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Chinese Mandarin - Casual beginner log

  Tags: Beginner | Mandarin
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22 messages over 3 pages: 13  Next >>
js6426
Diglot
Senior Member
Cambodia
Joined 4521 days ago

277 posts - 349 votes 
Speaks: English*, Khmer
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 9 of 22
30 December 2013 at 11:04am | IP Logged 
For grammar you could check out http://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/ for a free resource. I
haven't used it much yet (mainly because I haven't studied grammar enough), but I will be diving into it a lot this
year I hope.

From what i've read the following two books are supposed to be some of the best for grammar, again I haven't used
them myself yet but I will be this year:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415700108/ref=as_li_ss_il? ie=UTF8&tag=allset-
20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=04157 00108

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415472156/ref=as_li_ss_il?
ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0415472156&li nkCode=as2&tag=allset-20

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kraemder
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5185 days ago

1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 10 of 22
03 January 2014 at 6:51am | IP Logged 
Missed this somehow. I'll check those resources asap. I just wanted to add this site to my resources.. this add on to windows lets you do pinyin input as in Tā shì wǒ de lǎoshī.
etc. I'm using it for making flashcards.. I'm mostly copying words from my pop up dictionary but sometimes there's a list of definitions and the one I want is not on top so I gotta type the card in manually. Hate that. Anyone If anyone else finds this useful:

Pinyin Input
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kraemder
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5185 days ago

1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 11 of 22
03 January 2014 at 7:22am | IP Logged 
I'm redoing my flashcards. I am going to try going full sentence deck from the beginning and not just learn individual words 1st. Here's how I'm doing it (again, ripping stuff off the iknow.jp site). My membership runs out in 2 weeks. They keep reminding me. I don't think I'm going to renew. I never use the actual website I just copy its material in my SRS deck and modify it to my liking. Anyway. The sentences are rather simple (by and large) for their beginner vocab.

Side 1:

我是他的朋友。


Side 2:
我是他的朋友。
Wǒ shì tā de péngyou.
I'm a friend of his.

我 wǒ I, me, my
是 shì to be
他 tā he or him, (used for either sex when the sex is unknown or unimportant)
的 de of, ~""s (possessive particle)
朋友 péng you friend

----
I'm going to make myself read the sentence correctly using the tones (well in my head anyway, I don't really expect myself to pronounce them very well) and know the general meaning of each word.

I never really used sentence decks with Japanese. I tried them a little but found them really hard. I think it was being unfamiliar with kanji that did that to me. hanzi is different than kanji and I'm not really an expert on kanji either. But I think I'm good enough to make this work. However, there's some hanzi that doesn't seem to have any equivalent in Japanese...
喜歡 which is a basic word.. to like... well it exists in Japanese (some hanzi don't even exit) but I haven't seen it used ever. It kind of reminds me of 歓 but it's different. Whatever. There's a lot of that.


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Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4350 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 12 of 22
03 January 2014 at 2:20pm | IP Logged 
But isn't 歓 the 新字体 version of 歡? It seems to be a similar simplification to 単 from 單. And the
first character, I think is used in 喜び (よろこび).
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kraemder
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5185 days ago

1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 13 of 22
03 January 2014 at 10:09pm | IP Logged 
You're probably right. I haven't read up on all the simplifications done to the writing system. But I find it interesting so I probably will. I know that 歡 shows up in the kanji dictionary with rikaisama but some other characters don't. Also, I have my region set to Japan in Windows so I can print out directories in a DOS window and have them actually show the kanji instead of a bunch of question marks. I found out that when I make a Chinese deck, I have to set the region to China because some of the hanzi don't display either and I get the question marks popping up for some of the words. This made me think that these kanji/hanzi don't exist in Japanese.
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kraemder
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5185 days ago

1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 14 of 22
05 January 2014 at 10:40am | IP Logged 
Well I started an SRS Remembering the Hanzi deck. Even just doing basic vocabulary I don't know all the meanings of the hanzi in the material I'm studying. Not a big deal and I'm positive it's worse for others with no experience with this writing system. But I liked Heisig before so it seemed like fun. I found a stroke order font but found out it's incomplete. Well the author already says it is. I also discovered that Mandarin stroke order and Japanese stroke order aren't the same. Just 田 for example is different. Well it was different in at least one primitive where it was used I didn't double check just plain rice field. I am confused enough with Japanese stroke order so I'm just going to fake it with Chinese. The biggest use of stroke order is to look up words in a dictionary when you can't guess at their pronunciation. Or impressing your language teacher. Otherwise it's useless I think, although I think the Japanese seem to think it helps with remembering how to write a kanji. But that's crazy talk.

I spent money on Rosetta Stone but I think I'm going to focus on using this site to start. Zhongwen Red. It looks neat. They give sentences with native audio, real English translations, and literal English translations, and pinyon of course. I'll be making SRS cards with them.

One thing that's bothering me is that some pinyon seems to sound the same to me as other pinyon. the letter X immediately comes to mind but I know there's others. This makes learning the word well harder. Maybe I'll start to hear differences with more listening.
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Sunja
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6086 days ago

2020 posts - 2295 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: French, Mandarin

 
 Message 15 of 22
05 January 2014 at 12:34pm | IP Logged 
kraemder wrote:
One thing that's bothering me is that some pinyon seems to sound the same to me as other pinyon. the letter X immediately comes to mind but I know there's others. This makes learning the word well harder. Maybe I'll start to hear differences with more listening.


I use HanTrainer for hard words, because I like to have different speakers for hard sounds. Any online dict. with audio will do.

Just listening and being aware of the problem helped me. After some time I was able to distinguish qi as having a more "ch"-sound to it. For xi I watched a few youtube videos and I was able to do it.

My biggest problem right now is 生日 and the "ri" sound! Writing is easy but pronunciation is a headache. I think I just have to tag it as "hard" and move on!
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kraemder
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5185 days ago

1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 16 of 22
06 January 2014 at 7:35am | IP Logged 
Funny how I couldn't recognize 誕生日 without the 誕.

As I check the dictionary I think it's pretty uncommon in Japanese to shorten it to those two characters and the reading changes dramatically. I don't feel so bad.

I'm getting annoyed that choosing not to learn simplified is limiting my learning resources. Zhongwen Red uses simplified and that's it. It looks like such a good site and is free it might convince me to learn both right away. I don't think I'd confuse them since I've got lots of Japanese kanji stuck in my head already.


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