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Hitchhiker’s guide to the Chinese Galaxy | ||
Tags: Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 41 of 230 05 May 2013 at 7:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Special entry 5
Hanzi learned @ 5.4.2013 = 400 301-400 喜 久 看 还 還 (S / T) 电 電 (S ' T) 思 占 姑 果 店 为 為 (S / T) 周 以 母 告 洗 射 酒 阳 陽 (S / T) 咱 过 過 (S / T) 胜 勝 (S / T) 利 但 得 班 禾 旦 羊 发 發 (S / T) 厂 廠 (S / T) 刻 卡 讨 討 (S / T) 作 内 它 苦 灯 燈 (S / T) 其 红 紅 (S / T) 经 經 (S / T) 买 買 (S / T) 卖 賣 (S / T) 读 讀 (S / T) 欢 歡 (S / T) 末 写 寫 (S / T) 唱 想 球 歌 等 纪 紀 (S / T) 块 塊 (S / T) 钱 錢 (S / T) 差 差 (S / T) 实 實 (S / T) 近 就 基 意 切 互 俩 倆 (S / T) 肉 批 阴 陰 (S / T) 连 連 (S / T) 河 次 比 像 关 關 (S / T) EDIT: I changed a character that while reviewing realized I had repeated: 期 I replaced it with 意 Edited by outcast on 20 May 2013 at 8:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 42 of 230 06 May 2013 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Unit Completion Entry 10
Unit 3 Lesson 2 Basic Spoken Chinese 5.6.2013 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 43 of 230 07 May 2013 at 6:01am | IP Logged | ||
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Major Milestone 1
I exchanged "pleasantries" with a Chinese gentlemen for the first time today! He spoke imperfect thought smooth English, and the exchange was held in English. However, the pleasantries were in Chinese ("I study Chinese, You are welcome, take care of yourself, good-bye"), as were a few mentions of cardinal numbers. No where near a spontaneous conversation yet. Exiting nonetheless. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 44 of 230 10 May 2013 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Unit Completion Entry 11
Unit 3 Lesson 3 Basic Spoken Chinese 5.10.2013 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 45 of 230 12 May 2013 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Was out of town, so a day or so late but here it goes...
Weekly Progress Entry 8 5.10.2013 This has been a strange week... it seems it lasted for ever yet I had so much to do and in fact did. But it seems like a million things happened and that it has been two or three weeks since my last update. In general, I'm just keeping on the pace I have been. I have this week for the first time exchanged some pleasantries with Chinese people, very very simple memorized phrases, no spontaneous sentences. Still a bit off from that although I could create some if I wanted to, but my vocab and grammar knowledge is still so limited that only very precise and specific situations would allow me to do so, and that has not happened. The grammar has thrown its first twist at me, not because I don't understand it on the contrary it is elegant and simple, yet it is hard to think that way (I know eventually it gets better): using 的 in longer adjectival phrases. As learners of the language may now, "de5" (neutral tone) is among many things a possessive marker, somewhat like English apostrophe "'s". So you would say "wo3de5 bei1zi5 ("my cup"), "Zhao4 Li3de5 gong1zuo4 (Zhao Li's work/job). Both are basically identical structures to English. But Chinese makes what I feel is a more "elegant" usage of this concept and expands it to many adjectival clauses, which in English would have to be forcibly relative clauses: - The train (that departs tomorrow morning at 6 am) In Chinese it would be literally: "The (leaves tomorrow morning at 6am) that train". You basically attatch the particle "de5" at the end of that adjective/relative clause in parenthesis LITERALLY: "(leaves tomorrow morning at 6am)DE train" (in that order too: Chinese like German orders time from general to more specific) As I said, I find it very elegant that the language combines the possessive marking ownership with the possessive marking descriptive attributes. It would be like if in English we said "the at the mall working the night shift as security's guy", where the apostrophe indicates that the noun of the sentence ("guy") "owns" those properties. It will just take some time into thinking like that when trying to speak, as none of the languages that I have learned have something similar. German can at times put long attributive phrases in front of a noun, but mainly in writing and in speech this is rarely done at all. Vocabulary is going ok, remembering most of it. Characters are in a cruise control, not learning any faster nor any slower. I should be at 472 characters by the end of today, giving me about 3-4 days to learn 28 characters, about 7-9 a day which is totally doable. Mid week I should hit 500. I will hold to my promise to not learn any further characters in isolation after the 1000 most common ones from frequency lists + their simp/trad versions + any other outlier characters presented in the books I am using to learn Hanzi. After those I will only learn characters through new vocabulary and only if the vocabulary I learn that day happens to use characters I already now, I may supplement my diet of new ones with 3-4 new characters in isolation. I am pretty much done with unit 3, which had tons of information about numbers, time, currency, and was very involved in the details about how Chinese language and culture says such things like prices, hours, age, etc... so it was and remains a challenge to remember all the subtleties and differences. Plus it had its normal load of grammar too. So I would not be upset if I review it all a couple of days before moving on to Unit 4, which is more numbers. I should start this unit early this coming week. I will be on the far side of 500 characters learned heading towards 600 by next weekend. I have to maximize my eagerness to learn characters before the "novelty" factor wears off, which has not much thus far. So I will just plough ahead consequences be damned. Till the next WPR on 5.17.13! Edited by outcast on 12 May 2013 at 5:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ling Diglot Groupie Taiwan Joined 4597 days ago 61 posts - 94 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Indonesian, Thai | Message 46 of 230 12 May 2013 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm a native English speaker, but Mandarin is my language of secondary competence. I'll just butt in now to say that your insight serves you very well indeed in all of the above! Just so you know, "晚間星聞" involves a pun. (Challenge: see if you can figure out what it is!) Keep it up!! 加油! Edited by ling on 12 May 2013 at 8:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4960 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 47 of 230 17 May 2013 at 4:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Unit Completion Entry 12
Unit 3 Lesson 4 Basic Spoken Chinese 5.15.2013 (for some reason, the website was down a couple of days ago when I wanted to post this entry) Note: I spend a couple of extra days on the exercises for this lesson. For some reason, getting numbers right is one of the hardest things for me in a language. What I mean is not only counting linearly but manipulating numbers, skip counting, adding or subtracting, or saying long numbers. It's happened in all the languages I have been learning even close ones like Portuguese. I don't know why numbers trip me so much. The drills and transformation exercises in this unit had quite a few of these sort of exercises, which is good, but it took me quite a while. To think of numbers while at the same time tones, pronunciation, grammar, and the vocabulary (which of course does not come automatically like in your native language), plus remembering what the sentence said word for word (tough enough in our mother language), made the exercises very challenging. After several practice sessions I reached a level of comfort to move on. Edited by outcast on 17 May 2013 at 4:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jasoninchina Senior Member China Joined 5242 days ago 221 posts - 306 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Italian | Message 48 of 230 18 May 2013 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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You've been going strong for two months now. Great job!
I've been learning Mandarin for a while now, so just thought I'd drop in and make some suggestions. 1. podcasts. I like cslpod because they give their dialogues away for free. There's no audio, but the material is very natural. Often what we find in textbooks is very stale, so this is nice. 2. Anki. Maybe you're already using this or something like it, but I mention it because it's so great. 3. Chinese Breeze 汉语风 graded readers. I'd take them over NPCR any day. I also noticed your list on the first page about levels. I think you're underestimated what you can accomplish. If you keep at it as you have been, you can easily reach B1 by next summer. Keep up the good work! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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