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cactusa
now that many of you guys have mastered the basics and went beyond...how would you approach Cantonese learning as a total beginner? Which materials would you use?
I knew Mandarin when I started Cantonese, but if I didn't, I'd certainly use Assimil. However, that requires a reading knowledge of French. If I also didn't know French, I'd probably use something like Colloquial or Teach Yourself. I actually did the Pimsleur course once, and it's pretty good, but very short. Assimil is doubtlessly the gold standard for any language acquisition, but as I said, the Cantonese course is only availible with a French base as of yet (but if you're serious about polyglottery, you should consider learning French since it opens up a lot of great materials).
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Would you use Anki? If so which decks?
I'd use Anki, but I'd make my own decks. I have actually worked through an Anki deck of 5,000 characters, but I don't recommend doing that until you've reached at least an intermediate level. You'll get some free because of Japanese, but you need to learn thousands more. Also, delaying reading has shown to improve spoken fluency in learners of character-based languages. I don't do sentence cards, so the 10ks/AJATT method isn't my cup of tea, though I like putting a sentence on the back of the card. I prefer keeping the front clear of clues. Basically, create cards based on the material you're using to learn. Subs2SRS might be a good idea, but that would require finding a DVD with extractable Cantonese subtitles and that's not easy.
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How do you suggest practicing tones? Is praticing tones through musical notes a stupid idea? How many of them, 4,6, 9? Is there really no falling tone?
There are 6 tones in most modern romanizations. Sometimes the entering tones ( for words ending in -p, -t, or -k) are considered separate because of historic reasons and are given numbers 7, 8 and 9, but they're the same as 1, 3 and 6, respectively. The falling tone does still exist in many Cantonese dialects, but it's all but disappeared in the HK variety, which is the one most people learn. In the HK dialect, there are only two morphemes pronounced with the falling tone (先 and 添, when used as phrase-final particles). There's nt really any trick to practicing them, as far as I know. I found them pretty easy, but many people struggle. Listen and repeat, and read the explanations as to where each tone begins and where it ends. There are a few small tricks you need to make sure you do right, like beginning a tone 3 lower than the end of a tone 5, but all in all, you will likely get it right from the start or never get it right despite hundreds of hours of practice. That's prounciation for you. If you've managed pitch accent in Japanese, you should be able to manage the Cantonese tone system.