I like to pick "anchor" languages that will help me to easily dabble in a group of related languages. For example, French is my anchor for the Romance languages and Arabic is an anchor for the Semitic languages, the Arabosphere (the Arab dialects, Persian, and formerly Ottoman Turkish), and the hundreds of languages worldwide that have a small but crucial base of Arabic vocabulary, such as Spanish, Turkish, Indonesian, and Swahili. As an anime fan for about 25 years, I had always assumed that Japanese would be my anchor for the Sinosphere (the Sinitic Chinese languages plus Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese). However, only 60% of Japanese vocabulary comes from Chines so it isn't ideal as an anchor. My recent infatuation with Taiwan has suggested a better solution: Mandarin and Taiwanese as co-anchors.
~~Learning the Characters~~
My initial plan to learn the Chinese characters was to use James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. However, that makes heavy use of mnemonics due to Japanese's varied pronunciations of the characters. However, a large proportion of the characters are partly phonetic (I think I've seen a figure of 80%). So I think a better way to learn them is to first reach a high level of spoken Chinese, and then learn the characters in Heisig order (starting with the basic building blocks and then learning more and more complex characters) but learning the Chinese pronunciation.
Now, which Chinese to learn? Well, as I understand it, Cantonese is the most conservative languages for finals; it preserves all six final consonants (p, t, k, m, n, and ŋ) and preserves all eight of the Middle Chinese tone classes (and has an additional split in tone class 7 which I believe follows historical vowel length but I'm not 100% sure on that). However, Mandarin seems to more conservative regarding the other parts of the syllable (initial, medial, and core vowel). So short of learning reconstructed Middle or Old Chinese phonology, learning spoken Mandarin and Cantonese does seem to be the best way to take advantage of the phonetic nature of the Chinese characters. I will plan on learning the traditional characters first, then the simplified characters. Again, this will not be in the near future because my plan requires a high level of the spoken language, which will take a while.
~~Taiwanese vs. Cantonese~~
Now, although Cantonese is likely the best candidate to help distinguish finals, Taiwanese is not far behind. It preserves all the final consonants, plus a glottal stop that has been lost in Cantonese (but I believe the phonemic distinction is preserved by the tone system). And it has had only one tone merger, so it reflects seven of the eight Middle Chinese tone classes (I can't say "preserves" because the Min languages actually diverged before Middle Chinese). Teochew, another Southern Min dialect, distinguishes all eight of the classes but the best resources I could find were for Taiwanese. I think that giving up one phonemic tone is a fair trade for the feeling of connection I have with Taiwan and the excitement of learning something off the beaten path.
In addition to its more complete tone system, Cantonese has a few other advantages. It was historically the most dominant Chinese language in North America, and even today it is competitive with Mandarin in the US. Because of this, it is really easy to find Western media that has been dubbed into Cantonese.
I was going back and forth between Taiwanese and Cantonese, but in the end, Taiwanese won, for many reasons:
- X-factor: As mentioned above, Taiwanese has the excitement factor of studying something that is off the beaten path but still has great resources, and my interest in the POJ Latin alphabet.
- Popular media: Although it is much easier for me to get Western media in Cantonese than Taiwanese, that doesn't actually appeal to me that much because I prefer to enjoy media in the original language, and there seems to be just as much material from Taiwan as from Hong Kong on Netflix, although the Taiwanese materials probably feature a lot more Mandarin. As a metalhead, I am also excited to get into the Taipei-based band Chthonic, which has songs in Taiwanese, Mandarin, Classical Chinese, and English.
- News media: Hong Kong ranks at a perfectly respectable 80th place on RSF's 2021 Press Freedom Index (not far behind #67, Japan, and ahead of #86, Israel, as well as several European countries), #43 Taiwan narrowly missed out to #42 South Korea to have the best score in Asia, and is just ahead of the #44, the USA. There are more options for streaming video news in Cantonese, but there is a 24-hour Taiwanese Hokkien channel, PTS Taigi which probably has some news shows. It's geoblocked but of course there are ways around that. There is also the 24-hour news channel FTV News. I watched a little bit of it (not that I actually understood anything except an English-language car commercial with Chinese subtitles). It was all in Mandarin as far as my untrained ears could tell, but maybe there are some opportunities to hear Taiwanese on that channel as well. As far as I know, all print news is in Standard Chinese.
- Difficulty: I haven't gotten past the dabbling stage before in a tonal language, but luckily I seem to have a good ear for tones. Mandarin tones are absolutely trivial for me and any listening mistakes I make are related to the palatal consonants, not the tones. Taiwanese has the extra complication that it has level and falling tones at two different pitch levels, but that has not caused me any problems so far. One issue down the road will be that Min tone sandhi is absolutely bonkers, with only the last syllable of a phrase being unaffected, but I am told that the changes are very regular. Cantonese, on the other hand, presents me much more of a challenge. There are level tones at three different pitch heights, and in addition the two rising tones seem to have around the same starting pitch for some speakers (with only the ending pitch being different), so that is giving me much more trouble.
- Sound appeal:Cantonese and Taiwanese do share a lot of pronunciation features (such as final stops, syllabic nasals and some tone pairs that differ only by pitch), but I do prefer the sound of Taiwanese because it sounds a bit more mellow to me. Cantonese is spoken faster and the high tones are higher, giving it the impression of being shouted (although I'm sure that is something that I would get used to with exposure). I also like the nasal vowels, final glottal stops, and three-way stop contrast (voiceless aspirated vs. unaspirated, and voiced) of Taiwanese, and I like that it has just six vowels, which are six of Italian's seven vowels; it's missing the front rounded and back unrounded vowels that you might hear in other Chinese languages (at least with a Taichung accent which is what I'll be learning; in Southern Taiwan the closed o is replaced with roughly the "uh" vowel of English).
~~Short-term plans (next year or two)~~
The Sinosphere languages don't have a lightweight reputation so this project will take many years. This isn't something I can casually dabble in. My first priority is to reach an advanced level in Arabic, followed by Modern Hebrew. So I will mostly be trying to fit extended Sinosphere language study into time slots where it won't interfere with Arabic.
Taiwanese (Latin alphabet only)
I have ordered a set of the legendary Maryknoll language books and audio from Taiwan. It is a very extensive five-volume audio-lingual course, with the first two volumes roughly equivalent to an FSI Basic course, with each volume having enough audio to fill two mp3 CDs. The last three books have a bit less audio, only one mp3 CD each. The third book is full of dialogs with very little English instruction except to introduce new vocabulary. I had not heard of books 4 and 5 before but this is the description they gave me:
The theme of Book 4 is "Taiwanese Festivals and Holidays". The content includes lessons on everything from births to funerals, from marriage customs to Taoist mythology, from beliefs about the Zodiac to annual company dinners, from naming conventions to lunar/solar holidays, and more.
Book 5 is a short novel about a nurse in a hospital who falls in love with one of her patients. After becoming pregnant with the patient's child, the patient disappears and the nurse loses her job. The rest of the story is about her journey following the above hardships, and how she manages to carry on despite all the challenges facing a single mother in Taiwanese society.
The package will be shipped by sea so I probably won't get it until February or early March. Fortunately, the text of the first three books are posted very publicly, and I also received the audio for the first two books by a kind benefactor, so I am able to start studying right away. I won't point to exactly where I got them since I'm not sure of their copyright status and the last thing I want is for MI6 to bust down Rick's door. So far I have only gone over the first tape, which covers the vowel and consonant sounds and the basic tones. The tone Sandhi rules will be covered on the second tape.
I will hopefully be able to keep up my Arabic studies using Pimsleur, Assimil, and Duolingo while studying Taiwanese.
Spoken Mandarin
Once I have finished my current Arabic resources I will want start DLI Arabic Basic Course, which is quite extensive (181 tapes, so somewhere between 75 and 90 hours of audio). That will replace my Taiwanese time slot but should free up my commuting time slot, so I am thinking of doing Pimsleur Chinese (Mandarin) concurrently with DLI Arabic.
Korean
Korean seems to be the most dabbleable Sinosphere language due to its lack of tones and heavy reliance on an alphabet and limited use of Chinese characters. I've been thinking of giving Korean a brief dabble, so I might take a quick break from Arabic before starting the DLI course and Pimsleur Mandarin. My goal is to be able to read the instructions on the instant noodles that my wife tends to buy, as well as being able to pick out some words and phrases while enjoying popular Korean media.
Starting resources: Pimsleur, Assimil, and Duolingo.
~~Long-term plans (after I have died of old age)~~
Written Chinese
As mentioned above.
Japanese
I would love to spend a lot of time on it some day! After reaching a good level of spoken and written Mandarin and Taiwanese, it shouldn't be too hard.
Resources: Pimsleur, Duolingo, and maybe the Genki textbooks and/or Assimil.
Cantonese
Just because I fell for Taiwanese, doesn't mean I wouldn't also love to learn Cantonese some day!
Resources: Pimsleur, Teach Yourself, FSI. There's also an Assimil course but it's out of print and I haven't been able to find a copy.
Shanghainese
I'd probably like to learn a bit of this too. I'm not aware of any good English resources other than a short Mango Languages course, so I'll have to hold off on window shopping for now.
Vietnamese
It's a cool language and I love the instantly recognizable derpy, overloaded Latin alphabet. I'll probably want to study it at some point.
Resources: Pimsleur and Assimil (Northern dialect), Duolingo (? dialect), FSI (Southern dialect).