Cantonese Testimony 🙌 學中文見證

BACKGROUND:
I moved to Hong Kong in 2012, and I have tried everything I could to learn Cantonese. I spent SO MUCH time studying by myself, with various resources. Of course, the best way to study is to take classes. But classes weren't possible, either because they were unavailable, or too expensive.

And language exchange sessions with friends were always difficult to schedule. For a few months. Mei Ying tried to do language exchange with me. But even though it's spoken by over 50,000,000 people, almost nobody actually studies Cantonese. So, language exchange friendships don't usually produce great results. (But, I'm definitely happy, because even though I didn't learn Cantonese...I got to marry her!)

ANSWER TO PRAYER:
In November 2017, my prayer group at church prayed for me to be able to find a way to learn Cantonese. That week, I found a surprisingly affordable short-term class--taught in Mandarin--for Mainland Chinese people who wanted to study Cantonese.

If you aren't a native Mandarin speaker, I don't recommend this. It's very, very hard!

And to make it harder, the class was in Central (80 minutes from my house), and it required a lot of walking before and after the class.

According to CUHK, non-native Chinese speakers need roughly 6x more study time to learn any Chinese dialect than native Chinese speakers. (And I'm not a native Mandarin speaker!)

But I found a good online tutor, who has helped me a LOT with my Cantonese classes, and also with my Cantonese videos, 阿Joe講家庭，講英文 (Family, Language, and Joe). I was able to survive the class, and my reading and speaking ability both shot up from an Elementary to an Intermediate Level.

In December, I got an email from CUHK, saying that I could take classes in Jordan. They had one class that was a perfect fit for me, but it was very expensive.

But, because of the (exhaustingly difficult) class in Central, I knew I would be ready to start this Intermediate class, which is taught in English.

The email said that because I had studied Mandarin at CUHK (a 3-month full-time Upper Intermediate Mandarin course, in Fall 2015), I could get an 85% rebate if I completed 2 Cantonese courses.

Amazing!

So, I'm so grateful for my brothers at church praying, and for how God answered.

Answer to Prayer