I enjoyed our discussion, Jessie. You did a wonderful job editing and providing sub-titles. I apologize for the grainy quality of my end of the discussion. I didn't realize we were going to make separate recordings and merge them. I can do better next time. Your bright enthusiasm is contagious and no doubt helps your followers in learning Chinese. Good luck to you and to the learners that follow you.
Grainy quality? Never noticed! Mr Kaufmann, what a great interview. Thanks! It's listening to advice that is important. I think this is one of the best (Mandarin) interviews you have done. So much information in 20 mins. Great questions from Jessie laoshi, and great answers. You didn't have the availability online teachers when you first learned. But now, there are so many good learning channels, and we have access to different types of films. Now we can choose to look at hundreds/thousands of different channels for different learning experience. Jessie is an absolutely great channel. (everyone in the language learning groups, all follow all the same people, and I don't know anyone who doesn't follow her!). Thanks to both of you, and wishing you a happy and healthy new year!
I have no idea how Steve can maintain Cantonese. I lived 13 years in Hong Kong and speak fluent Cantonese. I also live now in Ukraine and speak fluent Russian. But lived 5 years in Ukraine. I watch TVB once a month for a day to keep my Cantonese. I went for about 8 months without speaking it and it went semi broken when I tried to speak it again. So even after speaking Cantonese for 13 years all day everyday, I still lost 50% fluency in around 1 year of no usage. And returned back after a few days of binge watching TVB.
I thought it was a wonderful interview. I've been studying Mandarin informally for about 3 years...I am only now feeling a little comfortable with it. My hardest thing is I have no one to speak with as I live in a smaller city in the USA,
my mother tongue is cantonese and all I can say is Steve really did well speaking cantonese, it is super easy to understand without subtitles, most words and sentence pattern match what we say in daily life, what a mad lad
He is very understandable in Cantonese and uses the correct slangs. And what is most amazing to me is the accent on his Cantonese is of a Mandarin-speaker not English! That goes to show how good his Mandarin is
One of the most impressive thing about Steve is that he is able to capture the flow of a sentence incredibly well. He has mastered the syntax and flow of a sentence, so even if he isn’t getting the pronunciation 100%, native speakers can understand him perfectly. I think this is the most important thing in learning languages, the right ebb and flow of sentences! Bravo!
I have much respect for Steve. He’s definitely a language genius who speaks many languages fluently. He’s a role model for many of us to look up to. He’s a man of humility, curiosity and perseverance
Without a doubt, Steve's skills are amazing. Let's also recognize how amazing Jessie's skills are too. She started her RUclips channel only a couple of years ago. While she did well right "out of the gate", I'm amazed at how rapidly she has grown from producing just "fun little videos" to producing truly professional interviews and other sophisticated content, all the while maintaining her totally charming persona. Thumbs up to both of these amazing people. 👍✊💪
i shouldn't be surprised but i really appreciate how steve explains how elements of a language aren't difficult or easy, but difficult and easy to him and people from similar backgrounds
It was a very long time ago that I started to learn Cantonese, in Hong Kong. I had a very difficult time with the tones, until I started thinking in Chinese, instead of translating from English to Chinese in my head.
@@sweiland75 you simply recognize the patterns, and accept how the language works. Once you build enough vocabulary, you’ll begin to think in that language instead of trying to translate it back to your native tongue. At least that’s how it was for me.
My baby language was Cantonese but My everyday is English. I am having a hard time to learn Pinyin. Why Pinyin?, my grandchildren speaks fluently Pinyin and learned from their mother. Is there a easier way to learn Pinyin? I grew up in Vancouver. Thank you.
@@joewong438 I was never exposed to Pinyin, so I am not sure how to answer. For me, it was mental visualization, like when you were a child. Maybe??? have more conversations with your grandchildren????? Sorry.
I remember Steve many years ago speaking better Cantonese than me. Then I lived 13 years in Hong Kong and realise my Cantonese is super fluent and not bad at all. Didn't even realise it until I heard Steve again. It makes a big difference to live in the country.
I do admire him for being willing to go into situations like this and speak. I have better Cantonese (and maybe Mandarin) but I would be terrified to do this.
@@nendoakuma7451 I don't know if you speak over 20 languages. But it is definitely impressive to be at that level of fluency while knowing that many languages. I think by comparing yourself to him you're embarrassing yourself a little bit lol. I'm only fluent at 4 and my level at my 5th language is a bit better than his cantonese but I still wouldn't even dare to be as confident as you are when you're comparing yourself to someone you're that far from in terms of linguistic capacities 😅.
@@ho-ry5uf I don't know what you're going on about. You think I don't have the right to say I think that I'm better in him in two of languages or that one of his languages has declined? I'm not sure why you're so offended by this. I was just reacting to somebody else's observation about his Cantonese and you make personal attacks.
We need more people like Jessie and Steve. There will be more understanding and less conflict if people have a similar mindset, to learn about other cultures and languages.
Also he just KNOWS how to learn languages scientifically. Chinese phonetics is highly fixed compared with alphabetic languages. Be familiar with the sounds first is much easier
The advice about languages being how they are and accepting that helps a lot because it allows you to freely think in your target language, regardless as to what that language is. As a native speaker of a language, you can take a very literal translation of something and reorder it as necessary to fit the grammar of your own language if you need to provide a translation, but otherwise maintain the correct phrasing without applying your native understanding of language to that phrase.
learn vocabulary actively but grammar passively. you'll absorb and improve the grammar inevitably based on practice, but with no words no practice is possible.
I speak Cantonese as a second language and luckily it's my heritage language and the language my parents would speak at him when I was little. I started learning it when I was 11 and now I'm in my 30s. Although my grammar is perfect (or so my parents and relatives think) my tones are not even as good as yours. How you even managed to learn Cantonese this well is totally beyond me. And I have parents and relatives to practice with so I guess I should be ashamed of myself. Absolutely brilliant Steve!
interesting, I am just opposite. As a Chinese born in Vietnam and ended up in US in the 1980, my accent and tones are spot on but my grammar, reading, and writing is like a 3rd grader or worst.
Best thing for tone is a dictionary, Hanping Cantonese is excellent app for $10. I would switch the default pinyin from Jyut to Yale as it is more accurate to English.
The answer is always Cantonese. I live in Taipei and when I went to Hong Kong literally every local started conversations in English with me, whereas in Mandarin speaking places they will usually just start off with Mandarin and it is up to the foreigner to apologise and say they only speak English (which I believe is a great thing, learn the local language!). Difficulty aside, my friend who has lived in Hong Kong his whole life (who has British parents) has had to constantly battle to bring a conversation to Cantonese because the more authentic looking locals won’t entertain Cantonese with him often. That’s the social reality of Cantonese for the most part, then the difficulty lies in the traditional characters for writing and the added tones for speaking and listening.
My goodness! I’m Hakka Chinese brought up in the uk, but would really like to learn to speak mandarin and Cantonese fluently for the benefit of my half English daughter. I’m planning to learn these languages together so when we visit our relatives in Hong Kong and Shenzhen it would help us so much. Both of you are so inspiring!
I am a polyglot Hakka Chinese who grown up in the UK so I speak both mandarin, cantonese and other languages fluently. He is giving pretty good advice 😊
Steve said it's important, at first, stick to Pinyin and then go to characters. I'd like to add in the comments something that helped me: Typing on the Chinese keyboard (using the Pinyin keyboard) helped me remembering the characters. And I love when someone interviews Steve, he's like my role model. I wanna learn as many languages as he does. Btw, English is not my first language.
Typing in Chinese is a very important skill. It's easy (for me) to set up a Chinese keyboard in Windows. Of course you need to know some pinyin to type, but the typing will help as you learn. I agree with what Steve said about just learning pinyin first and not studying Characters for the first 2 months or so, but after that, learning characters, despite the difficulty, is a great way to maintain motivation as well as impress your friends and enemies.
To a native Chinese, as I watched my three kids learning Chinese Characters 漢字 from young age, I don't think they had a hard time learning it. It's a very natural process! They started from the Chinese phonetics Zhuyin 注音, and being able to read Children's book written in 漢字 but with 注音 written beside each 漢字 so they know how each sound and can understand it in a sentence, then gradually as they read more and more 漢字, they got rid of 注音 all together. I found the process very natural, because that is my own experience as well! As a native Chinese speaker, I found 注音 helped a lot, and put a great ease on learning 漢字 in a very natural sense! Sadly, this great system is abandoned by the Chinese Mainland in 1949 and is currently only in use in Taiwan. But I am proud my three kids learned 漢字 this way without much strain, as I observed, and have built quite a strong foundation on their command of Chinese language and literature, which I myself enjoyed too, sometime practicing calligraphy and immersed myself on the beautiful strokes of 漢字！
I speak Cantonese and Mandarin. My mother tongue is Cantonese. I found Mandarin was super easy to learn. I started watching a lot of Taiwanese drama and songs when I first started. I do occasionally hear Mainland Chinese but it was harder to understand due to the lazy R sound. But I was able to understand when I read the Chinese characters. I read somewhere that Cantonese is made of 8 different ancient Chinese languages. Many Cantonese speakers can seem to adopt to other Chinese languages quickly even if they may not pronounce the words correctly. I found that Fu Jian and Shanghai language was easy for me to understand (even though I don't speak it). I don't really think there is a right or wrong language to learn as long as you are open to learning it. This is a really good video and I look forward to seeing more. Have a wonderful day you two. ❤
It is because Cantonese and other Southern Chinese dialects/languages inhert the sounds from ancient Chinese, certain wording are being used and/or pronouncing in the same or similar way. The geographical factors of the South helps to preserve languages to be destroyed during wars.
the trick with simplified/traditional is to understand the principle that most of the simplifications follow: whether it is 1. reducing the number of brush strokes 2. deleting elements 3 reverting to an earlier form of the character 4. using the cursive form of the character.
I have just started a university course in Chinese two weeks ago and the speed is super fast for beginners. I think Steve is right - listening to the correct sounds in the beginning and learning pinyin is super important. Watch Chinese dramas, tv shows, listen to Chinese music- you will get used to hearing mandarin, some sounds will become familiar after a while. Speaking and writing correctly will come in time - honestly, learning mandarin is a huge commitment. You can’t forget for a month and go back.
For me as a Vietnamese, the speaking and listening part is somewhat easy and grammar os super easy but the structure of the chinese sentence is somewhat strange. English is much easier in that matter
I can relate so much on the point you mentioned about “reading novels or literature”. I feel that my English improved a lot by reading English novels, this method works so much better than any other methods. Many people say oh I can read, what they mean by that is they can read simple sentences or words from newspaper but that’s not hard, a middle school student can also do that. Reading literature is definitely the best approach so far. At least for me
My English improved by listening and then reading and writing. I grew up listening to BBC and Voice of America on radio, back in 80s\90s, as a kid, I had to deprogram my brain from decades of listening to that filthy propaganda, nevertheless my listening and understanding abilities became really sharp.
Was so happy to see two of my favorite RUclipsrs collaborate! So much great info! I had no idea that either of you knew this much Cantonese (without Li’s help) Loved that you threw in your home dialect at the end too! Happy New Year to all! Very happy to be on this journey with you!
As a native Mandarin speaker, I would say Cantonese is much harder to learn. Mandarin has four basic pitched tones and a fifth neutral (toneless) tone, whereas Cantonese has 6-9 tones depending on who you ask. One of the most difficult sounds to pronounce properly in Cantonese is " 银" (ie. silver, currency, etc). Another interesting pronunciation is "5" in Cantonese. You literally close your mouth when you pronounce the word "5". lol Try yelling across the street while pronouncing "5". lol Mandarin is much easier for a beginner to learn for sure.
I can neither read nor speak the Chinese language. I watch some Donghua, but I just love the way to sounds to the ear. Something about it is so relaxing to me. 💆🏾♀️
When I first arrived in Hong Kong back in the 1980s, I was given advice by the locals to not bother learning Cantonese; the future was Mandarin. Secondly, I was told not to bother learning characters as it was too difficult. Thankfully I ignored both pieces of advice as very few people spoke Mandarin in Hong Kong at that time. I also soon found that too many characters sound similar in pronunciation, including the tones and the only way to differentiate and understand the full meaning was to learn characters. Many years later I had to work in the mainland and although my Mandarin was and is absolutely appalling to this day, I was so thankful I had made the effort to learn characters and it made a huge difference in enabling me to communicate with Mandarin speakers and also navigate around. Steve is also correct in saying you cannot properly understand the culture if you don't learn the characters. I also agree traditional characters are not only far more attractive, they also retain their full original meaning whereas so many simplified characters have been made up of other characters with totally different meaning which is a real shame. Although I am no expert, Steve's Mandarin sounds extremely authentic to my ear and his fluency is amazing. His Cantonese, while being a million times better than my Mandarin, sounds far less authentic but still pretty fluent. I can also tell Jessie is not a native Cantonese speaker but her pronunciation is very good and easy to follow.
Jessie and Steve Kaufmann in one film. Fabulous! I'm going to sentence mine so many sentences from this!! Superb!! So so many things, that new learners / intermediate learners + can learn from this. I think if I'd known all this kind of stuff from the beginning, I would be way way way ahead of where I am now, which was learning with very little structure. Thanks Steve and thanks Jessie laoshi!
Steve is great, and it's always interesting to hear how he learned so many languages, but he is not perfect, so I think it's better to only mine natives.
I live in Vancouver & I hear Cantonese spoken everyday I go out. In the area I used to live it was like 90% Cantonese speakers compared to Mandarin. In my new area, it's like half and half. The top 3 languages spoken in the city overall are English, Mandarin & Cantonese, followed by Punjabi. For me as a native English speaker I find Cantonese pronunciation easier than Mandarin & I also like the the way it sounds, so I've learned mostly Cantonese. Cantonese used to be way more dominant here, now maybe Mandarin is slightly ahead, but it's hard to judge. You can still use Cantonese to order food in most Chinese restaurants & talk to people all over the place. I think Mandarin is more common among wealthier people. In the neighborhoods where more working class people are you still get the sense of Cantonese dominating.
That was really interesting. I live in the UK and, perhaps surprisingly, it is also Cantonese that is much more common than Mandarin in this country. I also agree with you about wealthier people (and more recently arrived) being more likely to speak Mandarin, although that is probably down to historical reasons. However, the city I currently live in has very few Chinese people. After English, the top five languages in my current city are Polish, Lithuanian, Punjabi, Urdu, Portuguese.
@@NickLea well the first chinese ppl that migrated all over the world were all from pretty much hong kong and guangdong, thus the dominance of cantonese. This only started to change since the beginning of 2000s. During the early 2000s HK and guangdong ppl were way more wealthier than north chinese. My parent and i moved to canada with 3000 USD. We couldn't find the familiar food we eat in the north. I disliked the guangdong and HK food, even the "chinese" food were a shock to me. But now you could find anything in Toronto. And mandarin speakers in recent days are more wealthier. But it wasnt always this way.
If you check out Andy Lau’s movie called Dances with Dragon, back 30 years ago mainlanders were still poor compared to those in Hong Kong. In the movie Andy Lau is mistaken as a mainlander swimming to and entering Hong Kong illegally. Since everything now is made in China, there are lots of wealthy mainlanders living overseas.
I also like the the sound of Cantonese. It's jaunty and playful. Probably wrong, but it sounds like native Cantonese speakers would be more likely to make jokes. I found the people in HK generally pretty good-humoured.
Very insightful. As a Mandarin learner who has little or no belief in his ability to learn Mandarin, he offered me a lot of hope. So far, it's been many hours of sheer obstinacy, refusing to quit, though with no real expectation of success in the end. His comments were balm for my soul as I'm gradually realizing that I CAN DO THIS!
Randomly just came across this video. I loooooove Jessie's Chinese accurate. 特别特别标准. So lovely. I'd love a teacher like her. I was also super impressed with Steve's Chinese. I often feel like "polyglots" aren't as fluent in their languages as they claim. Steve definitely could hold his own without a super heavy American accent. Fun to watch. (not an expert on my end by any means, just studied language in country for awhile).
I watched a video of Steve speaking mandarin two years ago before I started learning Chinese. I'm so happy that today, after living two years in Shenzhen, I can understand the conversation!! Steve's vocabulary use is amazing. Thank you Jessie for putting out this content for us :D
A lot of very good points made here. The part that struck a chord with me was when he emphasised the importance of input. I wholeheartedly agree, because I've recently started doing a lot more Chinese listening and reading and my overall level has certainly improved. Continual input is key.
As a person who can speak both Mandarin and Cantonese, I can tell you Cantonese is much harder than Mandarin, especially if you want to be fluent at it.
The other day I was watching a scene that I had watched like 20 times, and I decided to remove subtitles. I always knew what was the meaning but I never stopped to actually listen to it and allow my brain to make the connections. And I did, and it worked. 跑呀! 你们怎么不跑了
I speak mandarin as a second language and Steve has put me to shame. He is absolutely right. The perseverance and curiosity and drive needs to be there. His spoken Chinese is good BUT what is fantastic is not only his pronunciation but his comprehension and extensive knowledge of different Chinese words. The greatest respect for this fine gentleman.
It's so interesting when your mother langauge is a slavic langauge, and how often other people use it as an example to messure difficulty for languages in general.
Ayy fellow Slav! Also don't know about you, but I also love the fact my native language (Polish) makes it so much easier to pronounce Mandarin since they both have so many sounds in common. It's fascinating given they're completely unrelated languages
Thank you. Really enjoyed this video.Steve is amazing - I'd love that kind of language fluency. The only thing I'd add in the Cantonese vs Mandarin is that Mandarin is more formal and the written and spoken language are largely aligned. In other words, if you say something, the words coming out of your mouth will be what's written down. Obviously, both Cantonese and Mandarin dialects map to the same Chinese picture written language. But Cantonese people do not talk in the format of the written context - it is more slang or loose. It's like asking English people to put thees and thous into their sentence. So if you watch a movie with subtitles, Mandarin will be aligned to it word for word, but Cantonese will deviate for much of it.
I'm a Mandarin learner, the way I learn the language is I look up to expressions and words in pinyin to build some vocabularies bank, then listening to as much of Chinese to build my confidence in speaking and only after a while I begin to look at the characters...now I'm looking at both pinyin and characters to gradually transition to characters... it's indeed the most challenging part of my Mandarin learning journey.. Although I only know like less than 100 characters I think Chinese characters are extremely important in writing communication.. it definitely conveys any message better than pinyin or latin script...
This interview is both entertaining and beneficial. I agree wholeheartedly that the first thing to learn is to listen. I am Cantonese and have a hard time using Mandarin because I didn't have a chance to listen to a lot of Mandarin. I think I can speak Mandarin relatively well but listening to Mandarin remains difficult, especially when it's spoken rapidly.
If you know 64 basic latin words + 16 most common prefixes + 20 most common suffixes, you will easily learn Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Romani
Undoubtedly Steve Kauffman is a legendary polyglot, he's fantastic, he amazes me anytime, he's an inspiring man whose skills are worthy of being appreciated by anyone in the world. I love that. How wonderful ❤. I really like what he does. Truly language learning is like an awesome gift, I think language learning field is the world's greatest privilege we might have. Not longer ago, I did stick to the language learning field because it was something completely new and fun for me which came from nowhere.... just kidding, actually it came out of an idea while I was using a language learning app last year and suddenly I realized that what I was doing was just a matter of amusement and thereby I have developed a nice passion for it and therefore I have also decided learning new languages to build up and increase my knowledge and interests about it. On our path to fluency in any language, there will always be several mistakes and hurdles or barriers to overcome, though. But, it's worth it. Such a beautiful choice!!! Learning languages also means learning and getting involved within new cultures related to your target languages. I know how it goes. I'd get along with people whose native languages are those chosen by me. Finally, I think that learning Indo-European languages is the best option to get started into the language learning field. Chinese isn't one of my target languages due to its huge complexity and my personal reasons too. Whether it's Mandarin or Cantonese, it remains like one of the World's hardest languages to learn and fit. I almost forgot, English is not my first language. Goodbye 😊.
I also notice that ( from many years ago) that when I speak different languages, I look like a different person. Later on I noticed it was not only me, but a lot more other people claim that they also feel the same. For example, when I speak native mandarin, I am at ease, intelligent, sometimes outgoing sometimes not, very natural and flow. When I speak English, I become a more confident, outspoken, cool type of person. When I speak Japanese ( a little bit) I become a person who is cute, avoid conflict and confrontation that type of person. I find it very interesting
I love the laugh at 9:07. You’re thinking like “damn what language does this guy NOT speak” but still kept it professional and kept pushing 💪 great content from you two.
He worked it out man. I am from HK and able to speak Cantonese and ok Mandarin and obviously English but now studying Italian the grammar side of it is a challenge
That was great. Thank you. What was particularly interesting to me was when you jumped from Mandarin to Cantonese. It was the best example I've seen of the tone and pronunciation differences. Cantonese sounds so much harsher than Mandarin to my ears. I always knew that from books but to hear it is really interesting.
cantonese is without a doubt a lot harder because you need to learn 2 grammatical sets one for speaking and one for writing, in cantonese you don’t speak like you write
I first watched this video like 6 months ago, I think a bit more and back then my level was a lot lower. I couldn't even understand the basic sentences in this video and my listening skills were very low, like speak to me slowly and clearly low. However, now that I've been increasing my vocabulary and improving my listening comprehension by making my ears sensitive to tones, I can say I understood like 70% with no subs, while learning new vocab. This is still something I'm happy about :D!! This is a reminder for you guys to keep going.
As a Dutch from HK/Cantonese descent, I am deeply impressed how Steve (and Jessie) speaks Cantonese. Not only the language itself, but mostly how he pronunciates and uses the right intonations; expressions and right vocabulary. For who claims he speaks a little bit of Cantonese, not perfect, but quite fluent.....I bet it's better than many overseas Cantonese descendants. Very good and nice video.
Vietnam’s primarily written in the romanized script because the revolutionary literacy campaign recognized that achieving adult literacy with the traditional Vietnamese or even Chinese writing system would be far too difficult, so for practical reasons they went with the Latin alphabet already made familiar there by the French colonizers.
What makes Cantonese harder than Mandarin is that you're speaking/listening to Cantonese vocabulary and grammar but you have to read/write in Standard Chinese which is the literal form of Mandarin. We are not taught to write in Written Cantonese.
To be honest, I think many non-English speakers who learn English is because English is the world’s most important language, either for practical reason or economic reason, it’s useful to learn. You also get to read the world’s most advanced paper and technology because they are all written in English. So there is no reason not to learn English well because the underlying substance is just so important. However as to other languages, to be honest, people don’t really have so much curiosity or incentive or time to invest in learning a language if it is not so useful or helpful.
From watching this I can deduce Cantonese is a difficult language to master to speak. I’m glad I am a Cantonese and grew up with Hong Kong pop culture influence and entertainment.
I feel like to keep those languages, you have to continuously practice them or use them. I bet he talks to a lot of different people everyday in all 20 or more languages he knows
Very few people like learning new things especially if it’s not tied to money and learning another language or languages is even rarer as frustration kills many who try! Congrats as I’m trying to acquire a second language and have discovered something great during the process that even more drives me to learning more languages! Lounging and learning for life!
He wasn’t kidding when he said he took a shortcut to learn Cantonese with the six tones. In comparison to his Mandarin (which is OMG good), his Cantonese has a heavy accent which is certainly understandable but certainly not as good as his Mandarin.
The sound of Mandarin - brushes on 4 pots The sound of Cantonese - rain on 9 pots Tried to learn some Cantonese in HK when I briefly worked there a couple of times. So hard for this Westerner!
you will learn both character sets; there ARE simplification rules and principles! You should study which ever character set is in the place you want to go first. I think simplified may be easier to learn, though i can think of good arguments that traditional though tougher to write are easier to recognize. learning both will make each MORE memorable! so learn both but start with one, whichever You prefer!
I enjoyed our discussion, Jessie. You did a wonderful job editing and providing sub-titles. I apologize for the grainy quality of my end of the discussion. I didn't realize we were going to make separate recordings and merge them. I can do better next time. Your bright enthusiasm is contagious and no doubt helps your followers in learning Chinese. Good luck to you and to the learners that follow you.
Thank you Steve! No need to apologize, what you said matters a lot more than the image quality. I had a great time too. Wish you all the best!
Grainy quality? Never noticed!
Mr Kaufmann, what a great interview. Thanks!
It's listening to advice that is important.
I think this is one of the best (Mandarin) interviews you have done. So much information in 20 mins. Great questions from Jessie laoshi, and great answers.
You didn't have the availability online teachers when you first learned. But now, there are so many good learning channels, and we have access to different types of films.
Now we can choose to look at hundreds/thousands of different channels for different learning experience.
Jessie is an absolutely great channel. (everyone in the language learning groups, all follow all the same people, and I don't know anyone who doesn't follow her!).
Thanks to both of you, and wishing you a happy and healthy new year!
I had a lot of questions about learning Mandarin and I got more answers and inspirations than I hoped for. Thank you.
I have no idea how Steve can maintain Cantonese. I lived 13 years in Hong Kong and speak fluent Cantonese. I also live now in Ukraine and speak fluent Russian. But lived 5 years in Ukraine. I watch TVB once a month for a day to keep my Cantonese. I went for about 8 months without speaking it and it went semi broken when I tried to speak it again. So even after speaking Cantonese for 13 years all day everyday, I still lost 50% fluency in around 1 year of no usage. And returned back after a few days of binge watching TVB.
I thought it was a wonderful interview. I've been studying Mandarin informally for about 3 years...I am only now feeling a little comfortable with it. My hardest thing is I have no one to speak with as I live in a smaller city in the USA,
my mother tongue is cantonese and all I can say is Steve really did well speaking cantonese, it is super easy to understand without subtitles, most words and sentence pattern match what we say in daily life, what a mad lad
He is very understandable in Cantonese and uses the correct slangs. And what is most amazing to me is the accent on his Cantonese is of a Mandarin-speaker not English! That goes to show how good his Mandarin is
One of the most impressive thing about Steve is that he is able to capture the flow of a sentence incredibly well. He has mastered the syntax and flow of a sentence, so even if he isn’t getting the pronunciation 100%, native speakers can understand him perfectly. I think this is the most important thing in learning languages, the right ebb and flow of sentences! Bravo!
Cantonese of course stand on their own side, no reallity, justice, standard at all, these are over normal selfish.
I have much respect for Steve. He’s definitely a language genius who speaks many languages fluently. He’s a role model for many of us to look up to. He’s a man of humility, curiosity and perseverance
Without a doubt, Steve's skills are amazing. Let's also recognize how amazing Jessie's skills are too. She started her RUclips channel only a couple of years ago. While she did well right "out of the gate", I'm amazed at how rapidly she has grown from producing just "fun little videos" to producing truly professional interviews and other sophisticated content, all the while maintaining her totally charming persona. Thumbs up to both of these amazing people. 👍✊💪
I could not agree more.
She's so professional. I just stumbled across her channel recently, I'm enjoying the content.
i shouldn't be surprised but i really appreciate how steve explains how elements of a language aren't difficult or easy, but difficult and easy to him and people from similar backgrounds
You'd think that's obvious and common sense.. but alas...
It was a very long time ago that I started to learn Cantonese, in Hong Kong. I had a very difficult time with the tones, until I started thinking in Chinese, instead of translating from English to Chinese in my head.
Yes, exactly, I tell everyone that - you have to start thinking in the language(s) you're learning. So much easier. Tyvm for your comment.
@@1jediwitch How do you think in a language in which you don't have a strong vocabulary?
@@sweiland75 you simply recognize the patterns, and accept how the language works. Once you build enough vocabulary, you’ll begin to think in that language instead of trying to translate it back to your native tongue. At least that’s how it was for me.
My baby language was Cantonese but My everyday is English. I am having a hard time to learn Pinyin. Why Pinyin?, my grandchildren speaks fluently Pinyin and learned from their mother. Is there a easier way to learn Pinyin? I grew up in Vancouver. Thank you.
@@joewong438 I was never exposed to Pinyin, so I am not sure how to answer. For me, it was mental visualization, like when you were a child. Maybe??? have more conversations with your grandchildren????? Sorry.
Always knew Steve had a decent accent in Chinese but his vocabulary was what impressed me the most. Great interview Jessie!
he has a good tone
Funny you say that because Steve always said people will be more impressed with a great vocabulary than wether you have an accent! 😊
I remember Steve many years ago speaking better Cantonese than me. Then I lived 13 years in Hong Kong and realise my Cantonese is super fluent and not bad at all. Didn't even realise it until I heard Steve again. It makes a big difference to live in the country.
Yeah, he hasn’t been working on it much for several years and it shows, although it was never one of his stronger languages.
I do admire him for being willing to go into situations like this and speak. I have better Cantonese (and maybe Mandarin) but I would be terrified to do this.
@@nendoakuma7451 I don't know if you speak over 20 languages. But it is definitely impressive to be at that level of fluency while knowing that many languages. I think by comparing yourself to him you're embarrassing yourself a little bit lol. I'm only fluent at 4 and my level at my 5th language is a bit better than his cantonese but I still wouldn't even dare to be as confident as you are when you're comparing yourself to someone you're that far from in terms of linguistic capacities 😅.
@@ho-ry5uf I don't know what you're going on about. You think I don't have the right to say I think that I'm better in him in two of languages or that one of his languages has declined? I'm not sure why you're so offended by this. I was just reacting to somebody else's observation about his Cantonese and you make personal attacks.
We need more people like Jessie and Steve. There will be more understanding and less conflict if people have a similar mindset, to learn about other cultures and languages.
OMG this is adorable!! His mandarin personality is like a 北方大叔. It sounds so different from any other language personalities of his.
Also he just KNOWS how to learn languages scientifically. Chinese phonetics is highly fixed compared with alphabetic languages. Be familiar with the sounds first is much easier
The advice about languages being how they are and accepting that helps a lot because it allows you to freely think in your target language, regardless as to what that language is. As a native speaker of a language, you can take a very literal translation of something and reorder it as necessary to fit the grammar of your own language if you need to provide a translation, but otherwise maintain the correct phrasing without applying your native understanding of language to that phrase.
learn vocabulary actively but grammar passively. you'll absorb and improve the grammar inevitably based on practice, but with no words no practice is possible.
I speak Cantonese as a second language and luckily it's my heritage language and the language my parents would speak at him when I was little. I started learning it when I was 11 and now I'm in my 30s. Although my grammar is perfect (or so my parents and relatives think) my tones are not even as good as yours. How you even managed to learn Cantonese this well is totally beyond me. And I have parents and relatives to practice with so I guess I should be ashamed of myself. Absolutely brilliant Steve!
interesting, I am just opposite. As a Chinese born in Vietnam and ended up in US in the 1980, my accent and tones are spot on but my grammar, reading, and writing is like a 3rd grader or worst.
So you can read a newspaper? Watch some tvb
Best thing for tone is a dictionary, Hanping Cantonese is excellent app for $10. I would switch the default pinyin from Jyut to Yale as it is more accurate to English.
His Cantonese tones are OK ..not perfect ...sounds like a mainland Chinese speaking! 💯
Oh .Mr Steve Kaufmann talks two Cantonese languages very well. I am also Chinese . I was born in Vietnam
The answer is always Cantonese. I live in Taipei and when I went to Hong Kong literally every local started conversations in English with me, whereas in Mandarin speaking places they will usually just start off with Mandarin and it is up to the foreigner to apologise and say they only speak English (which I believe is a great thing, learn the local language!). Difficulty aside, my friend who has lived in Hong Kong his whole life (who has British parents) has had to constantly battle to bring a conversation to Cantonese because the more authentic looking locals won’t entertain Cantonese with him often. That’s the social reality of Cantonese for the most part, then the difficulty lies in the traditional characters for writing and the added tones for speaking and listening.
My goodness! I’m Hakka Chinese brought up in the uk, but would really like to learn to speak mandarin and Cantonese fluently for the benefit of my half English daughter. I’m planning to learn these languages together so when we visit our relatives in Hong Kong and Shenzhen it would help us so much.
Both of you are so inspiring!
I am a polyglot Hakka Chinese who grown up in the UK so I speak both mandarin, cantonese and other languages fluently. He is giving pretty good advice 😊
Yes! Keep the culture background alive ❤
Steve said it's important, at first, stick to Pinyin and then go to characters. I'd like to add in the comments something that helped me:
Typing on the Chinese keyboard (using the Pinyin keyboard) helped me remembering the characters.
And I love when someone interviews Steve, he's like my role model. I wanna learn as many languages as he does. Btw, English is not my first language.
your english is really good!
@Ari.
And yet your English is pretty good 👏
@Ari whats your native language then? I bet you are from indonesia? Am i correct? English also not my native language. English is my third language.
Typing in Chinese is a very important skill. It's easy (for me) to set up a Chinese keyboard in Windows. Of course you need to know some pinyin to type, but the typing will help as you learn. I agree with what Steve said about just learning pinyin first and not studying Characters for the first 2 months or so, but after that, learning characters, despite the difficulty, is a great way to maintain motivation as well as impress your friends and enemies.
Same, I started typing early, it allows me to remember characters easier.
I am very proud of Steve and his Chinese. He is one of the few real polyglots on RUclips.
To a native Chinese, as I watched my three kids learning Chinese Characters 漢字 from young age, I don't think they had a hard time learning it. It's a very natural process! They started from the Chinese phonetics Zhuyin 注音, and being able to read Children's book written in 漢字 but with 注音 written beside each 漢字 so they know how each sound and can understand it in a sentence, then gradually as they read more and more 漢字, they got rid of 注音 all together. I found the process very natural, because that is my own experience as well!
As a native Chinese speaker, I found 注音 helped a lot, and put a great ease on learning 漢字 in a very natural sense! Sadly, this great system is abandoned by the Chinese Mainland in 1949 and is currently only in use in Taiwan. But I am proud my three kids learned 漢字 this way without much strain, as I observed, and have built quite a strong foundation on their command of Chinese language and literature, which I myself enjoyed too, sometime practicing calligraphy and immersed myself on the beautiful strokes of 漢字！
I speak Cantonese and Mandarin. My mother tongue is Cantonese. I found Mandarin was super easy to learn. I started watching a lot of Taiwanese drama and songs when I first started. I do occasionally hear Mainland Chinese but it was harder to understand due to the lazy R sound. But I was able to understand when I read the Chinese characters.
I read somewhere that Cantonese is made of 8 different ancient Chinese languages. Many Cantonese speakers can seem to adopt to other Chinese languages quickly even if they may not pronounce the words correctly. I found that Fu Jian and Shanghai language was easy for me to understand (even though I don't speak it).
I don't really think there is a right or wrong language to learn as long as you are open to learning it.
This is a really good video and I look forward to seeing more. Have a wonderful day you two. ❤
It is because Cantonese and other Southern Chinese dialects/languages inhert the sounds from ancient Chinese, certain wording are being used and/or pronouncing in the same or similar way. The geographical factors of the South helps to preserve languages to be destroyed during wars.
the trick with simplified/traditional is to understand the principle that most of the simplifications follow: whether it is 1. reducing the number of brush strokes 2. deleting elements 3 reverting to an earlier form of the character 4. using the cursive form of the character.
4. Suppressing some elements in the language which don't align with the atheist communist agenda.
absolutely love how Jessie kindly and politely suggests new words for Steve, and how Steve humbly and graciously accepts it :)
I have just started a university course in Chinese two weeks ago and the speed is super fast for beginners. I think Steve is right - listening to the correct sounds in the beginning and learning pinyin is super important. Watch Chinese dramas, tv shows, listen to Chinese music- you will get used to hearing mandarin, some sounds will become familiar after a while. Speaking and writing correctly will come in time - honestly, learning mandarin is a huge commitment. You can’t forget for a month and go back.
现在学得怎么样了
@@heruhailiuhuang533 虽然现在我听得懂更多，但语法还非常难，所以我每天练习听力。 我希望我写清楚 🤣
@@klaudia2141 感觉已经很不错了！可以跟你练习口语吗，我想练习口语。
@@klaudia2141 中文语法比较简单的，因为不管如何说，都说得通。
For me as a Vietnamese, the speaking and listening part is somewhat easy and grammar os super easy but the structure of the chinese sentence is somewhat strange. English is much easier in that matter
I've known who Steve is for a while, but my first time hearing him have a full Chinese conversation. Dude is really freaking good! 很厉害哦!
His accent is average but his vocabulary is super impressive.
@@victorv7356 Exactly.
I can relate so much on the point you mentioned about “reading novels or literature”. I feel that my English improved a lot by reading English novels, this method works so much better than any other methods. Many people say oh I can read, what they mean by that is they can read simple sentences or words from newspaper but that’s not hard, a middle school student can also do that. Reading literature is definitely the best approach so far. At least for me
My English improved by listening and then reading and writing. I grew up listening to BBC and Voice of America on radio, back in 80s\90s, as a kid, I had to deprogram my brain from decades of listening to that filthy propaganda, nevertheless my listening and understanding abilities became really sharp.
Was so happy to see two of my favorite RUclipsrs collaborate! So much great info! I had no idea that either of you knew this much Cantonese (without Li’s help) Loved that you threw in your home dialect at the end too! Happy New Year to all! Very happy to be on this journey with you!
Greeting sounds like hakka turn hokkien !
As a native Mandarin speaker, I would say Cantonese is much harder to learn. Mandarin has four basic pitched tones and a fifth neutral (toneless) tone, whereas Cantonese has 6-9 tones depending on who you ask. One of the most difficult sounds to pronounce properly in Cantonese is " 银" (ie. silver, currency, etc). Another interesting pronunciation is "5" in Cantonese. You literally close your mouth when you pronounce the word "5". lol Try yelling across the street while pronouncing "5". lol Mandarin is much easier for a beginner to learn for sure.
看見兩位的語言天份
我學好法語的信心大增了
世上無難事
I can neither read nor speak the Chinese language. I watch some Donghua, but I just love the way to sounds to the ear. Something about it is so relaxing to me. 💆🏾♀️
When I first arrived in Hong Kong back in the 1980s, I was given advice by the locals to not bother learning Cantonese; the future was Mandarin. Secondly, I was told not to bother learning characters as it was too difficult. Thankfully I ignored both pieces of advice as very few people spoke Mandarin in Hong Kong at that time. I also soon found that too many characters sound similar in pronunciation, including the tones and the only way to differentiate and understand the full meaning was to learn characters. Many years later I had to work in the mainland and although my Mandarin was and is absolutely appalling to this day, I was so thankful I had made the effort to learn characters and it made a huge difference in enabling me to communicate with Mandarin speakers and also navigate around. Steve is also correct in saying you cannot properly understand the culture if you don't learn the characters. I also agree traditional characters are not only far more attractive, they also retain their full original meaning whereas so many simplified characters have been made up of other characters with totally different meaning which is a real shame.
Although I am no expert, Steve's Mandarin sounds extremely authentic to my ear and his fluency is amazing. His Cantonese, while being a million times better than my Mandarin, sounds far less authentic but still pretty fluent. I can also tell Jessie is not a native Cantonese speaker but her pronunciation is very good and easy to follow.
Amazing guy. I thought I speak 7 languages is very good but Steve no doubt is the master! I salute you Sir.
Once you visit China, you will see the whole world like a vintage place ❤️🇨🇳.
Greetings from India 🙏
....
Jessie and Steve Kaufmann in one film. Fabulous!
I'm going to sentence mine so many sentences from this!!
Superb!!
So so many things, that new learners / intermediate learners + can learn from this.
I think if I'd known all this kind of stuff from the beginning, I would be way way way ahead of where I am now, which was learning with very little structure.
Thanks Steve and thanks Jessie laoshi!
Steve is great, and it's always interesting to hear how he learned so many languages, but he is not perfect, so I think it's better to only mine natives.
same!! watching this, im trying to remember the way he expresses things in Chinese so I can copy it later lol
I live in Vancouver & I hear Cantonese spoken everyday I go out. In the area I used to live it was like 90% Cantonese speakers compared to Mandarin. In my new area, it's like half and half. The top 3 languages spoken in the city overall are English, Mandarin & Cantonese, followed by Punjabi.
For me as a native English speaker I find Cantonese pronunciation easier than Mandarin & I also like the the way it sounds, so I've learned mostly Cantonese. Cantonese used to be way more dominant here, now maybe Mandarin is slightly ahead, but it's hard to judge. You can still use Cantonese to order food in most Chinese restaurants & talk to people all over the place. I think Mandarin is more common among wealthier people. In the neighborhoods where more working class people are you still get the sense of Cantonese dominating.
That was really interesting. I live in the UK and, perhaps surprisingly, it is also Cantonese that is much more common than Mandarin in this country. I also agree with you about wealthier people (and more recently arrived) being more likely to speak Mandarin, although that is probably down to historical reasons. However, the city I currently live in has very few Chinese people. After English, the top five languages in my current city are Polish, Lithuanian, Punjabi, Urdu, Portuguese.
@@NickLea well the first chinese ppl that migrated all over the world were all from pretty much hong kong and guangdong, thus the dominance of cantonese. This only started to change since the beginning of 2000s.
During the early 2000s HK and guangdong ppl were way more wealthier than north chinese. My parent and i moved to canada with 3000 USD. We couldn't find the familiar food we eat in the north. I disliked the guangdong and HK food, even the "chinese" food were a shock to me.
But now you could find anything in Toronto. And mandarin speakers in recent days are more wealthier. But it wasnt always this way.
If you check out Andy Lau’s movie called Dances with Dragon, back 30 years ago mainlanders were still poor compared to those in Hong Kong. In the movie Andy Lau is mistaken as a mainlander swimming to and entering Hong Kong illegally. Since everything now is made in China, there are lots of wealthy mainlanders living overseas.
I also like the the sound of Cantonese. It's jaunty and playful. Probably wrong, but it sounds like native Cantonese speakers would be more likely to make jokes. I found the people in HK generally pretty good-humoured.
Cantonese people sound bad tempered !
Very insightful. As a Mandarin learner who has little or no belief in his ability to learn Mandarin, he offered me a lot of hope. So far, it's been many hours of sheer obstinacy, refusing to quit, though with no real expectation of success in the end. His comments were balm for my soul as I'm gradually realizing that I CAN DO THIS!
Randomly just came across this video. I loooooove Jessie's Chinese accurate. 特别特别标准. So lovely. I'd love a teacher like her. I was also super impressed with Steve's Chinese. I often feel like "polyglots" aren't as fluent in their languages as they claim. Steve definitely could hold his own without a super heavy American accent. Fun to watch. (not an expert on my end by any means, just studied language in country for awhile).
This is exactly the video I needed to see. Both speakers are inspirational.
I watched a video of Steve speaking mandarin two years ago before I started learning Chinese. I'm so happy that today, after living two years in Shenzhen, I can understand the conversation!! Steve's vocabulary use is amazing. Thank you Jessie for putting out this content for us :D
作為一個會講普通話和廣東話的德國人，我覺得廣東話難很多 ... 但是廣東話是我全世界最喜歡的語言 :)
作為一個語言學家，起碼國語和粤語的發音都不地道！
我係香港人，我都諗住學德文，希望你可以努力咁去學廣東話，加油👍🏻
@@Atreyx 学德文？
Gosh, I just wish Hong Kong will change to simplified Chinese cause as a Guang Zhou person, it's so difficult to read traditional Hanzi.
@@FFXfever couldn't agree more, we should totally eliminate something cause it is difficult for YOU.
A lot of very good points made here. The part that struck a chord with me was when he emphasised the importance of input. I wholeheartedly agree, because I've recently started doing a lot more Chinese listening and reading and my overall level has certainly improved. Continual input is key.
Master at work...truly understands the mindset of acquiring a new language... awesome!!!
As a person who can speak both Mandarin and Cantonese, I can tell you Cantonese is much harder than Mandarin, especially if you want to be fluent at it.
The other day I was watching a scene that I had watched like 20 times, and I decided to remove subtitles. I always knew what was the meaning but I never stopped to actually listen to it and allow my brain to make the connections. And I did, and it worked.
跑呀! 你们怎么不跑了
I speak mandarin as a second language and Steve has put me to shame. He is absolutely right. The perseverance and curiosity and drive needs to be there. His spoken Chinese is good BUT what is fantastic is not only his pronunciation but his comprehension and extensive knowledge of different Chinese words. The greatest respect for this fine gentleman.
Sometimes a word of the foreign student sounds like a native speaker !
It's so interesting when your mother langauge is a slavic langauge, and how often other people use it as an example to messure difficulty for languages in general.
Ayy fellow Slav! Also don't know about you, but I also love the fact my native language (Polish) makes it so much easier to pronounce Mandarin since they both have so many sounds in common. It's fascinating given they're completely unrelated languages
So fabulous. Inspiring. For ever more learning and developing. Thanks 🙏.
What a legend and inspiration for all of us in the process of learning a new language.
他谈他学中文的经过和经验对我的中文学习很有帮助。我是日本的中文爱好者。我敬佩他能说一口流利的日语。
您中國語本當上手
Thank you. Really enjoyed this video.Steve is amazing - I'd love that kind of language fluency. The only thing I'd add in the Cantonese vs Mandarin is that Mandarin is more formal and the written and spoken language are largely aligned. In other words, if you say something, the words coming out of your mouth will be what's written down. Obviously, both Cantonese and Mandarin dialects map to the same Chinese picture written language. But Cantonese people do not talk in the format of the written context - it is more slang or loose. It's like asking English people to put thees and thous into their sentence. So if you watch a movie with subtitles, Mandarin will be aligned to it word for word, but Cantonese will deviate for much of it.
Jesse, your questions to Steve where fantastic ❤ I learned so much and enjoyed this interview. Will watch it again to gain more from it.
I'm a Mandarin learner, the way I learn the language is I look up to expressions and words in pinyin to build some vocabularies bank, then listening to as much of Chinese to build my confidence in speaking and only after a while I begin to look at the characters...now I'm looking at both pinyin and characters to gradually transition to characters... it's indeed the most challenging part of my Mandarin learning journey..
Although I only know like less than 100 characters I think Chinese characters are extremely important in writing communication.. it definitely conveys any message better than pinyin or latin script...
Ahhhh! Thank you.
Do not compare languages, just embrace new language.
Best advice ever.
Have a new mindset now to help me learn Mandarin
Bruh this is so informative. I tip my hat to this guy for giving us wise life lessons as well. Steve kaufmann ladies n gents
This interview is both entertaining and beneficial. I agree wholeheartedly that the first thing to learn is to listen. I am Cantonese and have a hard time using Mandarin because I didn't have a chance to listen to a lot of Mandarin. I think I can speak Mandarin relatively well but listening to Mandarin remains difficult, especially when it's spoken rapidly.
If you know 64 basic latin words + 16 most common prefixes + 20 most common suffixes, you will easily learn Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Romani
Steve is such a role model!
Undoubtedly Steve Kauffman is a legendary polyglot, he's fantastic, he amazes me anytime, he's an inspiring man whose skills are worthy of being appreciated by anyone in the world. I love that. How wonderful ❤. I really like what he does. Truly language learning is like an awesome gift, I think language learning field is the world's greatest privilege we might have. Not longer ago, I did stick to the language learning field because it was something completely new and fun for me which came from nowhere.... just kidding, actually it came out of an idea while I was using a language learning app last year and suddenly I realized that what I was doing was just a matter of amusement and thereby I have developed a nice passion for it and therefore I have also decided learning new languages to build up and increase my knowledge and interests about it. On our path to fluency in any language, there will always be several mistakes and hurdles or barriers to overcome, though. But, it's worth it. Such a beautiful choice!!! Learning languages also means learning and getting involved within new cultures related to your target languages. I know how it goes. I'd get along with people whose native languages are those chosen by me. Finally, I think that learning Indo-European languages is the best option to get started into the language learning field. Chinese isn't one of my target languages due to its huge complexity and my personal reasons too. Whether it's Mandarin or Cantonese, it remains like one of the World's hardest languages to learn and fit. I almost forgot, English is not my first language. Goodbye 😊.
Two of my favorite youtubers! Greetings from Shenzhen!
I also notice that ( from many years ago) that when I speak different languages, I look like a different person. Later on I noticed it was not only me, but a lot more other people claim that they also feel the same. For example, when I speak native mandarin, I am at ease, intelligent, sometimes outgoing sometimes not, very natural and flow. When I speak English, I become a more confident, outspoken, cool type of person. When I speak Japanese ( a little bit) I become a person who is cute, avoid conflict and confrontation that type of person. I find it very interesting
I love the laugh at 9:07. You’re thinking like “damn what language does this guy NOT speak” but still kept it professional and kept pushing 💪 great content from you two.
He worked it out man. I am from HK and able to speak Cantonese and ok Mandarin and obviously English but now studying Italian the grammar side of it is a challenge
Super interesting and beneficial interview. Its so inspiring to learn that people can speak 20 languages! Thats absolute talent! Well done.
So glad you both chatted ! I love ur channels. Amazing interview. U asked awesome questions!
Glad you enjoyed it!
That was great. Thank you. What was particularly interesting to me was when you jumped from Mandarin to Cantonese. It was the best example I've seen of the tone and pronunciation differences. Cantonese sounds so much harsher than Mandarin to my ears. I always knew that from books but to hear it is really interesting.
Totally marvelous. If only more language teachers understood these principles, students would learn with much less of a struggle.
Steve Kaufmann is everywhere 😅 nice to see him always so nice and ready to help other multilingual youtubers with cameos 😁
cantonese is without a doubt a lot harder because you need to learn 2 grammatical sets one for speaking and one for writing, in cantonese you don’t speak like you write
I first watched this video like 6 months ago, I think a bit more and back then my level was a lot lower. I couldn't even understand the basic sentences in this video and my listening skills were very low, like speak to me slowly and clearly low. However, now that I've been increasing my vocabulary and improving my listening comprehension by making my ears sensitive to tones, I can say I understood like 70% with no subs, while learning new vocab. This is still something I'm happy about :D!! This is a reminder for you guys to keep going.
Although I'm not very fluent in Hanji but I also love it. It's such a beautiful language! And thanks for sharing!
Steve 说得很对，我在学习任何一门语言都是从发音开始的，然后学习词汇，语法，句子。点个赞~
Jessie, your Cantonese is excellent! Great job! And listening to Steve is like listening to my 舅父 on the phone!
This man is a treasure of humankind
Great collab with Steve Kaufmann. So insightful and inspirational. BTW thx for the subtitles! It helps me learning Chinese through meaningful content.
As a Dutch from HK/Cantonese descent, I am deeply impressed how Steve (and Jessie) speaks Cantonese. Not only the language itself, but mostly how he pronunciates and uses the right intonations; expressions and right vocabulary.
For who claims he speaks a little bit of Cantonese, not perfect, but quite fluent.....I bet it's better than many overseas Cantonese descendants. Very good and nice video.
Very inspiring views, not just for learning languages, but essentially applicable to learning anything.
Vietnam’s primarily written in the romanized script because the revolutionary literacy campaign recognized that achieving adult literacy with the traditional Vietnamese or even Chinese writing system would be far too difficult, so for practical reasons they went with the Latin alphabet already made familiar there by the French colonizers.
What makes Cantonese harder than Mandarin is that you're speaking/listening to Cantonese vocabulary and grammar but you have to read/write in Standard Chinese which is the literal form of Mandarin. We are not taught to write in Written Cantonese.
Steve I really find your enthusiasm for learning new cultures and languages very inspiring..thank you Jessie for featuring Steve in this video!!😅
Wow perfect Chinese. Steve is a real great polyglot.
It’s amazing that steve can speak several languages at this level.
I am fluent in both it’s fun to see there are other people who can speak mandarin and Cantonese
To be honest, I think many non-English speakers who learn English is because English is the world’s most important language, either for practical reason or economic reason, it’s useful to learn. You also get to read the world’s most advanced paper and technology because they are all written in English. So there is no reason not to learn English well because the underlying substance is just so important. However as to other languages, to be honest, people don’t really have so much curiosity or incentive or time to invest in learning a language if it is not so useful or helpful.
I’m still trying to gain some level of proficiency with English and that’s the only language I have spoken my entire life!
I loved this interview, the content, the caption in English and Pinying, everything
Because of Steve I had the guts to learn mandarin 4 years ago. Now I start to work at Alibaba in Hangzhou.
the way he said Jessie was already Chinese haha so good.
The whole reason he speaks Chinese is to learn more.
Steve knows plenty about China. Listening has helped me greatly.
From watching this I can deduce Cantonese is a difficult language to master to speak. I’m glad I am a Cantonese and grew up with Hong Kong pop culture influence and entertainment.
Such a great video with very useful advice.
His Chinese is better than most 'young polyglots' on YT these days.
Thanks to STEVE, I just discovered a new RUclips channel to follow!
This man is the GOAT. First saw him on Feli‘s channel speaking German
How did Steve 'keep' so many languages? Learning is one thing,but languages fade away without using them.
I feel like to keep those languages, you have to continuously practice them or use them. I bet he talks to a lot of different people everyday in all 20 or more languages he knows
Very few people like learning new things especially if it’s not tied to money and learning another language or languages is even rarer as frustration kills many who try! Congrats as I’m trying to acquire a second language and have discovered something great during the process that even more drives me to learning more languages! Lounging and learning for life!
And indeed inputs, meaningful inputs are so important, especially in the beginning of the language journey.
He wasn’t kidding when he said he took a shortcut to learn Cantonese with the six tones. In comparison to his Mandarin (which is OMG good), his Cantonese has a heavy accent which is certainly understandable but certainly not as good as his Mandarin.
The sound of Mandarin - brushes on 4 pots
The sound of Cantonese - rain on 9 pots
Tried to learn some Cantonese in HK when I briefly worked there a couple of times. So hard for this Westerner!
you will learn both character sets; there ARE simplification rules and principles! You should study which ever character set is in the place you want to go first. I think simplified may be easier to learn, though i can think of good arguments that traditional though tougher to write are easier to recognize. learning both will make each MORE memorable! so learn both but start with one, whichever You prefer!
Watching this helps me a lot and answers many questions I have in my mind. Thank you guys!!❤