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Mandarin journey (FSI, Pimsleur, NPCR) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5867 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 121 of 181 05 October 2009 at 9:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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Congrats! Do you use your Mandarin very often in the US?
Also, I see you have added Tagalog to your language list, have you started studying Tagalog as well? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6052 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 122 of 181 06 October 2009 at 1:23am | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you :) I use my Chinese with 3 native speakers who I communicate with regularly. 2 are in my area, and 1 is in China. So I have about 2 to 4 Chinese conversations every week I suppose. As for Tagalog, well it so happens that I work with a TON of Filipinos. Nearly 1/2 of my coworkers are Filipino. Thus, there really is no reason not to learn Tagalog. Besides, it has a lot of Spanish words thrown in the mix, which is convenient, and is from a totally different language family than my others, so it will expand and strengthen my language acquisition ability, as well as be interesting and different. Right now, I am just getting done with Pimsleur Tagalog and ready to start FSI Tagalog. Since there is a dearth of Tagalog materials, it may be a challenge to find something for the advanced level, but this is a bridge that will be crossed again in the future, so I need to learn how to learn an unpopular language. My goals for the language are modest compared to Chinese; conversational fluency, perhaps 2 to 3 thousand words. I consider it a "side project" so I didn't start a log. My next big undertaking will be either Japanese or Russian. Chinese study still takes the first priority for now. How does your study go? Edited by irrationale on 06 October 2009 at 1:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5867 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 123 of 181 06 October 2009 at 2:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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I grew up with a lot of Filipinos, but none of their parents passed on the language apart from a few family-related words, like kuya and ate, the only Tagalog words I still remember.
My studies are going well, still pushing along in Spanish. I finally finished Platiquemos, after 10 months. Actually, I'm currently planning for a 2-3 month trip to Spain, which hopefully will see me returning to the US much more conversant in Spanish. My French is pretty much 100% passive knowledge (much of it borrowed from Spanish), but that's ok as Spanish is my priority for now. Anyway I hope you decide to keep another log on your next "big project"! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6052 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 124 of 181 18 November 2009 at 7:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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Multiple milestones to report. All my chinese partners have now commented on my fluency and ability to express advanced ideas, so I suppose I am finally in the advanced level of fluency now. Of course, it wasn't some sort of epiphany, it is just that now people have really begun commenting and I suppose I hadn't realized I had passed into this level. I also for the first time a few days ago, finally completely understood a political discussion on the Radio Free Asia radio show "listener's hotline (my regular show). For awhile now I have been getting the "gist" but this was the first time I could understand the entire exchange word by word.
Alas, my passive vocab sucks, so I can't can't claim to be truly advanced in Chinese. I still need much more passive vocab to understand completely what is being said (besides normal conversation), and to fluently read. It is interesting, because this definitely shows that you need around a minimum of 5000 to 6000 words to be at this level, while intermediate must be something around 2000. According to my ANKI deck I "know" 5312 words and 2169 characters. I am almost done with memorizing every word in the Frequency Dictionary, after which I will move on to finish memorizing all of the remaining HSK words, as well as start to memorize topical words of topics that interest me. I plan to buy Shuams' Outline of Chinese Vocab, and Harrap's Chinese Vocab for this purpose (thanks Torbyne!) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5523 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 125 of 181 18 November 2009 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Would you be interested in this project:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=17927&PN=1 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6052 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 126 of 181 19 November 2009 at 9:24am | IP Logged | |||||
Not really. I don't learn the characters individually, rather by words. Good luck though. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5523 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 127 of 181 19 November 2009 at 10:20am | IP Logged | |||||
Ah, but once I have the list of characters, I will compile a list of words that can be formed using each character and any characters learnt before. I have constructed scripts for this, but I need the sequential list of characters in order to do this. For example: 1. ri - day No words 2. yi - one No words 3. ben - measure for books yiben x, one [book] riben - Japan 4. wen - script, language riwen - japanese written language etc. I found this method extremely useful for learning kanji, and the words that use them. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6052 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 128 of 181 01 December 2009 at 4:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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Finally finished "a frequency dictionary of Mandarin chinese". I'm glad to be past that book, I just needed to know which are the commonly used words in all registers. On to finish the damned HSK list and hopefully start casually reading more to ween myself off of lists.
Since the dictionary removed proper nouns, my vocab is really proper noun poor and perhaps nouns in general. To solve this, my next vocab book will be a topically organized one as mentioned before. Besides certain nouns, I only look at words out of a chinese-chinese dictionary nowadays, using a Chinese English dictionary has become a total waste of time. I've also started using pictures in Anki for certain nouns that exist in China. I'm also currently searching for a conversation partner to discuss educated topics with me, a search which may be a challenge. Perhaps a doc student? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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