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Miss Kay’s Mandarin Mania | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| KayJane Newbie United States Joined 4517 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian | Message 1 of 20 13 July 2012 at 3:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hello! As this is my first language learning log, I believe a little introduction is in order. I'm Kay (that is actually my nickname) and I have decided that I will learn Mandarin Chinese. Why, you ask? Well, I would like to be hired by a large bank and maybe even become CEO with my amazing Mandarin skills...All jokes aside, I have been interested in Chinese culture and history for many years and since I have not graduated high school yet, I believe I should use my time for something productive and rewarding-like language learning! I have always liked learning languages, but wanderlust seems to strike at the worst times. I have dabbled in about ten languages and I am conversational in Spanish (and by conversational, I mean irritating stock phrases that high school students learn), but I believe that now is the time for me to finally buckle down and take advantage of my youth. My goal is simple: Near-Native Fluency in Mandarin Chinese (Native fluency would be a fanciful dream) Simple, right? Obviously I have my work cut out for me and I'm not expecting any quick advancements in the language, but I am giving myself until college graduation to be proficient (B1, I believe). That gives me six to seven years to sail through the sea of characters (hopefully I'll know at least 2,000). Baby Steps I have been learning Chinese for about three months (on and off). In that time I learned how to count. It was that sort of progress that made me dabble in Persian, but now I'm focused since I plan to go to China the summer of my senior year. I would like to work in Guangzhou (I sometimes wonder if I should take up Cantonese) or Beijing, but Chinese universities are out of the question. As of right now, I would like to obtain enough survival knowledge before I graduate high school. Plan of Action I am currently utilizing: -FSI -DLI -CCTV -Anki I hope to get through one unit of FSI a day (this only applies during summer vacation), write out the characters in the dialogue, and practice reading (using a reader, of course!). I shall use this log to record my observations and progress. I believe I will have more time to study this year, since I have to commute (I feel so grown-up being a commuter) to the local uni for my AP Calculus and accounting classes (thank-you, outsourcing). I will also make sure to update Anki so I don't get behind on my vocabulary acquisition. Final Remarks It's just wonderful to be able to communicate with other language learners (and polyglots), and frankly, my little endeavor pales in comparison to what most of you guys are doing. I just hope I can contribute to the language learning community and encourage others to learn Mandarin Chinese! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cortical Tetraglot Newbie CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4632 days ago 30 posts - 52 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, SpanishB1 Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 2 of 20 13 July 2012 at 4:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Kay,
6 years should be plenty of time, to reach your goals. Just keep at it, a small step every day will amount to a long walk over time, just always keep at it, even if you feel like it. "Constant dropping wears the stone". Mandarin has been on my list for about 5 years, and after I've decided that after I've reached an intermediate level in Russian, I'll finally start learning it myself (hopefully by next spring) Good luck, and don't get discouraged :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| catullus_roar Quadrilingual Octoglot Groupie Australia Joined 4567 days ago 89 posts - 184 votes Speaks: Malay, Hokkien*, English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese*, French, German, Spanish Studies: Italian, Latin, Armenian, Afrikaans, Russian | Message 3 of 20 13 July 2012 at 7:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm native Mandarin Chinese, and I think your use of CCTV is very good. However, you may want to consider working on 1) your accent and 2) your penmanship. Chinese has four tones, and mastering hanyu pinyin will help tremendously with learning the words themselves.)
Accent: I have yet to see a non-Chinese person who has been able to imitate a perfect native accent or reach native fluency of the sort that you see on CCTV, but you may just be the first. ;) Point is, if you sound very different from the news reporters or Chinese actors, don't be discouraged - there is a wide range of Chinese accents, and it's tremendously difficult to get a native accent. I'd advise you to forget English when speaking Chinese - most foreigners tend to use a monotone which is unacceptable in Chinese, and really exaggerate the sounds (they may sound exaggerated to you, but Chinese tones can be quite extreme). Learning Words: I don't know if the materials you're using will have this, but in Chinese there's this concept of writing we call bihua. (笔画) It's how we write strokes. Chinese words are made of different strokes. For example, 8, or 'ba', is written 八(丿㇏). Learn the different strokes, and then the sequence in which each is written, and you will have much more accurate handwriting than if you are simply trying to imitate the shape. Also, you'll be able to learn words you don't know from people as they dictate the bihua to you. Learning Chinese without bihua is like learning English without the alphabet. 6 years should be more than enough if you get your basics right. Chinese is a language that needs a lot of time picking apart the words, and there are a lot of false relations (words that sound the same but mean different things, and words that sound different but mean the same thing etc etc), so don't give up! Good luck and I wish you good progress. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| KayJane Newbie United States Joined 4517 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian | Message 4 of 20 14 July 2012 at 12:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank-you for the encouragement!
Observations I seem to sometimes fall into a state of mind where I would like to start a new language because I figure, "If I can become very proficient in, say, Spanish and French in the same amount of time of having basic knowledge in Chinese, why not just start Spanish and French?" That way I could become a polyglot sooner! But alas, my dream of becoming a polyglot is not as important as my dream of learning Chinese. My motivation has also been boosted because I scored a 4 and a 5 in AP World History and AP Human Geography, respectively. I am now certain that I will be able to actively apply my knowledge of the Mandarin that I learn; if I was able to do it with those two subjects, I'll be able to do it with this language. I may be getting a little overconfident, though, since I'm contemplating taking AP Chinese senior year. Anyways, I learned something interesting today. The name for Goldman Sachs is 高 盛，I believe. Upon further investigation, I discovered that many companies have Chinese names that sound close, but not exactly like their other names. I believe companies find words that have similar sounds to their original names; this practice may also applie to given names. I know one can also match the definition of one's name with the Chinese word. I tried this with my last name, but I can't seem to find the Chinese word for "one with a good head of hair". With my first name, if I just go for a translation of its meaning, the closest word would be 天。I read that Chinese naming for foreigners can be a very complicated process, so I won't stress over figuring out my name right now. Difficulties As of now, my biggest difficulty is speaking in sentences. I can easily write 我 是 ［whatever my name would be], but actually saying all that is difficult because I focus on positioning my mouth the correct way. I have gone through Pronunciation and Romanization, and frankly, trying for perfect pronunciation is keeping me from speaking. This is probably a personality issue, due to the fact that I am a dangerously meticulous perfectionist, so errors are just too painful. Speaking will require one to make errors, though, so I will have to adopt a new attitude. I don't think Mandarin songs have the tones, so I'm never able to decipher what the words mean unless I have the lyrics (and even that is hopeless sometimes). Basic Dialogue I just figured out how to type characters, so I'm going to try writing a dialogue that will soon be a part of my little story about a tourist from Tonga named Salote. 您贵姓？ 我是王伟。 你好吗？ 好,谢谢。 再见！ 再见！ A little awkward, but it took ten minutes to write...Please correct me if I make any mistakes. Final Remarks I remember reading something about how one does not address oneself as 先生, so I now feel as though adding a "miss" to my log was a little conceited, but I just wanted a little alliteration. 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 5 of 20 14 July 2012 at 2:49am | IP Logged | |||||
The solution is obviously to just study Chinese a lot harder and get there in about the same time ;) If you keep at it, I think you'll be at B1 sooner than you think. Obviously I can't really comment on Chinese, but for Korean 2 years of study seem quite enough to get to B1 - if you take it slow it might take 4 years, I guess. Seeing that Korean and Mandarin are supposed to be of similar difficulty, I would venture to say that the time span is similar. Also, once you've learned a hard language like Chinese I'm convinced you'll be a lot better at learning languages on the whole and subsequent languages will be easier to pick up. It would be really confusing to take up French and Spanish at the same time anyway (I tried with French, Portuguese - a total disaster).
That's cool :) Why did you pick Tonga? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| catullus_roar Quadrilingual Octoglot Groupie Australia Joined 4567 days ago 89 posts - 184 votes Speaks: Malay, Hokkien*, English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese*, French, German, Spanish Studies: Italian, Latin, Armenian, Afrikaans, Russian | Message 6 of 20 14 July 2012 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I shall help by commenting on your dialogue. I hope you post more of your story, based on the few words of dialogue you have posted, your writing is really at a decent level and you'll definitely be able to reach B1 or B2!
您贵姓？ Okay, I don't know if this is a regional difference (I'm not from Mainland China but I'm from Singapore) but if this is a conversation happening on the street or between two people in modern times, we wouldn't normally use 您贵姓. It's very very very formal and usually used between a commoner and a noble, or someone with equal status discrepancy. We'd normally introduce ourselves "我是XX，你呢", but usually if you just state your name, the other Chinese person will take the cue. 我是王伟。 你好吗？ 好,谢谢。 再见！ 再见！ And yes as you can see I don't really have much to say on your dialogue, just giving you some advice on how a native Chinese person might speak :) Just to give you an insight as to how natives learn Chinese: We do a lot of dictation. You seem fairly adept at writing words, so you might want to try just listening to simple sentences and writing them down. It sometimes takes a lot of practise to internalise the characters and put them together into sentences, and writing sentences over and over again can really help you form them naturally. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| KayJane Newbie United States Joined 4517 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian | Message 7 of 20 19 July 2012 at 4:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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I haven't updated in a while, so I might as well do that now...
@druckfehler I chose Tonga because I'd like to vacation there one day (it was actually a pretty random choice because I'd like to vacation in a lot of places). Observations I am currently on Unit 3 of FSI, Unit 2 of my Reading & Writing workbook, and episode 4 of Growing Up With Chinese. I also watched Farewell My Concubine and I actually understood *very* basic phrases and words. I found the dialogue was not spoken particularly fast like some of the shows on CCTV, so that was a plus. Difficulties Currently, I have hit a brick wall. I find that I am best at the four "basic" language skills in this order (from best to worst): writing, speaking, reading, listening. I find this quite strange because I can easily write the characters, but reading them is a little more difficult. I believe this could be because my handwriting is awful and I'm really not focusing on calligraphy to make it any better. My issue with listening is that when I listen to FSI, I hear many foreign names and once I hear that name, it's like everything I originally understood in the sentence is completely forgotten. I find this quite interesting... On another note, I will be postponing my next dialogue because I would like to make it longer and more detailed. Wanderlust's Unrelenting Hold So, I'm thinking about starting something new... I won't stop learning Chinese, but I've noticed something as of late: My family seems to think that I'm the family translator. I'm sure this is quite common for those that enjoy learning languages, but I've hoped that it would never happen to me. Firstly, my mother is reading a book that uses a lot of Russian words (such as пока), and she immediately turns to me and asks me what they mean. The same thing happens with Spanish, but to a greater degree because I am more knowledgeable in that language. Recently, my father returned from a business trip and he did business with South Koreans. So, when he came home, he gave me a keychain that was completely in Hangul. He also wanted me to translate his business card holder. ...So I began learning Hangul... I have mixed feelings about learning Korean because it seems tempting, as it doesn't really have complicated characters (if I decide to learn Korean, I'll be avoiding Hanja for as long as possible), but I've heard the grammar is...different. I won't make a judgment on whether it's particularly difficult or not, but I'm just not sure whether I'd like it. I also have no interest in Korean culture, really, and while I listen to KPop, I'm not a -gasp!- fan of it. I'm questioning learning Chinese, though, because I find Japanese nicer sounding and I've always wanted to visit Japan too. I'm just not completely confident that I'd fully grasp certain grammatical aspects. I also began reading blogs about Chinese culture (from people actually living in China) and I'm starting to rethink certain cultural aspects I originally liked. My wanderlust is not running as wild as before, though. As of now, I would like to learn Chinese, Japanese, and maybe Korean. Sadly (or not) I have materials for both Japanese and Chinese, so I'm always tempted to switch. I really want to devote myself to only one language because I must be at a functioning level by the summer of 2014. My biggest issue has been time management and juggling travel, training, and Chinese (this is especially difficult because Chinese is a language that I have to sit down and concentrate on). Final Remarks I have been contemplating what I want to do in the next few years and right now, I feel it's best that I get a good grasp on the language now because from the way things are looking, I may not be able to focus on Chinese the way I'd like to. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| KayJane Newbie United States Joined 4517 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian | Message 8 of 20 21 July 2012 at 3:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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Observations
Developing my reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills seems to be easier in Mandarin than in Spanish. Overall, Spanish was easier, but with Mandarin, I am able to practice reading/writing and listening/speaking at the same timeframe (with the resources that I am using). I'm trying out a new way of learning vocabulary. I write down the character, its pinyin, and a sample sentence (in Chinese). This usually takes up no more than three lines in my notebook. On a sheet of loose leaf paper, I keep a masterlist of the English equivalents, but I only use it if the sentence doesn't help me figure out the meaning. I realize that I'm not a big fan of SRS and I've wanted to compile a masterlist, so I'm beginning to actually like this method. As I'm listening to FSI, I'm wondering if some words need to be updated. FSI Mandarin has dated back to the '60s (some materials the '70s), so I just need to use my own discretion; I won't be using words like 同志，I think. The construction of the word is very interesting, though. 同 roughly means "be same" and 志 is like "will/aspiration", so it makes sense that a comrade would be someone of the same will. Chinese is very expressive and it's almost like a puzzle. Another interesting observation pertains to music. I mentioned earlier that I prefer the sound of Japanese better, and after listening to Mandopop, I've realized why. It's not that I dislike Chinese sounds, I prefer deeper voices (all of the songs in my library were sung by singers with high voices). I also found out that Korean is an agglutinative language and after looking through some verb-form charts, my mind was blown. Dialogue 1: 您好，王先生！ 2: 。。。你是谁？ 1: 我姓李！ 2: 你叫什么名字？ 1: 我姓伟。 2:你好马？ 1: 我好，谢谢！ 2: 不客气。。。我的名字丹。*Should it be mingzi jiao or just mingzi? 1: 谢谢，丹先生！ 2：我只叫丹。 1：对不起。 1: 。。。再见！ 2: 再见！ This dialogue is slightly more advanced than the last one （and just as awkward). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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