When I started learning Cantonese, I did not work through a course or text book lesson by lesson, but spent the first couple of weeks on acquiring general and personal core vocabulary. General core vocabulary consists of frequently used words like:
- Personal pronouns (I, you, he, she, it, …).
- Question words (who, what, where, when, why).
- Numbers.
- Greetings and and expressing gratitude.
- Words for expressing basic needs and talking about daily life activities (hungry, thirsty, want, would like to, need, tired, sleepy, big, small, expensive, cheap, buy, sell, go, walk, hot, cold, warm, cool…).
And as its name implies, personal core vocabulary is a set of words frequently used by a specific person.
Apart from learning words (and phrases), I also had a quick look at essential Cantonese grammar like basic word order, how to form and answer questions, and how to express past and future. This approach combined with living in a Cantonese speaking city worked very well. Now I am going to use it again for Thai.
This mission has the following objectives:
- Establish a Thai immersion environment without being in Thailand.
- Learn core vocabulary, core phrases, and essential grammar.
Achieving the first objective is a bit tricky, because Hong Kong’s Thai population is rather small. The good news is that many Thais and Thai businesses are located in Kowloon City, which is not too far from my home. But I probably won’t be able to go there more than once a week. So I’ll mainly have to rely on the Internet to create a virtual immersion environment (chat via Skype, watch Thai TV, and listen to Thai radio).
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