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Muddling through in TAC ’10 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5510 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 95 21 December 2009 at 9:59am | IP Logged |
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This is my TAC thread for the Team Challenge 2010.
I'm a member of Team H along with dragonfly, Sprachprofi, Toffeeliz, and Levi (yes, Levi, I'm MAKING you a honorary member whether you like it or not!). Among other things, we all study Chinese. We also share German in common, although my schedule is so crammed right now that I don't know when I'll be getting to Deutsch - before the end of the year, I hope... Stay tuned for the long list of Every Mistake I Have Ever Made in Mandarin and Therefore Should Hurry Up and Correct ASAP, coming soon to theaters near you. Edited by annette on 04 February 2010 at 11:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5510 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 95 21 December 2009 at 8:09pm | IP Logged |
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EVERY FLAW EVER THAT I NEED TO FIX IN MY MANDARIN, OKAY
1. Pronunciation - qu, xue. In these two combinations my u sounds really French-y to me, which is driving me ABSOLUTELY INSANE. Also, again just in these combinations, I'm not directing my air correctly for q and x. - figuring out yi-bu-qi-ba - I'm perfectly fine with yi and bu, but because the qi-ba stuff is pretty much obsolete, I get tripped up when talking to certain members of the older generation who choose to follow the old rules. I guess this isn't really "pronunciation" but "comprehension." Also on the topic of comprehension, sometimes I have a hard time with understanding accents such as from Northern China, which is not ideal, and also sometimes I have a hard time understanding beginners in Chinese who can't really pronounce things... I chalk it up to lack of experience. 2. Transliteration - If I'm writing a phrase that changes in tone, ex "hen3 hao3" changes to "hen2 hao3," what do I put down? The original or the changed? I rarely read pinyin now so I don't even remember what my textbooks said! - I need to learn some older forms of transliteration, as many of my resources, particularly re: Literary Chinese, were not published super recently. Which is fine as these aren't textbooks but straight material with pronunciation notes (so you know what the poet was originally going for), except that I kind of want to read the pronunciation because how cool would I be?? 3. Characters Extent of damage too depressing to contemplate. Suffice to say that I will need to work hard. - I also need to learn both traditional and simplified (yes, I need to, it is important). 4. Grammar Most of my grammatical flaws aren't really things I need to "learn" so much as "keep in mind." A lot of these I do know the right and wrong of, but when shooting my mouth off I often get a little sloppy. This would be fine if I were a native speaker but as a language learner, sometimes you get held to pretty stringent standards! - li3 vs shang4 (wang3 shang4; fang2 zi li3) - "wo3 xie3 le ta1 yi4 feng1 xin4" should be "wo3 gei3 ta1 xie3 le yi4 feng1 xin4." I think this is a case of English sneaking into my Mandarin. Oh dear. - "wo3 gei3 ta1 shuo1: blah blah blah" is apparently really local aka wrong when I say it, and therefore I should replace it with something more standard like "wo3 dui4 ta1 shuo1"/"wo3 gen1 ta1 shuo1" - now here's one that really IS a flaw. I get this right 80% of the time when just chatting, but the instant I start to think about it, I get myself all confused. One and a half hours = "yi1 ge ban4 xiao3 shi2" NOT "yi1 ge xiao3 shi2 ban4." Half an hour = "ban4 ge xiao3 shi2" NOT "yi1 ge ban4 xiao3 shi2!" - sometimes I use multiple le's in one sentence, I'm not sure if this is ever okay but it seems a little awkward. Sorry, can't think of an example right now. "wo3 chi1 le dong1 xi le"... I think that's right actually but it's still awkward. - jiu4 suan4 vs zong3 suan4 which I often mix up. - That's all the basic stuff I can think of for now, but I also have a LOT of more complex grammar that I need to work through, such as more classical forms. 5. Writing - Basically I want to improve my academic/analytical writing. Also, chatting on forums ;). I'm fine with light essays and all that crap language teachers make you do at a lower level (write about your family! your vacation!) and I can cobble together some literary analysis in Mandarin if I have to, but the latter will be TERRIBLE. It just doesn't sound right. This is because I don't read a lot of academic writing in Chinese, mostly fiction, so I don't know what the tone or vocabulary is supposed to seem like. A skill I need to learn. - As for the chatting on forums, I am very heavily influenced by my spoken grammar when I write in Chinese online, probably because in my brain it isn't "real" writing or something. So any of those mistakes up in the last section, such as "wo gei ta shuo," will be more acceptable in conversation in that the other person most of the time won't notice (almost nobody has perfect grammar when they speak, not even native speakers), but once you write it down on AIM or a website, it's glaring and ugly and makes you look vaguely dumb. 6. Watching TV shows is very hit and miss. I very rarely have problems with understanding people who are talking to me, but the instant I am confronted with more "intellectual" discussion - literature, philosophy, even Chinese dramas set 1000 years ago - things get a little messy. In general I can do the fluffy soap opera type shows but when you bring classical or fake-classical Chinese into the scene, I start to falter. Also, for some reason Taiwanese game shows throw me for a loop too, but that might be all the Taiwanese. One thing that is interesting and vaguely related to this, though, is that lately I've been meeting people who are learning Chinese partially from ancient China type dramas. I'm all for watching TV in your target language but sometimes these people end up sounding a little bizarre to me, using all these terms that nobody really uses in speech! Like for example, the other day someone was talking to me and using 犬 instead of 狗. I don't know if that's "acceptable" but I do know that I had never heard someone do that before and although I understood what they were saying, it was just sort of funny. It was all like "wo zong shi jue de quan bi mao huopo!!" I guess that's an extreme example and probably learned from trying to break compound words down or something but it was still pretty interesting. 7. Learning to read crazy cursive characters (ex grass script) Okay, so this isn't necessary, but I just think it would be cool. Come on, how pretty is this?  Edited by annette on 22 December 2009 at 8:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5510 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 95 21 December 2009 at 11:08pm | IP Logged |
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Day 1: Reviewing from Ground Zero
Just flippin' through the copy of Integrated Chinese Level 1 (Yuehua Liu, 3rd edition) that I last used four - five! how the time flies! - years ago when I first started delving into Mandarin. p. 22: I just realized that I almost always read "she2 me" for "shen2 me" but I think this is fine, just closer to Taiwan than Beijing. I used to read han4 in lieu of he2, which also feels Taiwan-influenced to me... p. 23: "Nin2 gui4 xing4?" "Mian3 gui4 xing4 Wang2." (Uncommon in my experience thus interesting) p. 66: Wow, they sure made that white guy ugly and weird in the accompanying drawing. Especially next to the cute little Asian girl. He's going to lean over and bite her nose off any minute now. p. 72: I rarely hear people talk about zhou1 yi1, zhou1 er4, zhou1 ri4, etc. Li3 bai4 yi1 / xing1 qi2 yi1 seem more common (the textbook also lists these of course). p. 73: "Unlike in English, where [the year 2015] is read 'twenty-fifteen'..." Gross! p. 77: Chinese food, American food he all likes (--> punctuation within this sentence structure) p. 79: So we all agree that "ni3 ba4ba" is correct (close personal relationship, thus can drop the 'de'), but this book also seems to be saying that "ni3men lao3shi1" is correct as well? Any native speakers with thoughts on this? p. 80: Classroom exercise: "forming a birthday dragon," no comment. p. 91: Counting age: nominal age = xu1sui4; actual age = shi2sui4. p. 92: AWESOME picture of ridiculously large amount of different styles for writing shou4 (longevity). p. 99: Creepy White Dude is totally hitting on Small Asian Girl! Edited by annette on 22 December 2009 at 12:10am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5510 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 95 22 December 2009 at 2:58am | IP Logged |
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Some insights from a native speaker friend on some of the things I noticed in the first
100 pages: On the phrase 'mian3 gui4 xing4 [surname here]': "Maybe people just don't say this to you because nobody respects you." Later clarification: "It's really formal so nobody would say it to you because you are so young, so why would I be that polite?" On how all the renderings of white people are purposefully ugly: "No, that's just what white people look like." Me: "But look at how they did his nose!" Her: "Right, because white people have noses like that. Look, your nose is like that. I don't mean it in a bad way, but your nose really sticks out." On 'ni3men lao3shi1' (no 'de'): "Well, yeah, that's right. You can also say ni3men tu2shu1guan3." Me: "I believe you, but I don't understand why. I mean, I get why I'd say 'ni3 ba4ba' but although teachers are really respected and all, they still aren't, like, family. And the library one is even less logical to me." Her: "Did your book explain?" Me: "Yeah, but nothing new - all it said was that the grammar sort of denotes 'close personal relationship.'" Her: "That's because your book sucks." Me: "Will you explain it to me then?" Her: "No, because you need to know that your book sucks." (Don't worry, I know where I can find an explanation!) On the bai3 shou4 tu2: "Those are actually really common, like if your grandfather has a birthday, you can give him one. It's like with the noodles." Initially my plan was to ONLY consult commercial textbooks so that if anyone was intrigued she could just go try out the book herself, but I'm getting increasingly disillusioned with this plan. My best beginner-level material is not commercial (and also not bound, yay!), while my favorite intermediate-level material appears to have been published by Lulu, and then at more advanced levels most of my stuff is photocopied and sometimes even source-less, so yeah... I'm going to finish this beginner textbook tonight and then switch to the better stuff. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Recht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5805 days ago 241 posts - 270 votes Speaks: English*, GermanB1 | Message 5 of 95 22 December 2009 at 3:00am | IP Logged |
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Viel Glueck!
literally, much luck 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5510 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 95 23 December 2009 at 9:51pm | IP Logged |
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Danke! I'm looking forward to Deutsch. I haven't procured any materials yet but I figure
I'll search the forum later... somebody HAS to have posted some good suggestions! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Stryozyk Newbie United States Joined 5474 days ago 39 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 95 25 December 2009 at 6:50am | IP Logged |
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Cool, I enjoyed reading your notes even though I know nothing of Mandarin or that textbook! For German
there are so many resources that it's hard to know where to begin. The website I use most frequently though is: http://dict.leo.org/ It's an excellent dictionary which includes phrases and a very helpful forum. Good luck! I really like your observations. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| annette Senior Member United States Joined 5510 days ago 164 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 95 29 December 2009 at 2:00am | IP Logged |
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Thank you for the compliment and the link. I've just checked out that dictionary you
mentioned and it looks interesting. It is taking me a while to figure out my way around (I'm really a total beginner) but I'm excited for when I'll really be able to use it! The forum in particular looks like it'll come in handy. Right now I am planning on beginning my foray into German sometime in the middle of January. I really need to focus on Mandarin for the first two weeks so I won't be embarrassingly behind in a local class, but after that I should be able to devote proper time to German as well. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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