Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5952 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 265 of 740 13 June 2010 at 10:51pm | IP Logged |
罗马不是一天造成的 / 羅馬不是一天造成的
luómǎ bushì yītiān zàochéng de
Rome was not built in a day.
That's the reply given by a chat partner when I expressed fustration with my current Mandarin situation. That and he excused me because I'm American, which then sent the conversation into a different direction .... being satisfied with the status quo is nonproductive. Daily new cards, in my SRS software, are set to zero but review entries still increase due to turn around times for an entry (12 hours later, 2 days, etc). And while I'm currently working from home, which gives much greater flexibility, next month that will not the case. The review card count made it up to 700+ and right now is about 580. On the upside, saying things like 我想不出来 (wo3 xiang3buchu1lai2) is becoming natural.
Edited by Snowflake on 13 June 2010 at 11:27pm
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5952 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 266 of 740 29 June 2010 at 4:28am | IP Logged |
Bang head here. Between the job and some health issues, I’m getting little done. With my time being so limited and unpredictable, I’ve thought about changing the approach for now and mimic’ing sentences from my movies… something fun. I’ve been too tired to even do that. The regular chats are pretty much holding me together at the moment. I’ve also pulled the stoppers on listening to movies with less than wonderful accents in favor of FUN, or as much as can be mustered under the circumstances.
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5952 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 267 of 740 04 July 2010 at 4:49am | IP Logged |
Have taken a first step in mimic'ing sentences from my movies. A while back I did some transcriptions though never completely finished any one movie. So I printed about two pages from one of those.
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5952 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 268 of 740 08 July 2010 at 7:28am | IP Logged |
Also under making things more interesting, am listening to radio from
Singapore (http://radiostationworld.com/locations/Singapore/Radio.asp) and
Taiwan (http://www.radiotower.com/country-TW.html?p=0&ord=rating&di r=desc).
It's a nice change from Beijing radio.
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5952 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 269 of 740 23 July 2010 at 11:54pm | IP Logged |
I'm very slowly catching up on the SRS entries, which are still set to 0 for new entries. The busy job schedule still prevents me from attending my Mandarin small groups. On the upside, my friend from Jiangsu has joined this project and now sits next to me. We don't get to chat much though his reaction to the accents in my Mandarin dubbed movies is interesting. This particular project is out of town so the dynamics are different. Anyhow he pointed out a restuarant, at the project site, where the owner speaks Mandarin and Cantonese. I get a little practice in at the restuarant. I also still do chats on the weekends.....must admit my mind feels like a sieve.
Edited by Snowflake on 24 July 2010 at 12:01am
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5952 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 270 of 740 31 July 2010 at 7:32am | IP Logged |
My due SRS entries are below 400 now, hooray! I also started chatting again with someone whom I haven't talked to in months. Chatting with people in the mainland and Taiwan can be a little put-offing. This was a bit surprizing to my co-worker from Jiangsu. Being here, he interacts with native Mandarin speakers from both the mainland and Taiwan. So he sees mainland and Taiwan phrases as interchangeable. As some forum members have encountered, that's generally not the case with overseas chat partners.
In terms of listening, I am currently concentrating on two particular animated movies. These are basically my most fun ones. One has what most people would consider to be an undesirable accent. To give a favor, a chat partner from Taiwan immediately said it is a mainland accent and not from Taiwan. He felt the accent purposely was exaggerated. My Jiangsu friend immediately said the accent was from Taiwan. When I contradicted that, he then thought it was Singaporean. He felt it could not be a mainland accent. From a documentary, I am quite sure it is a regional mainland accent which sometimes is translated into standard Mandarin for other people. I suppose it can be likened to a less common English accent ...like when documentaries show Welsh or Irish people speaking in English with a thick accent and English subtitles are present. On that note, someone in the mainland suggested the movie “Crazy Stone” as having a lot of different mainland accents. I haven't gotten around to getting a copy of that.
Edited by Snowflake on 31 July 2010 at 8:28am
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5952 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 271 of 740 07 August 2010 at 12:42am | IP Logged |
Still trying to catch up on SRS reviews. Due entries are under 200 now. While frustrated, I know that there’s some serious brain furniture rearranging going on given what is happening with my English.
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5952 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 272 of 740 14 August 2010 at 9:43pm | IP Logged |
Caught up with my SRS reviews this week and turned back on new cards to 10 a day.
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