Melody was halfway through chapter five by Tuesday morning. As is traditional with children's stories, her novel had started with the somewhat cliched passage of the children heading off to school. But it was now thickening with hints of the titanic struggle between good and evil to come, a clash that would test the extremes of both friendship and magic. As she finished another paragraph, the author couldn't help but glow at the thought of the Pulitzer that would almost certainly be hers.Learning Cantonese? This is our first Intermediate lesson at Popup Chinese and our first show starring our new Hong Kong podcaster Melody. At this level we try to keep our shows filled with the same natural and colloquial speech you'll hear in Hong Kong, and highlight only the more difficult segments and passages. It's a delicate balance, so if you have thoughts or feedback please share them with us. We'd love to read your comments in the discussion space below, or over email at service@popupcantonese.com.
suel
said on January 22, 2012
I am going through the transcript in jyutping but there seem to be a lot of inconsistencies: some characters have numbers for tones, some have accents, and some have no information at all. Take:1. so...gam3 ci haā lei6 bō dak6 gé?ci should be low rising, but there is no tone noted. gam3 has a number, but in other places an accent is used for third or second tones. And a down accent is used in the transcript for low falling, though many textbooks use this for the high falling tone (which of course you don't really need to learn).Anyway, I think this needs work. Stay with numbers or accents. I feel slightly guilty pointing this out since I am still a freeloader. Thanks! (And how comes this transcript was available to me while the others are not?)
trevelyan
said on January 24, 2012
@suel,Thanks for the heads up -- the problem should be fixed now. Also, the reason this transcript is available is because it's our sample lesson showing off the various site features. If you try to access the popup transcripts for other lessons, we'll still bother you to upgrade. But the podcasts are of course always free.Best,--david
sokuban111
said on January 24, 2012
Nice! Glad to see you guys finally an Intermediate Lesson.Only problem is, I am in the strange dilemma where I find this Intermediate lesson "a bit on the easy side", yet I find the Advanced lessons "too hard".
trevelyan
said on January 25, 2012
@sokuban111,Thanks for the feedback. It's going to take us a while to have a good-sized upper level archive of lessons. If you want more difficult lessons in the meanwhile, why not help us out by sending along some suggested dialogues at what you think is the right level of difficulty?This is a learning process for us too, so it would be really helpful to get this sort of feedback for figuring out what levels people are at and what sorts of materials we should be producing.Cheers,--david
simehome
said on January 26, 2012
My gf says the dialog sounds canadian not HK. Are the speakers living in Hong Kong?
trevelyan
said on January 27, 2012
Yes simehome -- with the exception of Nicole (who is from the mainland but currently a graduate student in Hong Kong) all our speakers are born and raised in Hong Kong and are long-term residents there. That said, if there's anything in particular that caught her ear, let us know. Everyone is off for Chinese New Years now, but we should be doing more recording next week and it might make for an interesting topic for a show.
thomaslee1965
said on February 7, 2012
hi, Nicole or Melody:Popup Cantonese is the best Website to learn the Cantonese. could you please adding more intermediate lessons?Best regards.
trevelyan
said on February 8, 2012
@thomaslee1965,Thanks for the feedback. :) Things have been a bit slow for the last few weeks because of Chinese New Years, but we'll be back with more lessons starting next week. Producing more intermediate materials is definitely a priority.Best,--david
sacredhero86
said on March 18, 2012
For some reason this doesn't show up in my podcasts through itunes...but the investigation does.
trevelyan
said on March 21, 2012
@sacredhero86,Strange, I'll take a look and see what the problem is.--david
sacredhero86
said on March 22, 2012
I think I've figured out the problem. It seems to be related to multiple download locations... unfortunately I had to delete everything relating to popup Cantonese and let the website launch itunes to redownload it all...which seems to have fixed 99% of the issues. For all the episodes with transcripts the transcripts quickly replace the information about the podcast...though this can still be viewed in the pdfs in ibook. So yeah to other paid subscribes I would suggest downloading everything through this sites subscription link and not through your devices or through itunes directly. I'm using the latest iOS on a touch 4th generation.
msadler888
said on April 3, 2012
Hello,I am about to travel to HK so I thought I'd learn a few sentences. While debating on your system, I "appreciatively " listened to one free sample.I was a little dismayed to hear the female say "nei" and then "lei" interchangeably. I realize that the "new/lazy" way is to speak "lei" but it's very disconcerting to a beginner to hear both in the same lesson. Can't you PICK ONE way and stick to it? It matters very much to me that the lesson is consistent.So, I'm not able to purchase your lessons because I don't want to be confused like that. Thank you however for your attempted system. I hope it gets perfected.All the best,GS
trevelyan
said on April 5, 2012
@msadler888,Thanks for the comment. Not an attempt to put a hard sell on you, but in order to explain the approach for anyone else who is curious -- this is an intermediate lesson which means we encourage speakers to speak colloquially and casually as long as it is educated, mainstream Cantonese.We do try to be consistent using "nei" at the absolute beginner level, such as our intro 20-lesson series and also try to point out when pronunciations diverge from the norm as spoken/heard in Hong Kong (i.e. Guangdong patterns, etc.). We are a work in progress though! Best,--david
dave.mar
said on October 26, 2012
just want to say I agree with sokuban111 that there's a big gap between intermediate and advanced. I understand pretty much everything in intermediate, but in Advanced, I'm lucky to get the gist of the conversation.Maybe, the compromise would be to make a level which has the same Advanced conversations but shorten them so that it can be translated quickly , maybe not word for word. The paid version might have this already, but I'm just waiting for more content before joining.
sacredhero86
said on November 14, 2012
I think they have bigger issues right now. They seem to be struggling just to consistently put out lessons at all now :/
08JC
said on November 16, 2012
I agree with sacredhero - I think that last podcast we had was mid-September. I've emailed them, asking if we could possibly have more, but had no reply...it's a big shame :(
dave.mar
said on November 16, 2012
I really hope they don't give up on this venture. The mandarin site is great. It tough to startup a new site. I wish them the best.
darkstar94
said on November 20, 2012
Yeah this website IS good, but it's hard to use when the content is limited due to lack of podcasts being produced, it seems as though their focus could be somewhere else.
Youli
said on November 23, 2012
Come on guys! You say the site is great yet don't agree to pay 50$ and wait till there will be a wonder - lot's of lessons and content.I think the only way we can have a chance to get more lessons is to start paying money (which I did). The market for Cantonese is not as huge as Mandarin, but it exists, it's a good niche, so I believe popupcantonese will eventually become a hit.
trevelyan
said on December 4, 2012
@Youli, darkstar94, and everyone,Yes -- we agree about the limited content recently. The problem is that I've been out of the country and so has Melody and Nicole, so production has slowed and we haven't wanted to bring new people on to do stuff unless we know it will be good.Anyway -- we aren't planning on abandoning Popup Cantonese, although lesson production will be quite slow until the New Year (another month or so). People are of course welcome to pay, but I don't think it will really make a difference in speeding that up. And I'll take a look and see about that first listening test.Best,--david
darkstar94
said on December 5, 2012
It must be hard juggling this and Cantoneseclass101 anyway, you definitely do a good job in both of them, but this website has a bit more personality I think.Thanks for the reply.
