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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4928 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes  Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 161 of 169 21 October 2012 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Mandarin
Well, I "passed" the first part of my oral Mandarin exam. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, but of course, they aren't looking for C2 level Chinese to start with. I'm just waiting for the next few exams... I made an interesting discovery. I downloaded ANKI 2.0 and am beginning to learn how to play with it. One thing that is either gratifying or disturbing is that some of the shared decks are incorrect. I was able to identify some very simple mistakes and realized that I can't really depend upon things you download from the net; you need to have at least two independent and hopefully, professionally-produced resources to consult to make sure of accuracy. Cantonese In Hong Kong I was able to use my Cantonese quite a bit just talking to the cab drivers. It seems as if I knew the city better than one driver, because even when showing him a map of the city, he didn't know where I wanted to go. He called the dispatcher and asked her, but she didn't know. So he gave me the phone, I told her in Cantonese, and she relayed the proper directions to her driver. It was so much fun to be able to use the little Cantonese I have to achieve a result. Tibetan In two weeks I'll be back in NYC; I'll bring back one of my textbooks of Classical Tibetan to study from. One good thing about Hong Kong is that youtube is not blocked there. I watched several videos about polyglots discussed on this forum, and saw Professor Arguelles' video about his dream project, the Polyglot Institute for Foreign Studies. I sincerely hope it can happen; it's a worthy project and goal, one that I'm sure resonates with many of the people on this forum. I have a similar idea of an online resource for the study of Sino-Tibetan languages. It's not an academy per se, but an online learning site for the study of various East Asian languages, but that's a post for another time. Edited by zhanglong on 22 October 2012 at 9:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 162 of 169 22 October 2012 at 7:40am | IP Logged | ||
Dude, if you make this happen, I want in. Also, congrats on your passing the exam! Too bad you're leaving for NYC before I get to HK again (thinking of dropping by for Christmas). I guess I'll look you up when I go to New York instead! Unfortunately, with NYC being English-speaking and all, it's not on my list at the moment. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4928 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 163 of 169 22 October 2012 at 9:15am | IP Logged | ||
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It would be a pleasure to have you on-board! I'll let you know as it develops...
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| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4928 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 164 of 169 21 January 2013 at 4:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't posted in some time, but the language study continues.
My Mandarin continues to slowly improve. A friend is trying to get me to use Skritter, but the monthly subscription makes me a little wary. A previous financial decision to use Cantonese Class 101 wasn't so good. Their transcriptions are unreliable, and their resources are easily surpassed by free alternatives. At years end, native Cantonese people say that my Cantonese sounds better than my Mandarin. I guess that's because I almost exclusively listen to Cantonese rather than read or write it. :( Finally, I'm flirting with learning Shanghainese. How I'll fit it in after Mandarin, Cantonese, and Tibetan is anyone's guess but I would like to be at least A1 in this by May 1st for a meeting I am having in Shanghai. The only resource I'll be using is: "Shanghai Dialect for Foreigners" where the phonetic transcriptions are done using the IPA. There is no formal transcription system for 上海话， no pinyin or jyutping, so IPA is a great choice to represent such different sounds. To my ear, it almost sounds like Japanese, but having done very little work with this, I'll have to investigate further. So, the 2013 goals are: 普通话： B2/C1 广东话： A2/B1 上海话： A1 臧语： A1 Edited by zhanglong on 21 January 2013 at 4:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4867 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 165 of 169 21 January 2013 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Great to see you're back! How are your three languages going?
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| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4928 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 166 of 169 03 March 2013 at 7:10am | IP Logged | ||
Ahh, I'm incredibly busy. I find that the more I study, the less time I have to be online. With the advent of things like Anki, Quizlet, Skydrive, and the like, I realize that I have a lot more advantages than the language learners of even ten years ago, but it's really easy to get lost in the gadgets and gizmos. So I've been focusing on paper, pencil, and staying in the field to test my language skills. It's been fun, but I still have far to go. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4928 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 167 of 169 09 April 2013 at 4:33am | IP Logged | ||
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Tibetan is becoming more and more interesting to me; the more I read about it, the more time I spend on it. I still do my daily Cantonese drills in the morning, and use Mandarin all during the day, but Tibetan, at least reading it and attempting to write it, just resonates with me.
A funny thing...the more obscure a language is, the more I want to learn it. Yet, aren't languages for communication? I guess there is more than one way to communicate -- between people, between cultures, spanning the distance between thousands of miles and tens of centuries. Seeing that people who lived so far away in both time and space, weren't all that different from us is a realization I never get tired of having. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| zhanglong Senior Member United States Joined 4928 days ago 322 posts - 427 votes Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 168 of 169 12 April 2013 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Mandarin
I keep listening to Mandarin media to sharpen my ear. This week I want to focus on using ANKI to remember a rather long list of vocabulary that I am creating sentences for. Cantonese My listening comprehension skills continue to improve. The hardest part is to find the right character for a given word, especially when pronunciation of various people is different. Guangzhou people speak Cantonese differently from Chaoshan people. Chaoshan natives have a different accent from Guangxi folk. Residents of Guangdong province all speak Cantonese in their own way; their Standard Cantonese is flavored by their local languages, but I can't yet identify the differences when they speak. Tibetan I've found a very convenient Tibetan keyboard that makes creating and editing Tibetan text. Online Tibetan Keyboard Shanghainese This language is so interesting, but I'm not devoting too much time to this language. The only text I'm using is "Shanghai Dialect for Foreigners". I examine this language only as a contrast to Mandarin and Cantonese. I don't yet know enough Chinese to be able to read the Pulleyblank books on Middle Chinese. Edited by zhanglong on 12 April 2013 at 12:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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