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Lorinth’s log - 劳伦的博客 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4267 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 137 of 408 05 September 2013 at 9:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In the Chinese Wikipedia, I read the article about 方鸿渐, the main character of 《围城》. I started reading 巴金的《春》(Abridged Chinese Classic Series, Sinolingua). I read from page 1 to page 16 (2 chapters). As it is an interlinear text (pinyin/hanzi), with a lot of empty spaces and pictures, I'd assess it's the equivalent of 3-4 pages. These first two chapters introduce many characters (and the tensions to which they are subjected and which will, I suppose, be the thread of the book) so they are chock full of family names and kinship vocabulary, and I'm a little bit lost. Usual vocabulary drills. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4267 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 138 of 408 06 September 2013 at 9:52am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Started and finished a ChinesePod lesson about a broken leg. With the last 5 or 6 lessons, I have listened repeatedly to the podcast before looking up the vocabulary or listening to the explanations. Except in one case, after such repeated listening, I was able to understand almost everything, say 95%. It's encouraging, but in real life situations, there is no such thing as "repeated listening" (except "再说一遍", but your interlocutor will most probably switch to English, and also "pause" and "rewind", but it gets old after a while). Read chapters 3 and 4 of 巴金的《春》. Read some more of the booklet 《如何学习言语（外语）？》. Indulged some more in my vocabulary acquisition addiction. Tried again to get used to listen to some Chinese in the background while working, a habit which I've been unable to make, up to now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4267 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 139 of 408 11 September 2013 at 10:03am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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巴金的《春》: read to chapter 18 included. Language lovers may enjoy the interesting discussion taking place in chap. 16-17, in which the very conservative head of the family professes that "learning English is useless for girls, they'd better learn how to raise kids". Hopefully, the world has changed. Mostly. Read an article about the position of France at the G20 summit concerning the Syrian crisis, one about Merkel's stance on the same subject, and another one about Iran's attitude. Vocab: usual drills. Yesterday my daily dose of 25 生词 (unknown words) was drawn from an episode of the animated cartoon 喜洋洋. Chinese Wikipedia about 喜洋洋. I've been using Skritter for 3 months and I have 336 characters in the queue, that's 3,5 new characters/day. I'm satisfied with that rate. Mostly, I've been adding batches of characters drawn from Patrick Zein's frequency list, starting from the bottom (#3000), plus characters I've studied many times and tend to forget over and over again. Patrick Zein's frequency list. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cacue23 Triglot Groupie Canada Joined 4292 days ago 89 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Shanghainese, Mandarin*, English Studies: Cantonese | Message 140 of 408 11 September 2013 at 12:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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巴金的《春》is a real read, even if it's abridged.
And how do you find all those resources? Quite amazing. I realize I haven't read most of the short stories or novels you read during my years of education in China. Not sure when they'll ever include them in the curriculum. In fact, I don't really remember what I read during my school years. I believe at least one-third of our textbook texts are foreign stories in translation. Edited by cacue23 on 11 September 2013 at 12:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4267 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 141 of 408 11 September 2013 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm totally engrossed in this series. I don't know to what extent the style of the author, or even the plot, have survived the abridgement process, but I think they are really good novels. In fact, I have the full versions of 《家》 and 《春》 sitting on a shelf, and I'm toying with the idea of reading them afterwards. We'll see.
My main source for the short stories is chinese-shortstories.com. It's a French site, despite the name, and they have the full text of many short stories, and sometimes also the vocabulary, linguistic and cultural explanations, etc. The site. For the articles, I simply use Google news. I've configured it long ago to display the Chinese press and to select articles automatically with key words. Right now, I can't remember how I did that, but I'll try to explain it one of these days. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cacue23 Triglot Groupie Canada Joined 4292 days ago 89 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Shanghainese, Mandarin*, English Studies: Cantonese | Message 142 of 408 12 September 2013 at 12:26am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It's been several years since I last read the novel. But when I thought about it, I believe it's theoretically possible for you to read it, and for pleasure. The language is pretty modern and he didn't tend to use sophisticated words. Of course you'll still need a lot of checking in a dictionary. Ordinarily this will tire you out. But you could probably try to look for the plot you recognize, plus by now you know the family tree of the clan. But there's always the issue of time and things happening in life, so it's really up to you. Thanks for the website, I'll check it out one of these days. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4267 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 143 of 408 12 September 2013 at 9:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for the encouragement cacue23! I wouldn't dare to say that I'm familiar with the
family tree: there are so many proper names and detailed kinship words that I still have to refer to the handy family tree chart that is displayed on the first page of each volume. I definitely intend to read the real deal one of these days (I may try 王强's 圈子 圈套 II before that, though, because I've already read vol. I). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4267 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 144 of 408 12 September 2013 at 9:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Finished reading the abridged version of 春. Tomorrow I'll start reading the abridged version of the sequel, 秋. Finished the ChinesePod lesson about 儿童节 and some kids who 表演动物世界. Read an article about the NSA spying on the Belgium-based SWIFT database (环球 银行金融电 信协会) and the reaction of the European Commissioner in charge of home affairs (欧盟委员 会内政事务委员). It's fun, sort of, to observe Europeans stubbornly turning the other cheek. Watched the first episode of 魔幻手机. Woah! Amazing! Hilarious! 西游记 blended with The Matrix: a dream come true. (I had to use the pause key a lot, though, to have time to read the subtitles and look up quite a few words). You can watch it here. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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