A language challenge: let's learn a little Italian and Cantonese (Chinese). In this video, Cantonese speakers try to say a few words of Italian and our Italian interviewers try tto learn the corresponding words and phrases in Cantonese. Lasy year, Michela was an exchange students at our school (SKH Lam Woo Memorial Secondary School). She is from Italy and came to Hong Kong on a student exchange organized by AFS intercultural Exchange (http://www.afs.hk/home/). One afternoon, her friend, Amanuel, came to vist and we shot the footage for this video. Like Michela, Amanuel was an AFS exchange student from Italy. The video highlights several language issues: 1. Hello Cantonese is a tonal language, so even if you say the correct sequence of sounds, if you don't use the correct tone, you are likely to say another word. The prase 'nei hio ' (你可) literally translates to 'you good'. The first few times Michela and Amanuel said this phrase, they got the tone wrong on 'ho', and used the tone for 'can'. If you are not used to tonal languages, it is very difficult to see where the error is. Cantonese is particularly difficult to learn because it has so many tones. There six distinct tones in Cantonese (with an additional three variations based on the final consonant), For more information, you can refer to the Wikipedia page on Cantonese phonology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantone... You may have noticed that the first time one of the Hong Kong students say the phrase in the video, she says 'lei ho' instead of 'nei ho'. 'Nei ho' is the correct pronunciation, but many (if not most Cantonese) speakers often used a simplified kind of pronunciation when speaking. in Chinese this is referred to as "懶音" (lan yum), which literally means 'lazy sound'. Most Chinese teachers would consider this kind of simplified pronunciation to be incorrect. 2. Goodbye For speakers of languages without a rolled 'R' (the sound is called 'erre' in Italian), trying to pronounce words like Arrivederci is very intimidating. Here is a video on how to pronounce the sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WQhC... It took a while for the native speakers to get the tone write for 'Joi Geen' (再見), We had some difficulty translating what they actually said (宰件) into English. The words they actually pronounced could also be translated as 'kill files'. The way they pronounced 'geen', it sounded more like one of the particles used before some nouns in Cantonese. These particles are called classifiers. Classifiers. For example, when speaking Cantonese ,instead of saying "three books" one would say "three + classifier + books". 3. i Love You. We were quite surprised that one of the Hong Kong students knew the Italian phrase, Ti Amo, already. When introducing the phrase Ngo Ngoi Nei, the first pair of students used the 'lan yum' (lazy sound) pronunciation for all three words. When I first started learning Cantonese these alternative pronunciations really confused me. The second set of students used the more formal (or many would say correct) pronunciation. The sound at the beginning of Ngo and Ngoi is quite unusual for speakers of many languages. English speakers often struggle with it. Actually, it is more or less the same song as at the end of 'sing' and 'long'; the only challenging part is that this sound never goes at the beginning of a word in English, so it seems rather strange to start a word with it.. 4. Friends Their were problems with inaccurate tones on the first part of 'peng yau'. With Amanuel saying something more like 'bun yau' 笨友 (stupid friend) and Michela saying something more like peng yau 貧友 (poor friend, with 'poor' referring to a lack of money.) 5. Beautiful As the Hong Kong students are quite advanced English learners, they can pick up rather complicated multi-syllable words fairly easily. ---------------------- Credits Italian Speakers Michela and Amanuel Cantonese Speakers: Yuni & Sally; Yuki, Kirsty & Patsy; Winnie & Angel Assistance with Translations: Joyce, Mabel, Kelly, Gigi, Serena & Eunice Camera Operator: Tim Varday Video Production, Editing and Music: Stephen Richards (longzijun: https://longzijun.wordpress.com/ ---------- CMe Creative Media Studio (https://cmestudio.wordpress.com/) SKH Lam Woo Memorial Secondary School A Relelali Production Relax Learn Laugh Live ----------- We hope you enjoyed the videol We hope to create a series of similar videos.

• published: 23 Feb 2016
• views: 18