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Snowflake’s Mandarin Log

  Tags: Mandarin
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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5903 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 553 of 740
05 February 2012 at 9:16pm | IP Logged 
Not getting much done recently due to job related things....missed chatting with my former Mandarin instructor today and instead talked with a friend who is originally from Chengdu. Don't know if she has a typical Sichuan accent.... I love her accent! Will try to find some audios of Deng Xiaoping to compare to as I've read he had a strong Sichuan accent. Should mention that now I'm sort of doing a variation of what Vlad suggested.... depending heavily on real conversations for learning. In my case these are face to face conversations as cyber chats are not the same. Now, corrections are more memoriable from face to face conversations. I'm still listening to PopUp Chinese as well as mainland audio from movies and the like. I'm scantily doing SRS reviews. Given the schedule, self-talk has been lax though should pick up after this week.
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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5903 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 554 of 740
10 February 2012 at 7:31am | IP Logged 
Found an audio clip with Deng XiaoPing speaking. The friend mentioned in the prior post does not have a Sichuan accent.

Trying to get back into doing self-talk....found this article to talk about for tomorrow ...http://mashable.com/2012/02/09/dad-shoots-laptop-facebook /
the one I originally looked at was a yahoo news item with a MUCH longer URL.
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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5903 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 555 of 740
19 February 2012 at 11:19pm | IP Logged 
Work has been getting in the way of studying, though some interesting things have happened. At my Sat small group, in the beginning part, they're now asking people to share something that's happened during the week. So I thought about making a goal to talk about something substantial one year from now. Listening to the language used, realized that I’d probably have to at least speak at B2 which is an intimidating goal. Then I was wondering whether I was out of my mind. My husband later suggested setting the goal to have something concrete to work toward. So I was looking at the HSK and TOCFL (was TOP) lists again. Not surprisingly, I know more from TOCFL than the HSK list.

At the end of the meeting mentioned above when preparing to leave, someone asked how much I understood. Well there was a woman within earshot who has been hoping to improve her English. So we met twice this past week to do a language exchange. She attended university here so her English is better than my Mandarin. She's originally from Shanghai and also knows Shanghainese. The language aside, we're having some interesting conversations. Fri we were talking about the cultural revolution in the English portion.

This term came up when talking with my overseas Taiwanese chat partner...筹码/ 籌碼, chóumǎ. Nciku and YellowBridge have the definition as "bargaining chip". That was not his intent though. He was thinking of 筹码 as a scarce and very valued resource. I'm unsure what to do with his definition as it doesn't show up that way in the dictionary.

Edited by Snowflake on 19 February 2012 at 11:28pm

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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5903 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 556 of 740
27 February 2012 at 9:38pm | IP Logged 
I'm doing some transcribing from a movie. This is from "Bolt".
cat: 如果你想要解药的话 rúguǒ nǐ xiǎng yào jiěyào de huà
cat: 就得完完全全照著我的话去做. jiùděi wánwánquánquán zhào zhù wǒ de huà qù zuò
dog: 不行, 想都想. bùxíng, xiǎng dōu bié xiǎng
dog: 你个堕落到黑暗界的家伙. nǐ zhège duòluò dào hēi'àn jiè de jiāhuo
cat: 对啦,对啦,没错啦,说完了吗. duì la ,duì la ,méicuò la ,shuō wán le ma
cat: 我只不过是要求你稍微让头歪一点. wǒ zhǐbúguò shì yāoqiú nǐ shāowēi ràng tóu wāi yìdiǎn
cat: 你会的吗,是不是? 快啊. ni3 hui4de ma, shi4bu2shi4?
cat: 快啊 kuài a
cat: 再歪,再歪. zai4 wai1, zai4 wai1
dog: 这...这太驴了吧   zhè ...zhè tài lǘ le bā
cat: 不会,不会,不要这样 bu2hui4, bu2hui4, bu2yao4 zhe4yang4
cat: 拜托配合一下你快做到了. bàituō pèihé yíxià nǐ kuài zuòdàole

I asked someone about 这太驴了吧 (zhè tài lǘ le bā) as both Nciku and YellowBridge said 驴 is a noun meaning donkey. The initial response was that it needed to be understood in context as the meaning might be that's too stupid, or that's unbelievable. After giving the context, my friend thought the meaning was "This is impossible!"
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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5903 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 557 of 740
03 March 2012 at 4:56am | IP Logged 
I used 混 (hun4) to refer to my daughter hanging out with foreign students at a 10 day academic workshop. The immediate response was where did I learn the word? It's from my copy of Kungfu Panda, the first movie. In the opening scene the panda asks the Furious 5, 我们一起混吧 (wo3men yi4qi3 hun4 ba). I was told not to use hun4, instead use 玩/玩儿. Evidentally I can joke with very good friends about zai4 yi4qi3 hun4hun4 but that's about it for people that I personally know.

混 hùn [v,adv] to mix; to mingle; muddled; to drift along; to muddle along; to pass for; to get along with somebody; thoughtless; reckless

And it turns out hun4 is used in...
混混儿 hùnhùnr [n] ruffian; hoodlum; scoundrel

So 混, as a verb referring to people, denotes undesirables aimlessly wasting time.

Edited by Snowflake on 05 March 2012 at 3:56am

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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5903 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 558 of 740
05 March 2012 at 3:55am | IP Logged 
Miscellaneous thoughts...

I've started playing around with a free copy of MDBG. It provides mouse-over popups of Chinese characters on my laptop, with an audio voice and the English definition. The nice thing is that doesn't matter whether the characters are on a webpage, in a Word or PDF file.

Discovered another source to buy movies (http://watchmoviesinchinese.com) and will be ordering in the next few days. I have some dramas but don't like using those for repetitive listening.

My Saturday small group is getting larger. Yesterday there were 38 adults. Of those, 4 were Taiwanese with the rest being mainlanders. The time before, there were 35 people of which all were mainlanders except for me.

Am changing my self-talk approach. Before I'd go through the news to select a story but that was not pushing me enough. So I've started using the headline article, eg I'm not personally choosing the story.

For some reason, the audio in MobileAnki is now working for one of my decks. The thing I changed was deleting that particular deck off my laptop and redownloading to my iPod. The other audio deck is still not playing.

I've been listening on and off to PopUp Chinese and CLO. Listening to CLO is to help maintain vocabulary. Transcribing movies, mentioned in a prior post, adds some fun to my routine.

Edited by Snowflake on 05 March 2012 at 7:30pm

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Snowflake
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5903 days ago

1032 posts - 1233 votes 
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 559 of 740
12 March 2012 at 1:47am | IP Logged 
Going through transitions...My tutor is starting a new job so we had our last session this week. I'm scheduled to start a different project next month which will require driving, instead of taking the train, so the routine will have to change a bit.

I've met more Shanghainese speakers.

The change in the self-talk routine to use the lead news story, many days, has me banging my head. Today I'm thinking about using the second headline story. Terms that I've had to look up have included;
国会议员/國會議員 guóhuìyìyuán [n] congressman; Member of Congress
共和党 /共和黨 gònghédǎng [n] the Republican Party
民主党 /民主黨 mínzhǔdǎng [n] the Democratic Party
候选人/候選人 hòuxuǎnrén [n] candidate (political)
活动住房 huódòng zhùfáng [n] mobile home
生命维持机 shēngmìng wéichí jī [n] life support machine
暗杀/暗殺 ànshā [v] assassinate
恐怖主义/恐怖主義 kǒngbùzhǔyì [n] Terrorism
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JayR9
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4644 days ago

155 posts - 162 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 560 of 740
12 March 2012 at 8:57pm | IP Logged 
Hi I am just wondering, do you watch the movies in mandarin or just transcribe them into Mandarin from when you hear them speak in English?

I am also wondering, can you get English speaking movies that are in Mandarin?
It would be good to watch a movie I know dubbed or something In Mandarin.


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