At any rate, I think you and I are cut from the same cloth. I’m currently living in HK and am learning Canto since “you will never learn it; too hard”, blah, blah, blah.

If there are any Canto resources that you can share, I’d be greatful.

Keep up the awesome work.
Jonathan

Kyoko:
http://nextupdownloads.com/scansamples/Kyoko.mp3

I was considering:
date: 日付
input: インプット活動
notes: 注釈
break: 休日

but
countdown: not sure what word to use
reading: not sure what form to put it in, if I want it to be a noun.
and the other words as well.
media, add [cards], other, need help for those too.

any help in translating those words for my chart would be much appreciated.

I’ve stumbled across your site and I’ve been applying it to my learning Cantonese :] I never really liked learning it much, cause all the stuff was reaaal boring: “你好嗎” “我好好。你呢？” 你呢” Stuff like that aha. I like your concept of “learn stuff you enjoy” because, in the end, im probably gonna be talking more about stuff I want to talk about than “Good day to you Mr. Wong. It is very sunny today. And how is your wife?” yaddayaddayadda. But what I really want to know is how long did it take you before you became really proficient at hearing and distinguishing/ speaking the tones? I’m having reaaal problems with the low-falling tone…
Thanks :]

I also love your victory calendar. I don’t know if anyone else has asked you this, but would you ever consider posting it for download here? I started making my own, but adding all the days and such for 180 weeks looked daunting. (I’m due for a contribution to your tip jar, but I’d be happy to throw in a little extra for the doc, too.)

The image hack is also, yeah, the best way to learn nouns and such that I can just about almost get, but not quite just by the definition. Words like 衛星 and 頭蓋 are really easy to grasp with an image staring you in the face.

So, yes, I think it very much so is worth doing with Japanese as well. I convert my failed cards into these along with the long ones when I break them up.

i’d like to work on building a nice deck of chengyu (idioms) and regular sentences, etc. ideas?

Haha.
Short answer: wait till next year to find out
Long answer: There is no “proven old method” per se…what I mean is, that old method was just one of a series of iterations . This is another, better suited to the situation at hand (Japanese can be accurately pronounced from kana, Cantonese does not use such a system), and I think better overall; it wasn’t change on a whim, but in response to a need.

I certainly find this new iteration more engaging, and challenging in a good way, I mean, YOU try producing kanji from memory given only an audio cue . Haha, in fact, the best thing is to try it for yourself and see your results. I’m very pleased with mine, and of course I wouldn’t post it here if I hadn’t subjected it to some thought and experimentation and seen the results.

Again, remember the situation:
I read Japanese.
I read Mandarin.
Standard Written Mandarin/SWM and Standard Written Cantonese/SWC (yay! more TLAs!) are visually identical.

I’m mapping three different languages to the same single kanji.
All of these languages sound completely different but two of them are visually identical in their standard written forms. So there was significant internal pressure/bias/habit in and on me to vocalize SWC as SWM. Also, without a usable phonetic representation system, I felt like there was no good way for me to reliably *produce* Cantonese sounds *before*/without hearing them. In that sense TTS hits several clay pigeons with one shell —
(1)
(a) I practice writing characters from memory and with only a sound cue
(b) I make stronger character-to-sound relationships (earlier) than ever before, especially character-compound-to-sound
(2) I overcome the bias to vocalize written Chinese in Mandarin;
(3) I become familiar with the sounds of Cantonese i.e. it’s better for my pronunciation, since I’m always having a “native-level-user” “read” to me and of course
(4) I naturally develop the ability to vocalize written Chinese in Cantonese (I imagine this is the part that worries you most: “if it’s being read to you, will you be able to read it yourself?”), the answer is: yes, after a few reps. Also,
(5) I prevent over-dependence on visuals for comprehending Cantonese, a roundabout way of saying “I improve my listening comprehension and writing comprehension at the same time”. Working without sound tends to strengthen the writing without directly strengthening the listening…my ability to read Chinese was almost embarrassingly better than my ability to comprehend it spoken…of course more listening can help fix this, but, why not hit 5 clay pigeons with one shell? Much better than “visually learning” the text of a word, and then almost separately “aurally learning” its pronunciation.

You know me, reineke, it’s Khatzumoto! Ah paid ja befo’! Sign the treaty!

Yeah, but basically…wait around or try it.