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Chinese Odyssey 2024 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4931 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes  Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 81 of 169 10 November 2011 at 7:43am | IP Logged |
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LOL!
Thank you for the reply! My language learning is almost all self-directed so I am heading up and down so many possible blind alleys. The funny thing is native speakers all say how "good" I am when the average five year old can speak better than I can. I'm buying a tablet today that I will show folks to have them check my sentences. (Why a tablet instead of a notebook? I have many notebooks full of pages and scraps of Chinese. I just want to keep all my notes in one place.) I have a book of Mandarin and Cantonese sentences that I am mining now for proper examples. Not much time left before I have to return to the U.S. Ai yo! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4931 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 82 of 169 16 December 2011 at 12:03pm | IP Logged |
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Recently in one of my classes, a student said he was from northeast China, Harbin.
I told him that northeast China was one of the last places in the world where one could find the Manchu language, when he revealed that he, himself, was Manchu. I asked him how much of this language did he know or speak at home, and he admitted that he knew nothing about his ancestors' language. At the end of the class, I taught him some simple words in the Manchu language such as father, ama, and mother, eme, and advised him to teach his son where his ancestors come from. The look in his eyes as he made a connection to five hundred years of Chinese history, was priceless. That's one of the best reasons to study languages; --to be able to connect to others, not just the living, but to all those who came before you and will come after you. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4931 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 83 of 169 16 December 2011 at 12:06pm | IP Logged |
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My weekly Mandarin and Cantonese classes are moving along; I am learning just how much I *don't* know. Of the four language skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking, I'm at just A1 level, bordering on A2.
Each day I study no more than ten words at a time and either find or create sentences with them that a native speaker will check. Learning the characters or the words by themselves is not useful. I have to focus on using them in sentences and in real situations to get the most benefit. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6231 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 84 of 169 17 December 2011 at 6:19pm | IP Logged |
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Great log! I really enjoyed reading about your progress.
I too am attempting to learn Mandarin and, who knows, someday maybe Cantonese. Cantonese seems really fun, but not real practical for me at the moment... You can follow my progress @ http://how-to-learn-any- language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=30282&PN=1 I think we have similar goals except I am so jealous that you have 1+billion speakers at your disposal to practice with over there!! ;-) Edited by liddytime on 17 December 2011 at 6:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4931 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 85 of 169 26 December 2011 at 4:18am | IP Logged |
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圣诞快乐！
As we are about to enter the Year of the Dragon, I find myself becoming more and more serious about my language studies. I made a promise to myself yesterday to spend most of my time outside of work thinking and speaking in Chinese. I have been able to have many conversations lasting over a half hour, but I'm still fumbling for words I don't know and having to ask for clarification on others. My listening comprehension went from 1% to something higher, but I can't quite quantify it just yet. I just know that I'm not saying "听不懂” as often as I used to. I am also following the advice I give my students; learn a small amount of words (from five to ten) at a time, review them regularly, and use them in sentences as you learn them. You tend to remember context-based learning rather than memorizing lists of words. So my daily schedule consists of: Mandarin listening: * listening to Mandarin audio for 30 minutes a day (minimum) Mandarin reading and writing: * learning to read and write ten characters a day * learning how to use words based upon these ten characters in sentences * learning one new grammar rule a day Mandarin speaking: * speaking to a native speaker from 15 to 30 minutes It seems modest enough, but the goal is not to rack up quantity of hours studied or words learned, but to make sure each contact hour I have with the language to be a quality hour. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4931 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 86 of 169 01 January 2012 at 6:25pm | IP Logged |
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Day 01:
I've listened to 2.5 hours of Mandarin today. I would do more, but my brain slowly began to melt as the Law of Diminishing Returns took effect. I've decided to set a definite deadline for my language studies. Studying all night long to meet a quota of daily study is counter-productive. 15 minutes when your mind is fresh is better than 2 hours when you are barely awake. Sunday's recommended website MDBG.net This is the one of the best Mandarin dictionaries on the net. It is also the site of the CEDICT project. It is *highly* recommended if you are a student of Mandarin. In other news: Also, I was fortunate to find a parallel dictionary in the bookstore for 广州话， 客家话， 潮汕话， and 普通话。 I don't know much about the Hakka language(s), but finding a resource for 潮汕话 was a special treat. All of these extra "dialects" of Chinese are fascinating, but I need to put in a lot of work on learning Mandarin, to get the most out of learning about other Chinese languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4931 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 87 of 169 02 January 2012 at 8:54pm | IP Logged |
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Day 02:
I'm using Mandarin in many different ways now. One unexpected way is in helping me decipher Cantonese. On the Cantonese log, I noted how difficult finding the meaning of one expression was; it's not listed in any online Cantonese dictionaries, but it's a staple of Chapter Two of a basic textbook. So it has to be an easy expression, right? Only by talking to native speakers and reading the chapter in Mandarin was I able to figure out the meaning of the Cantonese. New vocabulary for today from conversation and reading: 真是 巧合 菠萝 I listened to a half hour of Mandarin. I also reviewed the first 20 characters of my Reading Mandarin project. In less than a year, I will have finished the 2700 characters I want to have learned for 2012. Edited by zhanglong on 02 January 2012 at 8:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4931 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 88 of 169 04 January 2012 at 9:43pm | IP Logged |
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Day 04:
I've spent the majority of my study time on Cantonese. Whenever I return to Mandarin, it seems so much "simpler" in comparison. Sometimes being able to carry 100,000 words in your pocket and having all the latest gadgets and gizmos at your disposal can make you complacent. For the rest of this month, I will continue to go to places where I can't get by with a mix of English and Chinese. It's fun to be able to have impromptu conversations with local people. They think that my fluency within a limited range of expression equals mastery of the language. I can keep up the illusion more and more these days! :) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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