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, United States, Australia, Europe and elsewhere.
"Readings in Cantonese colloquial: being selections from books in the Cantonese vernacular with free and literal translations of the Chinese character and romanized spelling" (1894) by James Dyer Ball has a bibliography of works available in Cantonese characters in the last decade of the nineteenth century. A few libraries have collections of so-called "wooden fish books" written in Cantonese character. Facsimiles and plot precis of a few of these have been published in Wolfram Eberhard's "Cantonese Ballads." See also "Cantonese love-songs, translated with introduction and notes by Cecil Clementi" (1904) or a newer translation of these Yue Ou in "Cantonese love songs : an English translation of Jiu Ji-yung's Cantonese songs of the early 19th century" (1992). Cantonese character versions of the Bible, Pilgrims Progress, and Peep of Day as well as simple catechisms were published by mission presses. The special Cantonese characters used in all these was not standardized and shows wide variation.
Cantonese is usually referred to as a spoken dialect, and not as a written dialect. Spoken vernacular Cantonese differs from modern written Chinese, which is essentially formal Standard Mandarin in written form. Written Cantonese is largely incomprehensible to non-Cantonese speakers because written Cantonese is based on spoken Cantonese which is different from Standard Mandarin in grammar and vocabulary.Written Chinese spoken word for word sounds overly formal and distant in Cantonese. As a result, the necessity of having a written script which matched the spoken form increased over time. This resulted in the creation of additional Chinese characters to complement the existing characters. Many of these represent phonological sounds not present in Mandarin. A good source for well documented Cantonese words can be found in drama and opera (大戲 daai hei) scripts.
With the advent of the computer and standardization of character sets specifically for Cantonese, many printed materials in predominantly Cantonese speaking areas of the world are written to cater to their population with these written Cantonese characters. As a result, mainstream media such as newspapers and magazines have become progressively less conservative and more colloquial in their dissemination of ideas. Generally speaking, some of the older generation of Cantonese speakers regard this trend as a step "backwards" and away from tradition. This tension between the "old" and "new" is a reflection of a transition that is being undergone by the Cantonese speaking population. |
