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A newbie sets out: Braving Mandarin. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4555 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 9 of 94 15 January 2012 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Still chugging along. As a repeat of Saturday I did less than the weekday workload. Another small bite was taken out of the anki over due heap ( 300 reviews done today) of course correct mature is only around 50% but given that nearly all these cards are overdue it is no surprise. I think the number correct will start to matter more when there is no overdue mountain to assail.
While I study at the office , I am somewhat self conscious about being surrounded by native Chinese speakers so I try to be discreet with it. Though today they noticed, the boss took an interest even got me to read out everything that I had hand written via me scriptorium drills. The boss speaks little to no English, given my limited ability to actually produce anything in Chinese myself the encounters always feel awkward to me. I am glad for the most part of this, I was concerned that I was only able to read via the pinyin not the actual hanzi because of the way the assimil book it layed out. Turns out I read my handwritten scrawl just fine with no pin yin so I feel no need to start covering it up with paper just yet. I also think it is another event to put on the check list to say that this scriptorium method does work, for me at least. Furthermore, I was reminded that no text book was perfect. They spotted a line in the assimil book and said it was wrong. Naturally I wanted to know why. So I asked things like it “was it too formal?” “Is it an old way of speaking”. The answer I got was a very firm, “no, its just wrong”. It also became even more clear that most Chinese are not actually native speakers of Mandarin. Earlier I mentioned only a 53% pass rate for Mandarin tests from the native population. I looked deeper into and I think referring to other the other types of Chinese as a dialect does not do them justice. It goes deeper than just pronunciation, even grammar and sentence structure are very different. All they seem to have in common is the writing system. I have began to see them as separate languages rather than mere dialects. After all there is more similarity among European “languages” that want there is with Chinese “dialects”. European languages often do more than just share a writing system after all. My co-workers in particular said they at most know only about 6000 words in Mandarin at the most. Well China is breaking up for the spring festival ( Chinese new year), I have no intention to miss out on some cultural education. I will go to some bar, drink enough to delude myself into thinking I am fluent and then terrorise the locals with my 20 word active vocabulary. Current Status Assimil - Shadowing lessons 40 – 54 - Scriptorium lessons 37-39 - Assimil method lesson 18 Operation Save Anki - 1416 cards due/overdue 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| strikingstar Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5027 days ago 292 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 10 of 94 15 January 2012 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Referring to Chinese "dialects" as "dialects" is partially political. It makes them
subordinate to the language of prestige, i.e. Mandarin. In this regard, the purpose is unity and the establishment of a common ground. Portuguese and Spanish are probably more mutually intelligible than some Chinese dialects are with one another. But neither the Portuguese nor the Spanish would be happy if it was claimed that their language was a dialect of the other. But then again, they are separate countries so there is no issue of unity or a common ground. Anyways, 加油. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6436 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 11 of 94 15 January 2012 at 6:55pm | IP Logged | ||
They do not have the writing system in common, either, I'm afraid. Most non-Mandarin Sintic languages don't have a writing system, and they're forbidden to write it in the Mainland even if they have one. Fukkienese has a writing system called Pe̍h-ōe-jī and there's a certain amount of literature written in it in Taiwan (though of course not in China). By the way, "Pe̍h-ōe-jī" in Mandarin would be "bái huà zì", which tells you how far removed the languages are in terms of pronunciation. Cantonese is written with (traditional) Chinese characters. Written Cantonese exists in Hong Kong, but it's confined to informal language like in advertisements and comic books. Writing it with characters masks the phonological differences, but the differernce in grammar and vocabulary is still evident: Mandarin: 把东西还给我 (ba3 dong1xi huan2gei3 wo3) Cantonese: 畀返啲嘢我 (bei2 faan1 di1 je5 ngo5) The reason people claim that the writing system unifies all the Chinese "dialects" is because everyone who speaks a non-Mandarin sintic language is forbidden to write their own language and has to write in Mandarin. It's like making everyone in Europe write in English and then say that all the European languages are unified because everyone writes the same way. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4555 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 12 of 94 16 January 2012 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Another tired day where it took me hours upon hours to get everything done, in fact right up to 22:30 here.
I find myself wanting to do 3 Assimil type sessions a day, this is mainly due to me wanting to push into the “active wave”. While trying to do much is not a good idea, I have already pushed a ways into the second volume with shadowing, the assimil sessions are bringing up the tail end for some much needed reinforcement. Therefore given its position I see no problem in picking up speed for a while. I worked out how many anki reps I need to do a day to meet my goal of clearing the pile, the figures are not too encouraging. I get an average of 250-270 new reviews a day, on top of that I need to do 236 of the overdue pile a day to meet my target. Given my current 50% correct rate on these cards about 115 will be added to the regular reviews, plus the extra reviews that will be created from them then moving into a 2 day interview and more next day repeating of the ones I got wrong. I could be looking at 700-800 reviews a day to meet my target. It takes me a hour to do 270-300. I already study for 4-5 hours a day, the 700 reviews would make that 6-7 hours. I also find Anki reviews quite taxing on the old grey matter, I tire from it very quickly. Given the above I decided I was going to revise the target date, but then thought sod it. The target date still stands. I will alter the target date as need closer the time I think. Though I am looking forward to ridding myself of this terrible anki problem I am aware that even when they are all done and dusted it will still continue to haunt me for a while by generating a high number of regular reps for a while and their completion also ensures an onslaught of review spikes. I have started to do a 10 minute walking meditation between each study session as opposed to a break. While it will take some time to see if this experiment yields any desirable results day 1 of it has been encouraging. My concentration has held longer each session, I do not feel as brain drained and I am less easily distracted by the blinking lights of the internet at each study session. I shall review this meditation trial again a month or so from now. Because of the Japanese I have studied a lot of the traditional type Hanzi. I find it interesting that while going through the simplified ones for Mandarin, I can usually see what they have been simplified from ( I check to make sure though) this has helped immensely. I tried a little experiment I simplified some of the symbols I learned via Japanese using guess work and compared them to a Chinese simplified version, usually I was pretty accurate. But going from a new simplified character to a traditional did not fare so well. I think if one has the time, it may be better positions of themselves to study traditional Hanzi first for this reason. It has taken me very little time to go from the not so simplified Japanese symbols to recognising them in the simplified Mandarin ones. Current Status Assimil - Shadowing lessons 41 – 55 - Scriptorium lessons 38-40 - Assimil method lessons 19 & 20 Operation Save Anki! - 450 reps done today (1.5 hours) - 1306 cards due/overdue 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4555 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 13 of 94 18 January 2012 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Feeling pretty pleased with my progress today, I managed to take a big bite off my anki surplus. However it is in danger of being undone. I am somewhat tired from attending a new years dinner yesterday. Now for tomorrow I have been arm twisted into having to stop the night in another city boozing with some ex-pats much to my displeasure. I hope to try and get up earlier than the norm in order to get some anki time in to counter act this.
Tried to use a few extra words in a shop today, I understood the reply, yet I still stood there and blankly stared. They asked is I had the the amount of money they wanted in exactly. I understood what they said, parroted back then just stood there staring. After the event I found it amusing, yet I wonder if there is a reason relevant to my studies that this occurred. The next shop visit was just a circus act as I spent some time running round the floor chasing the overly abundant stack of small change that decided to break free from my wallet, maybe I should consider becoming a clown. Yet after spending 90 minutes in the rain soaking wet trying to find a place to buy phone credit , I am very happy because I used more words. I am already planning on what I will do with the time I will save when the overdue card monster has been brutally murdered ( hopefully in its sleep) I have settled on heseigs remember the simplified hanzi. Given the Japanese background I think it is possible to burn through at some pace. I will have to add less to anki, and it will be possible to skip many. While it may seem redundant, nevertheless I will do it to see which ones have been simplified and there will be some extra 1000 not covered in remembering the kanji. While the endeavour can be done without hesieg he has already done the hard work of assigning keywords and organising everything in a good order saving me hours of work. Spent some time studying how to study too. There are a number of things I would like to tackle to improve my terrible study habits, though I intended to do so on a “one thing at a time” basis. Top of the hit list is smoking, I already stopped smoking fags once before, though my arrival in China started me up again. So I already know I can do it, I just need to stay stopped. I also took some learner style test I found on I link here the results were som3thing like :- REF 3 SEN 9 VIS 11 SEQ 11 Apparently, not so desirable traits for the task of language learning. Current status -Assimil - Shadowing lessons 43-57 - Scriptorium ... um, I forgot and I dont want to get out of bed to go check! - Assimil method - lessons 22 and 23 Operation save Anki - 720 reviews done - 900 due.overdue remain , Yay half of them are gone. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6083 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 14 of 94 18 January 2012 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Feichang youqu!!!! !
Wo ye xuexi Putonghua. Wo kaishi xuexi 2 ge yue qian. Wo ye gang kaishi Assimil de shu. Wo xiang zhe hen hao de. Ni hue kan wo de log "Mainly Mandarian". Ni xihuan Assimil de shu ma? "Scriptorum" - na shi shenme?? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4555 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 15 of 94 19 January 2012 at 6:24am | IP Logged | ||
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我喜欢Assimil。 可是，这个不够。
我认识我的写信。 看写过他。 Scriptorium是这个 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7FztiCcvl0&feature=player_em bedded http://en.wikipedi a.org/wiki/Scriptorium 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4555 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 16 of 94 19 January 2012 at 6:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Well despite the need to squeeze everything in I have managed to keep to the weekly rountine for the most part and take a small chunk out of the anki pile.
The ex-pats, surprisingly are applying pressure to not learn Chinese “because I do not need to do so”. I am loathe to spend time with any of them, sadly to keep the peace sometimes (co-workers) I have to cross cities with my poor linguistic skills with mostly illiterate taxi drivers ( taxi cards don't work), stop the night at my expense (they live there, I dont) engage in droll conversation. All at the cost of valuable study/practice time. I am not a big fan of the ex-pat community here, I find them to be quite arrogant and bigoted. I can even quote one as saying it is every ex-pats duty to instil superior western customs and Christian values onto the Chinese. I decided then and there to distance myself as far away from other ex-pats as I can. The look of horror they gave me as I bought a whole duck grabbed it with my hands and proceeded to eat it, just like the locals. Well time to go get a train...during holiday season. Will take my MP3 in the hopes I can sneak in some listening. Hopefully I can be such a bore to them, they will “invite” me less and less as time goes one. Perhaps I should try (aka my duty) and instil the superior customs of language learning unto them. Some having been in China for 10 years and can speak zero Chinese... I do not want to be like that, interestingly Rosetta stone, which I rejected, is one of their recommendations, it done so well for them! Current Status - Assimil - Shadowing lessons 43-58 - Scriptorium 40-42 - Assimil method lessons 23 and 24 Operation save Anki - 490 Reviews completed - 786 Due/Over due remain - The last few days I have had a avergae success rate of +70%, This has helped keep the number of new daily reviews down, allowing me to take a bigger bite out of the pile beyond what was expected. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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