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Robarb’s Multilingual Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes  Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 1 of 6 21 July 2014 at 12:16am | IP Logged |
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Welcome to my log. Here I'll post about my progress and struggles in learning a very large number of languages,
independently, in my spare time. I'll comment on materials and techniques I find useful, as well as random experiences I've had that may or may not relate to languages I'm studying. At the moment, I am primarily concentrating on Mandarin and Cantonese, but I'll also post about maintenance of languages I'm not intensively studying (which, I believe, is one of the most important and neglected aspects of polyglottery, once you get past about 8 languages. You have to find a way to not forget them that doesn't eat your life.) I will try to make the log English-readable, but I'll also break out snippets of my target languages. And of course, feel free to correct, recommend, argue, encourage, and contact. OK, with that out of the way, let's get to the fun! ------- I just got a major boost to my Mandarin study when an exchange partner recommended me the Global Times Target Chinese site (http://language.globaltimes.cn/). My eyes immediately tracked to the advanced audio with transcription section at the bottom of the page. In my experience, there is no better way to study comprehension than audio with transcription-- the two forms of input greatly increase my comprehension over pure audio or text, and I get to solidify my mental connections between the written and spoken forms of the language, and practice reading aloud. It's especially useful for languages like Mandarin, Japanese or Hebrew, where you can't sound out unfamiliar words. Highly recommended. So far, I've read the posts about an Indian girl who became the youngest female to climb Mount Everest, and a newly discovered polymer. [Mandarin] 有没有别的网站可以同时阅读和听吗我已经认 识Lingq，但是他们的中文内容我差不多都听完 . 口语是特别难找到。 (Anyone know of a site with more transcribed audio? I already know Lingq, but I've exhausted most of their good Chinese content. Informal speech is particularly hard to find.) I seem to be having a problem with the rendering of Chinese characters. It looks fine until I publish the post, when some extra spaces get added and a random character transforms to ???. (I'm using Mac OSX Pinyin Simplified input method.) Edited by robarb on 21 July 2014 at 12:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4253 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 2 of 6 21 July 2014 at 12:35am | IP Logged |
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Welcome and glad to see someone else studying Cantonese!
I think I remember it being mentioned that Chinese characters sometimes mess up on this board because there's a limit or something to how many characters can be in a word and Chinese characters are counted as many more characters by the website. So adding in spaces might help with getting the characters display properly. Though someone who better understands the issue might be able to explain it more clearly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4443 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 3 of 6 21 July 2014 at 2:56am | IP Logged |
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I found a similar problem when typing in Chinese on this blog with some characters turned into ??? I use
a MacBook as well. The way I'd normally resolve the problem would be to type shorter lines and use [return] to force a line break. 在这个博客打中文字時我也找到同样问题。有 部分的字会变成？？？(问号) 我也用一部 MacBook 电脑。我通常用的解决办法是每一行打短一些 。 每一行打完时用 [return] 来开始新一行。 The next step in your learning would be for you to watch videos in Mandarin. I found a TV language learning series from Singapore posted on YouTube: "Say It! 好好说, 慢慢讲" with English & Chinese subtitles & captions. 你学习中文的下一步是多看一点华语的影片 。我找到一套从新加坡来有中文和英文字幕 的学习电视节目已上载在 YouTube 叫 “Say It! 好好说, 慢慢讲”。 Edited by shk00design on 21 July 2014 at 2:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 4 of 6 21 July 2014 at 4:00am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the tips!
Say It! 好好说, 慢慢讲 is just about the goofiest thing I have ever seen, but it is pretty useful for subtitled 口语。 (colloquial speech). Just from the first 3 minutes, I found some interesting regional differences. Apparently in Singapore, Mandarin is called hua yu; I have always used zhong wen, han yu, pu tong hua or, when speaking with non-Mainlanders, guo yu. More surprisingly, in Singapore English a hot pot is called "steamboat." Goes to show you're never done learning even your first language. Edited by robarb on 21 July 2014 at 4:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 5 of 6 27 July 2014 at 6:04am | IP Logged |
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I'm powering through Cantonese lessons from the FSI Language Courses (outdated US government lessons) and the
PopUp Cantonese podcast. While both are about equally useful, it's striking how much more boring the FSI course manages to be. Even in a beginner-level dialogue, PopUp finds a way to insert parts about panda sex, medical malpractice, poor fashion choice and passive-aggressive insults. Much more engaging than "Where is the restaurant?" Still, I can't wait 'til I can handle some native-level content in Cantonese. In fact, I'll make it a goal to incorporate native-level content by the end of 2014-- I'll have to rely on a lot of transfer from Mandarin to get there that fast, since it took me years to get that far in my first Chinese language. 你哋覺得我能唔能呀? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 6 of 6 02 August 2014 at 1:13am | IP Logged |
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Time for some writing practice!
[Portuguese] Amanhã é o meu aniversário. Pra comemorar, eu vou no concerto da banda Weezer com alguns amigos. Na verdade, passar o meu aniversário assim não foi o plano original, mas foi-me sugerido ir a esse concerto e caiu justo naquele dia, o que não deixou tempo pra fazer outro tipo de festa. Assim, adiei a festa em casa pra próxima segunda-feira. [Mandarin] 我的室友买了一张桌子。我们的房子越来越漂 亮！ 比上个同屋住在这里的时候好多了。以前我觉 得请人来我 的房子不好，不想让朋友们看情况到底怎么样 。我不是说 以前的情况那么糟糕，只是有点不干净，家具 不够了。 现在反之真好看。 [French] Je suis en train de lire un livre (en anglais) qui s'appelle L'erreur de Descartes, de Antonio Damasio. C'est un livre de neuropsychologie, publié en 1994, sur les rélations entre le raison, les émotions, le corps, et la conscience. Il commence avec une discussion du patient célebre Phineas Gage, américain qui a souffert une blessure grave du lobe frontal et a eu par conséquent une dérangement des émotions et de la raison. Puis il raconte des cas de patients similaires plus récents, et argumente que la raison est intimement liée aux émotions, qui servent pour surveiller le corps et donner une valoir déterminée a des situations. Le livre est intéressant et a eu une grande influence, bien qu'il soit aujourd'hui un peu démodé. [Swedish] Jag har också läst en artikel på ESPN om undergången av streetbasket i USA. Förr spelade man basket på asfalt i parkerna i många städer i USA. På några av dem var nivån ganska hög, och till och med professionella spelare brukade komma dit och spela med. Det fanns knappast spelare som inte lärde att spela på asfalt. Nu däremot är parkerna tömma eftersom unga spelar inomhus i ligor, och professionella är rädda för skador, som är oftare på asfalt än på trä. Vad synd! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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