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Hitchhiker’s guide to the Chinese Galaxy | ||
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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 57 of 230 01 June 2013 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Special Entry 7
Some major, major developments have occurred this week in my language learning journey, and yesterday in particular was a bit of a watershed day (Msy 31, 2013). I will digress for a moment from the Chinese WPE to explain: - - - - - - First of all, I had a great evening last night at a German-speakers get together. My German was not perfect and when discussing some high-brow topics (sovereign debt, health-care insurance, etc), I obviously still lacked technical vocabulary and had to pause, use turns-of-phrase, and a couple of times just say it in English ("C-section"), but the language flowed and somewhat spontaneously, surprisingly often with correct grammar and case usage. I even provided some native speakers with the correct choice of word when they got stuck! I also met a couple of great new people, and hopefully they can be friends from now forward. Second, I got an email response from a French-Canadian young woman I had met at my place of work a few weeks back. At the time I had mustered up courage and spoke to her and she was very nice, so we talked. At the end I asked her if she would like to correspond. At first she was surprised by the proposal, then accepted. I really was not expecting her to ever write back, but early this week she did. We have written in French to each other a couple of times now, so that is helping a lot both with my written French, but also to get more exposure to Quebec-French, which I told her to please use in her writings. I also met a new teacher at my weekly French meetings, a true Parisian with a true Parisian accent. She is very knowledgeable and already a great help. Third, my concentration seems to have returned so I had a great week with the languages. - - - - - - - - Now to Chinese... I was contacted on wednesday by a Chinese tutor, and yesterday we finally chatted via Skype. She seems like a VERY nice, kind woman and teacher, and quite eager to help me in my Chinese learning. We chatted for a while, even a few things in Chinese (though I understood not much when she asked, there were a few questions where I grasped the gist of what she asked but had to confirm it by telling her in English what I think she asked), and a question or two I even understood completely: 你去过中国吗？ She was quite impressed with my pronunciation, something she restated in her subsequent e-mail to me 你的中文发音非常好，真的！ I read this without any translation, and pretty much understood what she meant to say both thanks to context (we had already discussed this), and my knowledge of characters: while I don't know the word for "pronunciation", when I saw the characters 发 (to send out) and 音 (sound) next to each other, and the fact the teacher wrote "MY chinese _____" before them, immediately suggested it had to do with my output of sound... aka pronunciation! Then I saw the characters 常 and 好 after this and gathered she means to say that I get the pronunciation correctly often. And that's how I deciphered that Chinese sentence :) So, that it itself would have made my day, but with everything that has happened it was just amazing. So yes, I believe I will work with her. She also uses the New Practical Chinese reader to teach, so that falls in line with my original program I set out at the beginning of this log. Starting with the tutor changes my plans a bit though not fundamentally. This is what I plan to do: 1. Have the first two volumes of NPCR delivered, both text and workbook. 2. Set up at first, one meeting a week with the tutor (maybe go to two meetings eventually). I know, since I am in Unit 5 of Basic Spoken Chinese, have already learned pronunciation, and am up to 600 characters today, that the first lessons of NPCR will be a breeze and nothing but review. However I will do them and not skip, as even my tutors have suggested. Two reasons: first, it's good to review, and it never hurts. It's better to review also with new materials, since you hear different voices and conversations. Second, no one course can cover all expressions, characters, and grammar, so I am sure I will find material in these lessons that is new to me amongst all the already-learned stuff. So, my immediate plan is: a. Start NPCR volume 1 this week and go through it, doing all listening and exercises and paying special attention to the things Basic Spoken Chinese may have omitted. b. Continue with Basic spoken Chinese Unit 5. I'll have a little less time for it now, so the Units may take a little longer to complete, but that is OK. c. Continue learning the characters. I still plan to take Pimsleur out when I finish Unit 5 of Basic Spoken Chinese. I will take a short break from that course and focus for a week or two on NPCR and Pimsleur. Then I return to Basic Spoken Chinese and figure out how all these programs best fit together in my schedule. More long term, I plan to begin reading the Chinese Breeze series suggested by JasoninChina when I finish Basic Spoken Chinese. Before that though, I will really get going with the material in Basic Written Chinese. Right now I am only learning the raw characters presented in the book, not doing any of the exercises. I plan to do that at around Unit 8 (the course itself states its OK to to the Written track any time period after you do the corresponding Unit of the spoken course). Basic Written Chinese has good and very simple reading exercises which will be my first stepping stone into reading true Chinese (no pinyin, just characters). I also will get the Beginners Chinese Reading book at the same time as Chinese Breeze. This is a book Flarioca had originally placed in his list of materials and which I find could be useful. So to summarize the upcomming changes after Unit 5 of BSP: Right now: 3-4 hours a day basic Spoken Chinese (an hour or so drills, an hour reading the grammar notes, one hour learning/writing characters, the other hour I leave up to me depending on what I feel like doing that day, more characters or more speaking exercises). After Unit 5 BSP: 90 minutes or so of NCPR text and workbook (until I catch up to the level I am with BSP) 30 minutes of Pimsleur 60 minutes of Basic Spoken Chinese 60 minutes characters - - - - - 60 minute tutoring (once a week mainly talking in Chinese) One I catch up the NCPR with BSP, I will devote more equal time. At Unit 8 of BSP, I begin fully with the Basic Written Chinese (30 minutes) So eventually my time devoted to Chinese will increase by an hour, so I will have to cut an hour from German/French that day for that time. But I am not inflexible and I give myself the right to study more Chinese one day, or more French/German another day. As everything, it will be retouched as I go along. Amazing week, exciting time for me. 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 58 of 230 01 June 2013 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Weekly Progress Entry 11
5.31.2013 So I thought I would be into Unit 5 by now, but I just finished Unit 4. I am starting Unit 5 today or tomorrow. I have been trying to grasp the forming of larger numbers in Chinese, which of course is different from the West, no less because they use a different scale. To make matters worse, I figured I brush up on how we form numbers in the west to better understand the Chinese way, only to then be reminded that even in the West there is no universal system. So I had to "learn" the difference between the long scale and short scale (billion, trillion vs millard/billiard), and the exponential scale each uses. That took a bit of time from my learning, but now that I understand it, it should now help understand French and German large numbers when spoken on TV (now, rarely do numbers get so high that there is a difference between one billion in the short scale vs the long scale), but it is still good to know. I have been speaking out loud numbers larger than 10,000 to see how they work. I also must remember to insert a placeholder zero (though I am still not fully clear how that works with a number like for example: 1,010,001... are there two 零 used there?) Anyway, numbers in foreign languages have always been a pet-peeve of mine, because they trip me up. I don't know if that is normal but it took me a while to get the German "four and twenty blackbirds" system, or the multiplicative French system beyond 60. There has not been a lot of grammar in this lesson, but plenty of notes on number and vocabulary usage. I need to review it often so I don't forget it. I must admit however that for the first time the usage of something in Chinese eludes me a bit: the stative verbs 多and 少. I don't think there is any analogy to them in any of my other five languages, and furthermore it seems to be common for the Chinese to use the negative of one to mean the other (i.e = "There are not few cars", when they mean "There are MANY cars"!!!!). So that is an area I really will have to watch out for, and perhaps ask for some help. The characters have been my weak spot this week. I have arrived at 600, but about a day late. I will have to review again this batch of 100 characters, to make sure I did learn them well. I think I did, but I just haven't practiced writing them yet so I feel they are more distant to me than the others at the moment. I hope today to get some practice in. I will post the list of those shortly (tons of entries in this log today!!!) This week the plan is to begin my way to 700 characters (can I believe it, can you?), and get on with Unit 5, which already seems like a MAJOR unit. We finally leave behind the numbers and dates part and really get into some thick grammar. And the unit's drills are LONG. So it will be a momma Unit. I will be ordering New Practical Chinese reader 1 and 2 and the workbook. As soon as I get them, I will begin using them. Till the next WPE on 6.7.2013! 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 59 of 230 01 June 2013 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | ||
So I did... - - - - - - Major Milestone 2 Chinese still has not opened up much in terms of me reading things of course. However, unlike the last time I checked the yahoo Taiwan webpage, I was able to understand some of the menu options for the first time: I could find and click on: 1. sports section 2. entertainment section 3. job search section 4. music section 5. word/dictionary section 6. news headlines section ((I think) 7. "the one minute weather forecast" 一分鐘報氣象 (right?) So, again, I am still not through the door by any means, but I can hear the lock moving (very slowly). We will check again at 1000 characters. Edited by outcast on 01 June 2013 at 5:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5876 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 60 of 230 01 June 2013 at 6:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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A little comment: 非常 is kinda like "super" or "extremely". So: "Your Chinese pronunciation is super good! Seriously!" Another phrase you'll likely hear a lot is "你的发音很标准": ni3 de5 fa1 yin1 hen3 biao1 zhun3. Biao1 zhun3 just means standard, saying you have a very clear, standard pronunciation. :)
And in 1,010,001, yes there are two 零s, but they aren't together. 一百零一万零一. Remember that above 19 (十九) the tens digit always includes how many tens there are. So 113 is 一百一十三 (notice that it's 一十三 and not just 十三). Dates are different, though, you just say the numbers. 二零零八年 (or often just 二00八年), 二0一三年. 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 61 of 230 02 June 2013 at 5:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Special entry 8
Hanzi learned @ 6.1.2013 = 600 501-600 长 長 (S / T) 张 体 體 (S / T) 拉 啦 站 古 故 政 棵 克 辛 较 較 (S / T) 知 面 麵 (S / T) 父 图 圖 (S / T) 收 啤 况 言 信 步 交 汽 应 應 (S / T) 楼 樓 (S / T) 页 頁 (S / T) 圆 圓 (S / T) 客 快 声 聲 (S / T) 题 題 (S / T) 化 向 曏 (S / T) 亚 亞 (S / T) 史 艺 飞 飛 (S / T) 该 該 (S / T) 脏 髒 (S / T) 水 城 旨 者 猪 豬 (S / T) 孝 教 然 当 當 (S / T) 尸 起 记 記 (S / T) 纪 紀 (S / T) 巳 导 導 (S / T) 种 種 (S / T) 眼 真 级 級 (S / T) 忘 表 县 縣 (S / T) 原 全 全 (S / T) 侯 始 位 懂 往 离 離 (S / T) 远 遠 (S / T) 概 Edited by outcast on 05 June 2013 at 7:02am 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 62 of 230 02 June 2013 at 7:00am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks a lot Crush. I really don't know the character 非 yet, so I didn't know if it was part of the previous word or the next one. As for the numbers, now I am a bit confused. I don't remember my book saying you had to say 一十三. I just looked and it says to simply say the word for the number under 100, thus the example they give is 三百五十八。(358) So to confirm, I have to say, for example, 两百一十一 (211), 九百一十九 (919), etc??? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5876 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 63 of 230 02 June 2013 at 12:39pm | IP Logged | ||
So you've got 三百一，三百二，三百三，三百四，三百五， etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kevin Hsu Triglot Groupie Canada Joined 4749 days ago 60 posts - 94 votes Speaks: English, Mandarin*, Korean Studies: German | Message 64 of 230 02 June 2013 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | ||
Actually, it should be be 两百五 rather than 二百五. Use 二 when the 2 is by itself or before a 十. Otherwise, use 两. Also, use 两 when you want to say exactly 2 of something. Some examples to illustrate: 二 => 两个 二十 => 二十个 两百 => 两百个 两千 => 两千个 两千零二 => 两千零二个 (not 两千零两个 because it's not exactly 2) That being said, I have heard people say 二百五 sometimes, but I personally avoid it because it is incorrect. Edited by Kevin Hsu on 02 June 2013 at 3:33pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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