sanyiang

[sanyiang]

Good start! Already I'm starting to see patterns where some radicals are used in different places. Like how steam has the grass radical on top, maybe indicating a lid on a pot, and how good is made up of woman and child, and how flower has a person in it, maybe because they stand upright like a person

(this is absolutely just how I, personally, am going to try and remember them and might not have anything to do with how they were actually linguistically written down)

I have 18 here on this page, so I think the next few pages will be writing practice with them, trying to memorize them, just generally getting familiar. The video recommended doing all 55 in a week, but aha, that probably won't happen. I'll do my best with these 18 and see where we go from there.

The writing will be done while verbally speaking the word and the english translation, so I can hopefully drill them into my brain

[sanyiang]

Long time no post (whoops) but I found this! It's for Mandarin, but I think I can modify the beginning stuff especially to help me learn Taishanese. (The later stuff suggests adding tv shows and podcasts with more and more advanced language to your daily life, which is difficult when Taishanese has no movies and tv shows and few youtube videos or podcasts (yes I know I could add Cantonese which has lots of movies and shows but I'm not learning Cantonese yet))

I've taken my notes, now I just need to start making myself a plan of action. In the video, she suggests using Week 1 to get familiar with the tones, which I'm pretty familiar with in my general floundering already, but I could use a refresher

More to the point though, she recommends learning the 55 most common radicals in Week 2, so I'm going to google a list of those, write them all down, translate the pinyin to penyim, and then continue writing them all down until they're familiar. Here is a list with the 35 most common, which I will be using

I've got a notebook I'm not using and a bunch of pens, so let's get going

[sanyiang]

Why... why do I have followers here...?

Are you sure you followed the right blog?

Well, in case any of you are interested in learning taishanese/toisanwa/hoisanva, here's the link to the discord server

[sanyiang]

I HAVE OBTAINED PRONOUNCIATIONS

Mostly I was concerned about the presence of lh in my family's toisan, because in the limited amount I've heard, I don't recall hearing lh. And it's distinctive!

But sure enough, got my aunt to count to 10 and there is was, right on 3 and 4. The sexy sexy lh

Plus confirmation that 2 is ngi and not ngei. That one I have heard a lot, but nice to be sure

Tomorrow I take my flashcards to school so I can work on making some language help

[sanyiang]

Next week

Next week I am going to Auntie's

I have told her about the books I have

And I have told her that I want to chat with her about it and get out specific family pronunciations from her

No chickening out now

This time it's for realsies

[sanyiang]

Oh fuck, if I'm going to be throwing around resources I should probably toss up a link

All of my resources were obtained from the Taishanese/Sze Yap server on discord, which is filled with several language nerds, lots of fluent and heritage speakers, my illiterate ass, and many lovely people. Highly recommend

Join uuusssssss

[sanyiang]

I am very bad at keeping a language blog I am learning. Oh well, habits aren't formed in a day

About a month ago I got a copy of Jade Wu's Learn to Speak Taishanese 1, which is very exciting! Unfortunately for me, her tone system doesn't make sense to me? It's fine, there's nothing wrong with it, and someone used to speaking Cantonese or Mandarin would likely have no issue with it. It just isn't as intuitive to me as the tone system I'm used to

So I spent most of this month rewriting the entire book, converting the tones

So that's where I'm at currently. I spent fifteen minutes this evening going through the first lesson, mostly just practicing getting consistent with tones

I'm going to be spending a few weekends this summer at my aunt and uncle's (Uncle is teaching me to drive), so I'll try and work up the courage to ask Auntie (ngei32 yi21) about specific pronunciation things. Do we use lh and ng? Do we use ei or i?

I can maybe (?) answer one or two of these? I remember my middle Auntie (lham33 yi21) calling my oldest Auntie (ngei32 yi21) "nei die die" (and my mom "yi die die" but that's not one of the questions), so we might use n instead of ng and ei, but I'm still going to ask, because it's better to be sure. Especially since I don't know if we use lh at all

But that's more for later. I did good tonight. Tomorrow I'll bring some blank flashcards with me and make some up. Word in taishanese on one side, english on the other

[sanyiang]

Lesson 4: I would like to eat some food

Lesson 5: Alright. Now we get to the numbers

Really appreciating how the lessons are organized

Lesson 1: how to introduce yourself. Excellent, very important, you have to know how to say hello to people

Lesson 2: Chinese New Year. The most important holiday of the year, at least in my experience as third gen, the holiday when the family all gets together and you can impress them with your pronunciation

Lesson 3: No thank you A-Po, I'm very full and don't want to eat any more food. Yes really. Yes really

Truly the most important things first

[sanyiang]

Really appreciating how the lessons are organized

Lesson 1: how to introduce yourself. Excellent, very important, you have to know how to say hello to people

Lesson 2: Chinese New Year. The most important holiday of the year, at least in my experience as third gen, the holiday when the family all gets together and you can impress them with your pronunciation

Lesson 3: No thank you A-Po, I'm very full and don't want to eat any more food. Yes really. Yes really

Truly the most important things first

[sanyiang]

Day two of language learning and I have already failed my goal

[sanyiang]

I changed it on my computer and that did indeed make it stick but I don't remember what the original title was so now it's spite

Also I have put a blog title and description on this three times now!! Why does it keep vanishing!?!

[sanyiang]

Most used/correct translation of nei33 hao55: Hello

Literal translation of nei33 hao55: You good?

[sanyiang]

It's summer and you know what that means! I finally have a braincell to spare for language learning!

I'm going to go slow I think. Well, relatively slow. I want what I learn to stick in there forever. The resource I'm using for now is Inspirlang's Learn Taishanese Daily. I'll do three lessons, every two days for now

I learned a brain hack thingy where if you review a thing you learned 1, 3 and then 6 days after you learned it, it'll stick in your brain better. And then reviewing the day before an exam ie: the next family gathering. So here's hoping that works, otherwise it'll be a long learning process

The way Inspirlang romanizes the tones is a bit different from what I'm familiar with, so I'm just going to rewrite the lessons in my notes with the tones I know. This doesn't always work (one lesson has la3 as an ending particle, which should be la32, based on all the other things the 3 tone is, but it's actually la55) but I'm sure I'll figure it out

Today was the first three lessons. Greetings, New Year (a useful thing for me to learn in April, two months after New Year) and a few hunger words. It is very important to be able to tell your aunts that you are, in fact, full and will not be needing any more food. And then being prepared to eat more anyways

I am still having massive trouble with tones. Like, going from a 55 tone to a 32 tone is tough, or even just pronouncing a 325 tone. But I am also a level 1 toisan speaker, so I just have to keep practicing. It'll get easier. Going slowly and then speeding up helps

[sanyiang]

The problem (I say like there's only the one, but this is the one plaguing me rn) is that there's a lot of variation in toisan for pronunciations and things. So a word like you can be pronounced like ni33 or like nei33. Which is fine, this is how languages grow and change and live, but it's also making it really difficult for me personally cause I don't know if my family uses lh as a consonant or not and if not then what we use as instead

Basically, it's making my life very slightly difficult

I really need to go talk to my aunt about this

[sanyiang]

Pronouns! I may have forgotten this blog existed because I got busy but here we go

So one thing I love about toisan is that he/she/they singular pronouns are all the same. You get one (1) third person singular pronoun and that's it. All genders, no genders, doesn't matter, you're all kui33

Anyways, pronouns are as follows

I/me - ngoi33

You (s) - nei33 or ni33 depending on pronunciation

He/she/they (s) - kui33

We - ngoi21

You (p) - niak21

They (p) - kiak21

[sanyiang]

Fucks sake

Also I have put a blog title and description on this three times now!! Why does it keep vanishing!?!

[sanyiang]

Also I have put a blog title and description on this three times now!! Why does it keep vanishing!?!