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Learning chinese with quality websites?

de D46J0L72, 29 de mayo de 2007

Aportes: 11

Idioma: English

D46J0L72 (Mostrar perfil) 29 de mayo de 2007 21:33:58

Hi. I'm very impressed with this site for learning the language of Esperanto. The quality and effectiveness is very impressive.
I am looking to learn Chinese, the cantonese "dialect," but have not been able to find a site of such quality of lernu.net.
Do any of you happen to know of any sites for Cantonese that offers a quality near that of lernu.net?

Thanks. =D

Francisly (Mostrar perfil) 30 de mayo de 2007 12:32:48

D46J0L72:Hi. I'm very impressed with this site for learning the language of Esperanto. The quality and effectiveness is very impressive.
I am looking to learn Chinese, the cantonese "dialect," but have not been able to find a site of such quality of lernu.net.
Do any of you happen to know of any sites for Cantonese that offers a quality near that of lernu.net?

Thanks. =D
perhaps you can raise your problems here if you have any
im from hk and i speak pure cantonese(hopefully lol)

erinja (Mostrar perfil) 30 de mayo de 2007 14:20:38

I don't know much about Chinese-learning websites; I was looking for a good Mandarin site a while back and didn't find much.

It is hard to find good free language-learning websites. I don't know much about paid websites, since I have never subscribed to one. I have not found a free learning website for any language - not just Cantonese - that was as extensive as lernu.net, at least not for any of the languages I have ever studied.

I am not really sure why, come to think of it. I would think that many countries would be interested in encouraging people to learn their language, and a well-designed free website would be a great way to do it. The cost of a website like lernu.net is small in comparison to a nation's budget. lernu.net relies very heavily on volunteers, but I think that even if all of the work was paid, the money required would still be tiny in comparison to a national budget.

According to the original work plan, lernu.net is nearly complete. I don't know if very much more will be added, at least not according to current plans. There is talk of where to go next with the project. Some suggestions have been made regarding "exporting" the model - creating versions of lernu for teaching other languages, using similar courses and formats, though still less extensive than our Esperanto version. I don't know if it will ever come to fruition; it is still in the very early stages of discussion. Chinese has not been discussed, however (Mandarin or Cantonese).

richardhall (Mostrar perfil) 30 de mayo de 2007 14:57:54

erinja:I have not found a free learning website for any language - not just Cantonese - that was as extensive as lernu.net, at least not for any of the languages I have ever studied.
BBC Wales have some good resources for learning Welsh. I believe there's at least one American now studying Welsh at Cardiff University who began his journey into Welsh that way.

erinja (Mostrar perfil) 30 de mayo de 2007 16:33:39

richardhall:
BBC Wales have some good resources for learning Welsh. I believe there's at least one American now studying Welsh at Cardiff University who began his journey into Welsh that way.
That's true, they do have some good stuff. But I got the impression that much of their content teaches vocabulary and phrases rather than grammar. They do have different courses involving grammar rather than phrases/vocab but they tend to be mostly audio courses. I wish they had something in a more "traditional" format - a grammar lesson and then exercises. Something like Ana Pana, but for Welsh. I do like their dictionary and mutation checker.

mnlg (Mostrar perfil) 30 de mayo de 2007 16:35:17

erinja:It is hard to find good free language-learning websites. [...] I am not really sure why, come to think of it.
As long as you can get a substantial business advantage by learning a language, it's extremely unlikely to find high quality services to learn it free of charge.

Free learning material is more common for "minor" languages, as an attempt to increase the "user base" and achieve some sort of critical mass of speakers or recognition.

Of course when you have fewer speakers, you also have fewer teachers, less material, fewer techniques or methods, etc. It is therefore more difficult in general to offer a rich resource for learning the language.

Esperanto tips the balance by being relatively simpler to learn; also, almost all Esperanto speakers learn it as a second language, and I suspect that this can help them acquire a slight advantage in case they are interested enough to become teachers themselves, as opposed to a language whose speakers are mostly native, and therefore not necessarily aware of its workings.

awake (Mostrar perfil) 30 de mayo de 2007 20:09:21

There are a lot of nice resources online for learning all kinds of languages, including mandarin and cantonese.

Here's an excellent one:
It's not a lernu-like site, but it's a great resource

http://fsi-language-courses.com

These have Complete (for many languages...others are still being scanned and uploaded) copies of the FSI (Foreign Service Institute) language courses. These were courses developed by the U.S. department of state to train diplomatic personnel. They're dry, and boring, but if you can stick with them most of them are very good. Both the complete mandarin and cantonese courses are available there.

These are the same courses sold by Barrons (Barron's ads some cultural notes an music and such so they can copyright their product as a "derived work" - but the course content is the same).

Kwekubo (Mostrar perfil) 30 de mayo de 2007 23:49:04

Have you tried a library? I've found audio courses like Linguaphone and Pimsleur are very good for learning how to speak languages, and I presume that's what you'd be starting with if you're learning Cantonese from the bottom up. I have it on my to-do list to go through my local library's full set of Pimsleur Mandarin CDs during the summer.

erinja (Mostrar perfil) 31 de mayo de 2007 03:11:10

The library is a great suggestion.

A small addendum - even if your local library has a limited selection, many libraries are willing to transfer materials between them, so if the materials of interest are available at another branch, sometimes you can get them to deliver it to your local branch for easy pick-up.

Senlando (Mostrar perfil) 31 de mayo de 2007 21:20:37

one language i'v been really struggling to find learning materials for, is Taiwanese (a branch of the Minnan language). does anyone now of any language sites that teach Taiwanese?

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