Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 457 of 740 17 September 2011 at 9:31pm | IP Logged |
Have gone back to transcribing "The Fellowship of the Lords"....decided I was aiming too low. Also, transcribing helped with character work so switching from simplified to traditional undid some things. The job has been more eventful lately which is getting in the way. Need to look more closely at the www.tli.com.tw material. They have both simplified and traditional.
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 458 of 740 18 September 2011 at 4:25am | IP Logged |
I'm getting a cold so am home tonight instead of being at one of my Mandarin speaking small groups. My son has a class at the local Chinese school now so Sat afternoons I spend time listening to exercise classes in an open area while waiting for him. These are 99% in Mandarin. People usually gather on the sidelines, watch and chat with each other while waiting for their kids. A stranger started talking with me so we chatted for a bit. Something from the conversation that struck me....she was surprized that I would like to go to China for say a month to improve my Mandarin. And she actually asked again how I learned Mandarin. I think it's time to reward myself!
Edited by Snowflake on 18 September 2011 at 6:17pm
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 459 of 740 18 September 2011 at 5:19pm | IP Logged |
I chose a particular section of "The Fellowship of the Rings" to memorize, sort of a combination of echoing/chorusing and islands. And wouldn't you know it, there is a piece that doesn't match the subtitle plus another that my Taiwanese chat partner does not understand. I've been rechecking the Mandarin audio and subtitles and now am checking the English version. I may end up having to extract the audio for just those sentences and pass them with the subtitles by several people.
Edited by Snowflake on 18 September 2011 at 7:46pm
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 460 of 740 20 September 2011 at 4:37am | IP Logged |
Quick notes....
Used 重量训练 (zhòngliàng xùnliàn, weight training) when talking with someone from the mainland. She understood what I said and had no quibbles.
The phrase from "The Fellowship of the Rings" that my overseas Taiwanese chat partner didn't understand... The Malaysian fellow understood it only in context. The Beijing woman understood it without even checking the context. My Taiwanese chat partner had suggested that he didn't understand due to it using mainland phrasing.
Sort of drilling into the "The Fellowship of the Rings" passage that I've started to memorize. Understandably it's not an exact translation from the English so am working through what it does say. Looking like this will take a while...it's rather abstract to begin with.
Edited by Snowflake on 20 September 2011 at 4:41am
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 461 of 740 22 September 2011 at 3:55am | IP Logged |
Looking at "Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition" again and thinking I should have some sort of loose organization or record milestones like (not in any particular order at the moment);
...fully memorize chosen LOTR section
...smoothly and correctly say that LOTR section
...finish echoing CLO dialogs/summaries through level 7
...finish CLO lessons through level 7
...find some way to be periodically assessed (maybe every other year). For my purposes it does not have to be the HSK. The idea is to pinpoint weaknesses and address them. I suspect this can't be started for several more years.
...fully understand the chatting around me at the local Chinese school (what is in hearing distance)
...fully understand an animated movie in the first viewing
...fully understand a non-kid's movie in the first viewing
...fully understand church service sermons for a full month
...fully understand small group discussions for a full month
...contribute for say a total of 3-5 minutes in a group discussion
The list above gets into advanced proficiency so many of those will be years away.
On the phrase from "The Fellowship of the Rings" that my overseas Taiwanese chat partner didn't understand, the Taiwanese woman at work did understand it. And the English interpretations I've gotten were slightly different. I'm thinking my overseas chat partner didn't understand it because of the specific point that was being made. He's more technical than most and probably views what he does for a living as contradicting that idea.
Edited by Snowflake on 23 September 2011 at 4:35am
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Everplayer Diglot Groupie China Joined 5050 days ago 69 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Japanese, German
| Message 462 of 740 22 September 2011 at 8:55am | IP Logged |
Just come across your log while being curious on how foreigners learn my mother tongue. :)
Here is my opinion on 锻炼 and 训练.
For 锻炼, you might have noticed that the characters follow radicals of 'iron' and 'fire'. Yes it literally means 'forging iron'. So when used in training it refers to training by repetition or exerting some pressure to realize a potential, such as 锻炼身体,锻炼口才,锻炼肌肉。
For 训练, the first character roughly means 'rule' or 'custom'. So it is a training with rules or a 'systematic training'. As in 重量训练, it is a weight training with plans and methods, usually for professional athletes.
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 463 of 740 23 September 2011 at 4:36am | IP Logged |
Thanks Everplayer!
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 464 of 740 23 September 2011 at 4:45am | IP Logged |
My tutor is trying to get me to use northern phrases. Upfront I asked her to accept that I do not use 儿s and not to correct their absence. At that time I had not thought about the fact that I tend to use southern phrasing.
On the idea of being periodically assessed... since there are a good number of colleges and universities in this area, I probably can work something out with a professor from one of those. My preference would be someone from one of the larger universities which have multiple tracks for Mandarin classes such as total neophytes compared to say heritage learners who can already speak or write. But that really shouldn't matter for quite a while.
Edited by Snowflake on 23 September 2011 at 5:44am
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