Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 249 of 740 23 March 2010 at 4:44am | IP Logged |
Quick update.... Lately am doing a lot of my language exchanges with people from Taiwan. It's interesting to hear 二 without any r sound at all. To help balance things out, I am doing some work with the popupchinese.com material. Like many people on this forum have said, one day is thoroughly depressing and the next pretty good. Today was a good day.
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 250 of 740 01 April 2010 at 9:23pm | IP Logged |
Unsure what's happening, but lately have had to resort to Yale romanization for certain pinyin sounds like xiu, zun, cu and qiang. For those who have not followed this log, my college Mandarin classes used Yale romanization text books.
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Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5736 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin
| Message 251 of 740 02 April 2010 at 5:27am | IP Logged |
Snowflake wrote:
Unsure what's happening, but lately have had to resort to Yale romanization for certain pinyin sounds like xiu, zun, cu and qiang. For those who have not followed this log, my college Mandarin classes used Yale romanization text books.
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How odd! I've never heard of college classes that (still) use Yale! How inconvenient! O_O
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 252 of 740 02 April 2010 at 5:46am | IP Logged |
Pyx wrote:
How odd! I've never heard of college classes that (still) use Yale! How inconvenient! O_O |
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That's a reflection of my age and that time. At the time, the DeFrancis materials were available. The professor, a non-native speaker, decided against using pinyin. He was concerned that some of the students' parents would have an extremely strong emotional response to the pinyin.
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Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5736 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin
| Message 253 of 740 02 April 2010 at 5:55am | IP Logged |
Snowflake wrote:
Pyx wrote:
How odd! I've never heard of college classes that (still) use Yale! How inconvenient! O_O |
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That's a reflection of my age and that time. At the time, the DeFrancis materials were available. The professor, a non-native speaker, decided against using pinyin. He was concerned that some of the students' parents would have an extremely strong emotional response to the pinyin. |
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I see. I don't know much about you (and read too carelessly) and thought your college classes right now were using Yale :)
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 254 of 740 02 April 2010 at 6:16am | IP Logged |
Musing here...it seems to be a repeating theme that most people learning Chinese are on the younger side. Whenever a program mentions age ranges, it never comes close to mine. That said, I could not have done this 10 years ago. For me, the availability of material is what makes this possible. Without that, my motivation would have waned long ago.
Edited by Snowflake on 02 April 2010 at 6:16am
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Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5736 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin
| Message 255 of 740 02 April 2010 at 6:19am | IP Logged |
Snowflake wrote:
Musing here...it seems to be a repeating theme that most people learning Chinese are on the younger side. Whenever a program mentions age ranges, it never comes close to mine. That said, I could not have done this 10 years ago. For me, the availability of material is what makes this possible. Without that, my motivation would have waned long ago. |
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Well then I guess you answered your own question ;)
Before the availability of the so much material few people learnt Mandarin. Recently, material became available, so (relatively) many people take up studying it. However, mostly younger folks have the time for doing so..
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 256 of 740 06 April 2010 at 5:42am | IP Logged |
Today is a bang head here kind of day. Am thinking I probably should go easier on myself due to having a stomach bug the last week. The attitude did drive me back to doing some FSI. FSI way too easily slips out of my routine. Yet when my grammar has been correct, it most likely is due to FSI drill work.
Hmmm, maybe it's time to redo the module where FSI basically wanted you to memorize the various provinces. At this point, I keep meeting enough mainlanders that knowing the geography would be helpful.
Edited by Snowflake on 06 April 2010 at 5:45am
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