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Snowflake’s Mandarin Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 25 of 740 09 September 2008 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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...was translating song lyrics last night and ran into a character that I couldn't find in the online dictionaries. So I called the friend who had corrected my pronunciation of sh/xi/r. The mystery character turns out to be a form of “you”. Being unable to find characters in dictionaries is going to make this much more interesting. Plus when sending Chinese questions to that particular person, the script has to converted to traditional characters. At work today I mentioned the character to the overseas born Chinese. Upon seeing it, one of them expressed surprise. She said that form of "you" is very old and then started talking about literary Chinese. This is going to be an adventure.
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| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 26 of 740 12 September 2008 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm playing catch up on entering sentences into my SRS, entering new material, plus working the FSI drills...slowly plodding along. I was talking with my friend from Beijing about accents and am hearing contradictory things about, for instance, what the Shanghainese accent is like (amount of tongue curl). Oh well....it might be a matter of different people have their ears attuned to different things.
There's nothing like translating something like Harry Potter where the English and Chinese are sitting in front of me...but the word used for, in this case, worry is not in my paper dictionary. It is in the online dictionaries. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 27 of 740 15 September 2008 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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I extracted audios from some Mandarin movies and loaded them into my iPod. After doing a decent amount of character practice, realized that I really need a system to memorize the characters. So "Remembering the Kanji" and "Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1: A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters" was ordered. I asked the woman from Beijing if she had a system. Like all the other overseas born Chinese whom I've met, the answer was no. She memorized them the old fashioned way. She's interested in any memorization systems I may come across. Since volume 2 of "Remembering the Kanji" concentrates on learning the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters, I hope to borrow a copy to look at the approach. Edited by Snowflake on 15 September 2008 at 8:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 28 of 740 17 September 2008 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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While waiting for the books come, I've been using a sample copy of the intro and early chapters of vol 1 of "Remembering the Kanji". Got the link from the AJATT site; http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/miscPublica tions/pdf/RK4/RK%201_sample.pdf . As expected I've had to modify some of the visual illustrations. Some of the Kanji characters seem to be pretty old and no longer used in modern Chinese. It gets a little interesting when there is a simplified form of the character. Regardless the books' approach is still helpful. I've been slacking off the last week on the FSI material, need to get back into that. The FSI material seem to pretty much form my foundation for understanding audios.
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| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 29 of 740 21 September 2008 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I started the Tuttle book; it seems quite good. Writing wise, I'm taking a stepped approach like Heisig does...learn the character, later the proununication, tone and character combinations. The Tuttle book does all of that at once so I'll be going thru it several times. When the story/illustration doesn't click then it's off to the Heisig book and maybe the etymology in the yellow bridge online dictionary. Since I'm going thru FSI and listening to a ton of stuff, sometimes the word/compounds are familiar so there it's learn the term then the writing. It's a bit disappointing that Vol 2 isn't out; I emailed the publisher asking when that will be available. It is really nice not to have to make up my own stories/illustrations.
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| Hedge Bilingual Diglot Newbie China Joined 5963 days ago 19 posts - 20 votes Speaks: EnglishC1*, Norwegian* Studies: Mandarin | Message 30 of 740 21 September 2008 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | ||
Did you get a reply? I'm soon finished with vol. 1 and agree with you that it is nice not to have to make up stories. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 31 of 740 22 September 2008 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | ||
Not yet. I'll post the answer when they do. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 32 of 740 25 September 2008 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I feel like raising my hand and saying, "Teacher, teacher, may I be excused? My brain is full!" I ordered some DVDs from Hong Kong. The Mandarin accent on the first one is quite different than the other materials I have. I'm guessing the accent is southern as the speech is closer to how Mandarin is spoken in Taiwan. It was different enough that I tried to read the subtitles looking for words that I should understand (like I, he/she, etc.) Then I suspected that the dialog was different than the characters...thought I heard 可是 when the text said 但是. Anyhow, I'm planning on asking people to help identify the accent.
Hmmmm, my listening comprehension is better the second time. And it is much better to listen to the audio without any visual images. 3rd time around...AJATT is right. After listening to the new movie for the 2nd time today, I realized that ji4 (记, traditional 記) means remember. Also that yi1 qi3 (一起) means together...Not that I've learned the characters yet. I've heard those words enough times, in movies and songs, that the meaning is sinking into my brain. Edited by Snowflake on 25 September 2008 at 11:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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