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Snowflake’s Mandarin Log

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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5952 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 641 of 740
16 January 2013 at 7:20pm | IP Logged 
Day 150 of SinoSpoon/Neutrino.... Finished the 西遊記 graphic novel (no I did not look up every unknown character). For the purposes of the Super Challenge it counts as 1/5 of a book, 318 pages. Anyhow, I'm going back to reading The Hobbit and will probably reread this 西遊記 in several months. My book order from Hong Kong still has not arrived. Well that's what happens when paying for surface mail service, sigh. Once that arrives, plan to place another book order...have been on the look-out for interesting childrens books.

http://comic.piliapp.com/author/cwwany/ ...Her books are also available in simplified.

Edited by Snowflake on 16 January 2013 at 8:31pm

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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5952 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 642 of 740
17 January 2013 at 7:49pm | IP Logged 
I'm going to ask the bookstore to put a trace on the package. It dawned that the other surface mail package from Hong Kong which arrived early last week, shipped at about the same time. Well, here's another opportunity to write in Chinese. I'll ask some friends to proof my letter.   

Hope to place that mainland Amazon order today.

Update; Been through the mainland Amazon screens several times and haven't figured out how to mark the order so that PayPal knows it's me and not a fraudulent order.... haven't seen anything to designate it as a gift, nor run across being asked for a separate billing address. Hmmm, maybe I should try using a different laptop as it seems to be caching information.

Edited by Snowflake on 18 January 2013 at 2:11am

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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5952 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 643 of 740
20 January 2013 at 11:39pm | IP Logged 
Mumblings....got the mainland Amazon order through.      

Need to do more reading which means that I'll be doing less Neutrino tasks. Personally, the reading is turning out to be as important as SRS reviews to remember characters. I've said that before, though there's a tendency to work SRS reviews "to death" as there's a finite number making that easier to focus on.

Spent some time today with a Cantonese group. I tried to muster up some Toishanese though Mandarin came out. We ended up speaking mostly in English. Several of them said that Mandarin is easier as there's no systematic way to learn Cantonese. They attributed that to the 9 tones. I mentioned the idea that daily conversation uses 6 with only Cantonese opera using 9. They believe that the 9 tones are used in daily conversation.

Edited by Snowflake on 21 January 2013 at 12:02am

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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5952 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 644 of 740
31 January 2013 at 2:11am | IP Logged 
Not a lot to report...still working through Neutrino tasks and doing additional reading on the side. I feel this is where the beauty of Heisig comes out, seeing words that I audibly recognize and discovering new ones from familiar characters. Of course it really helps to have interesting reading material that decently matches my level. On that note, I expect to start the 2nd Heisig volume by the lunar New Year.

This is the subtitle from Kungfu Panda 2 where the peacock complains how many times does he have to kill the same stinking panda.
我得殺死這隻臭熊猫幾次才夠?
I haven't checked it against the audio yet to make sure they match.


Edited by Snowflake on 31 January 2013 at 2:30am

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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5952 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 645 of 740
01 February 2013 at 6:19pm | IP Logged 
Regarding the part in Kungfu Panda 2 where the peacock complains how many times do I need to kill the same stinking panda? .... The audio has 我到底要殺幾次才殺得死這隻臭熊猫? which is different than the subtitle.
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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5952 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 646 of 740
09 February 2013 at 5:08am | IP Logged 
Still waiting for my books to arrive, argh! I've started using www.purpleculture.net/traditional-simplified-converter/
to convert simplified text in Harry Potter books to traditional characters. These are soft copy books that a forum member posted URLs for a long time ago. Since I read so slowly, it's not a big deal to convert a few paragraphs beforehand. There may be some conversion mistakes here and there, but any misunderstandings will get sorted out in the end. I know so many native speakers that the more annoying thing will be having to sort through their differences on how to say something. BTW, I haven't finished The Hobbit. I tend to flip around reading different things.....variety is really helpful to keep things fresh so as to continue moving forward.

I've started the 2nd Heisig volume.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX38MmhushM
The singer is known as 家家. Her full name is 紀家盈.

Edited by Snowflake on 09 February 2013 at 5:11am

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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5952 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 647 of 740
13 February 2013 at 5:53pm | IP Logged 
Made it last weekend to both of my Mandarin speaking groups and had hot pot for the very first time. One person was incredulous about the latter, "Your parents are Chinese?!" Received my movies from mainland Amazon earlier than expected as my friends' mother came to visit. She brought those with her. So I have a lot of new DVDs, yay!   Since the mother is here for a few months, the next time they can bring things from the mainland will be in the summer.

On Sat I was looking at signs with 福 which were upside down. These were traditional red signs with goldfish, lotus flowers and I don’t remember what else. There were two of these upside down signs, one on each double front door facing inward.   This was the first time I was at a Chinese New Year celebration with this particular group.   My friends said that they do this every year.   The idea was to let good luck come into the house.   I don’t recall seeing that before and later asked my husband if he had. He said no. The next day, I asked at the other group about it.   They said it was a common practice and gave a similar explanation.   I'll probably ask my mother about it when we have the family celebration dinner.   

My book order from Hong Kong may come as late as the end of March.   Unstead of waiting for the prior order to arrive, I’m thinking of periodically placing orders so there’s a steady stream of new books coming in.   My husband suggested maybe we should just check out the bookstores in the local Chinatown.

I'm starting to listen to traditional Chinese instrumental music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M4gca_uLB4

Update; I'm on day 177 though am only about 15% into the Neutrino program work. Todays activities have all been reading type tasks so far. So I'm reading The Hobbit and periodically looking up characters.... love using the iPod touch pad for that. Sat the song leader used her iPad to project YouTube videos on a large screen TV. At one point, something got messed up and she wrote in script on the touch pad to get back to the particular video. When I say script, for a single character she hardly if at all picked up her finger from the touch screen.

Edited by Snowflake on 14 February 2013 at 5:29am

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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5952 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 648 of 740
18 February 2013 at 5:45pm | IP Logged 
Really enjoying the new animated movies which came in this recent batch. These are not Disney/Pixlar productions. Most of my Disney/Pixlar movies use Taiwanese voice over actors. Anyhow these new ones mostly have varying mainland accents. The one or two Taiwanese dubbed DVDs (still analyzing them) are a nice change in that they don't seem to draw from the same pool of voice over actors which my Disney/Pixlar movies use.

These days I'm adding new characters to my SRS deck at a slower rate. On that note, here's one of Khatz's little motivational blurbs, "Maybe you suck compared to what you will be, but you're amazing compared to what you were. Remember that."

Still slowly reading The Hobbit.... now in the section where Bilbo and the dwarves are up in the trees trying to stay safe from the goblins and wolves.

A mainland commercial....www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_OisTHISEU


Edited by Snowflake on 18 February 2013 at 5:49pm



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