I really should put more of an effort in this
8 months ago
I’m around a lot of Cantonese people all the freaking time and have picked up all manner of expressions but the whole tonal language thing is just incredibly hard. Proper tone in pronunciation is alien to me – I’m used using it for emphasis. In Cantonese (and other Chinese dialects) tone is used to shift the whole meaning of the word.
On the other hand, the grammar is fantastically easy making this language the opposite of Russian in terms of learning ;)
I’m also still a little torn over Cantonese vs. Mandarin – it does seem that Mandarin would be more useful in interaction beyond Hong Kong.
