Pimsleur Conversational Cantonese Chinese - 8 Audio CDs
8 CD's - Brand New
Includes a free CD case
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 Method provides the most effective language-learning
program ever developed. The Pimsleur Method gives you quick command of
Cantonese structure without tedious drills. Learning to speak Cantonese
can actually be enjoyable and rewarding.
The key reason most people struggle with new languages is that they
aren't given proper instruction, only bits and pieces of a language.
Other language programs sell only pieces -- dictionaries; grammar books
and instructions; lists of hundreds or thousands of words and
definitions; audios containing useless drills. They leave it to you to
assemble these pieces as you try to speak. Pimsleur enables you to
spend your time learning to speak the language rather than just
studying its parts.
When you were learning English, could you speak before you knew how to
conjugate verbs? Of course you could. That same learning process is
what Pimsleur replicates. Pimsleur presents the whole language as one
integrated piece so you can succeed.
With Pimsleur you get:
* Grammar and vocabulary taught together in everyday conversation,
* Interactive audio-only instruction that teaches spoken language organically,
* The flexibility to learn anytime, anywhere,
* 30-minute lessons designed to optimize the amount of language you can learn in one sitting.
Millions of people have used Pimsleur to gain real conversational
skills in new languages quickly and easily, wherever and whenever --
without textbooks, written exercises, or drills.
Dr. Pimsleur
Dr. Pimsleur was a language educator for over 20 years. He noticed that children have an amazing ability to learn new languages--quickly. That's why there are so many bilingual 5-year olds. Dr. Pimsleur spent his life developing this course to let you, as an adult, learn French as easily as a child would. You might not realize it, but you've already learned one language using the Pimsleur approach. Your first language!
About the Pimsleur Method
The entire Pimsleur approach is what language learning should be: quick, fun, and easy! Many foreign language students have difficulty learning. Their textbooks teach monotonous drills, grammar rules, and random lists of words. But textbooks alone can never bring it all together.
Your only real goal in taking any Cantonese Chinese course is to speak Cantonese Chinese naturally with others.
Dr. Pimsleur designed each lesson as the foundation for the next. In other words, you'll keep building on what you've previously learned. Best of all, the Pimsleur Cantonese Chinese course does not waste your time by cramming grammar down your throat. You learn to recognize what sounds right through practice. The Pimsleur approach's subtle grammar lessons won't seem like grammar lessons at all.
About Cantonese Chinese
Standard Cantonese is a variant of Cantonese (Yue) Chinese . 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. 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.
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 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 (daai hei) scripts. 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.
"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.
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.
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