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Snowflake’s Mandarin Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5903 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 585 of 740 13 July 2012 at 4:35am | IP Logged |
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Just watched "Pushing Hands" (推手 tuī shǒu) which is an old Ang Lee movie.
I'm generally liking Lenaia now that I'm chorusing along. Their vocabulary selection is slightly different from other materials which is proving to be a nice slant. For instance, most material that I've used introduces 会 for will. An example is I will leave at 3 pm. Lenaia uses 将, which is used in 将来 (jiānglái). So one of the Lenaia sentences is 我将下午三点钟走。 wǒ jiāng xiàwǔ sān diǎn zhōng zǒu。 It's a good thing their audio clips are about 60 seconds long. With my current lack of motivation, it's sometimes hard to fully concentrate for a 10-15 minute podcast lesson. Purchased "Chinese (Mandarin) Course - Speak and Learn Pro" for my iPod. The advertising promotes their Beijing accented audio clips and that they're a low cost alternative to Rosetta Stone. Basically they are pushing their audio match to photos. My idea was that using different photos, than what MindSnacks has, would strengthen associations. And while I expect some different vocabulary, it's interesting what is coming up, such as the transliteration 巴士 (bāshì) for bus. I mixed up 卫生纸 (wèishēngzhǐ, toilet paper) for 纤维质 (xiānwéizhì, fiber) while talking about dietary recommendations. My overseas Taiwanese chat partner had a good laugh. Looks like playing volleyball is out for me. This is the third day afterward and I'm still sore. While muscle soreness can be overcome, now one of my hips hurts while walking. There's another potluck this weekend so I'm trying to decide what to bring. This is a good-bye for one of my friends whose visa is abruptly up. Sadly, the Mandarin program he taught in has been cancelled. I cannot cook non-Cantonese Chinese food well enough and so have to buy something. Edited by Snowflake on 13 July 2012 at 5:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5903 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 586 of 740 16 July 2012 at 6:38am | IP Logged |
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Sat night there was so much that I did not understand. Today was better. Suprizingly, I was able to read most of the Powerpoint slides in today's first session despite not really working characters. The 2nd session was next to impossible but then the discussion was about things like Gnosticism (word appeared in English).
People are starting to joke with me. I've been like "a deer in headlights" since the joke makes little literal sense in the context....need to "lighten up". I'm turning on subtitles regardless of whether they decently match the movie dialog. It's agony when the subtitles are in traditional characters (am studying simplified). Edited by Snowflake on 16 July 2012 at 6:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5903 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 587 of 740 18 July 2012 at 12:29am | IP Logged |
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Have been watching 我知女人心 starring Andy Lau. 我知女人心 is a Chinese remake of "What Women Want". The dialog seems slower than usual so I'm trying to figure out whether that's really the case. Anyhow, I haven't yet been able to figure out how to turn on the subtitles.....am watching via www.funshion.com .
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| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5903 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 588 of 740 27 July 2012 at 12:37am | IP Logged |
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Bang head here ==> X. Still blah about studying Mandarin.
Rewatched 我知女人心....Now I think the dialog speed is just slightly slower. My prior perception of the speed being slower is probably due to understanding more. Still have the sense that listening to mainland materials for a while tends to trigger a comprehension jump. I generally notice that when going back to listen to materials out of Taiwan. I was wondering if that might be because mainland usage, compared to English, has more differences than Taiwanese Mandarin. Of course that sounds very strange. Or maybe it’s a matter of Taiwanese usage being closer to Toishanese so that hearing a lot of mainland dialog stretches my mind.....Haven't the faintest. In any case, I'm still focusing on mainland materials. Purchased software to extract subtitles and used it on a movie which I suspect is a pirated copy. The extracted subtitles were mostly unreadable. Well now I cannot find the Mandarin audio track when watching that movie. The audio was previously ripped so at least I have it in mp3's. Sigh. Heard from my friend in Taiwan, the one whom I knew way back when....She's suggesting that I visit in summer which at this point means next year. Just got back to working simplified radicals using Lenaia, sigh. Lenaia suggests actually drawing pictures with the radical embedded. BTW, finally decided on an "island" subject. I expect preparations will take a year, literally. There's specialized vocabulary which will be needed so I've started talking with some people about that. Edited by Snowflake on 27 July 2012 at 12:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5903 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 589 of 740 12 August 2012 at 9:57pm | IP Logged |
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I was transcribing part of a movie whose subtitles are very different than the audio. That’s no longer a huge annoyance as I treat it as a paraphrase… So I have two quite different, correct ways to say the same thing. I still wish subtitles would exact match the dialog, though it’s less of an issue now.
Was talking to my overseas Taiwanese chat partner about listening to mainland material, then switching to Taiwanese Mandarin and the listening comprehension jump. He felt that deliberately listening to different accents is a natural way to quickly increase listening comprehension. It seems he’s done that all along with his English and also did that for his Japanese. I’ve been thinking the main factors were different grammar usage and speaking styles, not the accents. Discovered that the watchmoviesinchinese.com vendor is willing to take requests for movies, at least for mainland releases. That makes things easier. He found one movie for me that is no longer in production and is looking for another which was released here last year. Some of my friends said that I am fluent. That’s reaaaally stretching it. What’s interesting is that these particular friends are not mainlanders. I doubt my mainlander friends would say that. Anyhow, I feel like I need Toastmasters for Mandarin students. This came up in conversation as my son had this done this week. 他去看牙医 把他的智齿拔掉了 tā qù kàn yáyī bǎ tāde zhìchǐ bádiào le He went to the dentist to have his wisdom teeth pulled out. My Taiwanese chat partner helped with the sentence. I later used it when talking with a mainlander. And to be sure there were no regional usage differences, afterwards I asked the person (from Beijing) about any hiccups. She said it was fine. Soldiering on....or at least trying to. Update; took out "not" in the sentence "I doubt my mainlander friends would not say that." Edited by Snowflake on 17 August 2012 at 5:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5903 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 590 of 740 17 August 2012 at 5:22am | IP Logged |
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Watched "Happy Times" (幸福时光, xìngfú shíguāng), a movie by Zhang Yimou.
There's a current thread called "Teaching students without discipline" where emk mentions the idea of a personal trainer for foreign languages. Am starting to think about that since I haven't been able to get decent traction on studying characters. Am at the stage where character study is a must... the intimidation factor still hangs over me. That really isn't surprizing as characters have intimidated me from childhood. I think this is a primary factor in being blah for so long. Edited by Snowflake on 17 August 2012 at 5:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5903 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 591 of 740 04 September 2012 at 8:09pm | IP Logged |
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The perception of characters is interesting. I tend to look at a section of characters and say that it’s either traditional or simplified based on what’s there. Someone from Taiwan was showing me free iPhone apps for things like the news, various magazines, etc, all in traditional Chinese. We were looking at her screen and I noticed the appearance of 这. I was surprised and pointed that out. She contradicted me, saying that was a traditional character. Sort of on the same vein, a mainlander and I were looking at song lyrics. I mentioned the lyrics were in traditional characters. She said that some of them were and pointed to specific characters. This idea of mixing simplified and traditional characters, at least the way these people expressed it, is not what I’m used to.
I was bemoaning getting some momentum going on character work and thought about the idea of a language personal trainer. One thought was to ask all my Mandarin speaking friends to encourage and periodically check on me. Then I realized that could be miserable. All of them learned their characters the same way, handwriting characters multiple times which was reinforced by usage. Variation from that would raise eyebrows and I’d probably get lectured over and over again. Then I thought about finding a tutor. Well my often erratic job schedule prevents consistently working with anyone local, or via Skype. What I did may raise some eyebrows…. I signed up for Khatzumoto’s SinoSpoon. I’m currently on day 16. Month one so far is set up, obtaining materials, easing into immersion and the like. In addition to daily instructions, there are 8-15 emails with URLs to use for immersion purposes. The variety for immersion is astounding. Some of these include service announcements, political ads and product advertisements. There have been videos of children playing, arguments, calligraphy demo’s and teachers explaining various things while working at whiteboards, etc. The language register is different than the movies I usually listen to/watch. I’m getting headaches listening to the material being "thrown" at me....haven’t had that type of headache in quite a while. My husband thinks this is better for me than going overseas. And given what I would probably do overseas, he’s right. Two of my Mandarin speaking friends have started, occasionally, saying short phrases to me in Cantonese. I guess that’s their way of trying to get me out of my shell. I’m an introvert to begin with and am even more introverted when it comes to speaking in Mandarin. Anyhow, hearing Cantonese from these two surprizes me since one of them is from Taiwan, the other from the Shanghai area. I switched the display language on my iTouch to simplified Chinese. A lot of things still appear in English. Anyhow, I’m going to see how things go before deciding to keep it that way or not. SinoSpoon teaches traditional characters with a section at the very end for simplified. I’ve bounced back and forth between traditional and simplified so many times. Need to update this post with the movies I've watched recently.....That list is somewhere else so will update this later. Edited by Snowflake on 06 September 2012 at 10:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5903 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 592 of 740 06 September 2012 at 1:31am | IP Logged |
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Didn't get around yesterday to updating the prior post with movies for the Super Challenge. Since I'm unsure what has been posted and what hasn't, here is the summary of the movies I've watched.
1 1st episode of New Journey to the West 1 Curse of the WereRabbit 1 Eat, Drink, Man, Women 6 Get Smart 1 Horton Hears a Who 2 How to Train Your Dragon 5 Jumanji 1 Kungfu Panda 3 LOTR - The Fellowship of the Rings 5 LOTR - The Two Towers 1 Over The Hedge 1 Pushing Hands 1 Shrek 2 1 The Devil Wears Prada 3 The Emperor's New Groove 4 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 1 UP 1 失恋33天 1 幸福时光 4 我知女人心 Per my tracking spreadsheet, I'm officially at 44 movies. Update; Sooooo excited....just got some new movies in the mail. I'm watching "Despicable Me" and so far am understanding the majority of what is being said on the first viewing! What I'm not catching is unfamiliar vocabulary and understandably, dialog which is drowned out by the music. Of course it helps that this is more a kids movie. After starting Khatz's immersion material, I noticed a decent size comprehension jump though was unsure whether the timing was coincidental or perhaps triggered by the much wider listening variety. I do think at this point that listening to a very wide range of accents and language registers is necessary. Edited by Snowflake on 06 September 2012 at 2:12am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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