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Ezy Ryder’s endeavor (TAC’14-15 旅立ち、鵲、東亞) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Ezy Ryder Diglot Senior Member Poland youtube.com/user/Kat Joined 4348 days ago 284 posts - 387 votes  Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 137 of 144 24 May 2015 at 1:34pm | IP Logged |
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Being pretty much done with high school, I guess I should start thinking about university.
After having difficulties finding information on studying in Taiwan as a regular foreigner willing to pay for themselves (as opposed to an overseas Chinese, overseas compatriot, or "outstanding international student"), perhaps combined with wanderlust, and fear; (in the spirit of running away from problems) I started thinking about other countries. Having studied all this vocab and characters in Mandarin, my listening comprehension and production skills are still minimal, and reading isn't too good either. But, maybe it could provide a foundation in similar languages? Reading a bit of the Cantonese Wikipedia, it seems Cantonese wouldn't be too bad, considering I have to build my 聽力 and speaking from scratch anyway... The readings of characters also often seem to be something in between Japanese and Mandarin. Knowing that some users here have moved to, or live/d in Hong Kong, could anyone offer some advice? As to, whether studying there would be any less difficult than in Taiwan? (I think there is an embassy in Poland, for a start). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ezy Ryder Diglot Senior Member Poland youtube.com/user/Kat Joined 4348 days ago 284 posts - 387 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 138 of 144 01 June 2015 at 1:52pm | IP Logged |
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TAC 2015 May Challenge (overdue, as always)
I first made a hand-written draft (looking up some words and characters), and now I retyped it here. 比夠死是個在波蘭流行的菜. 包含些樣蔬菜,肉與調料. 經常擁有一點辣的味道, 但為了它抵達自己的頂點必須等一 下. 就是說愈古老愈改變. 平常元旦的期間被做了. 我就移動以前應該學會自己做它. I finally started making the Pinyin syllable->possible Hanzi characters flashcards. Got 18 so far (that's like 4.36%?). Going a bit slowly... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ezy Ryder Diglot Senior Member Poland youtube.com/user/Kat Joined 4348 days ago 284 posts - 387 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 139 of 144 03 July 2015 at 10:15am | IP Logged |
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Haven't updated in a while. Sorry about that. I think I mentioned visiting my mother in the
hospital in some post way back, that's related to the reason why. She had a brain tumour (glioblastoma multiforme), underwent an operation and radiotherapy, but her state kept worsening. She was bedridden for the last few months, after suffering two episodes of epilepsy the same night. Last week she lost the ability to speak (shortly after saying her last farewell), and she died at home yesterday at about 4:09 AM. As you probably can guess, there are going to be some things to be settled, which means I still won't be able to study “full-time”. Some agreements need to be cancelled, I need to apply for a new social security (which, at least, might be over twice as high as the one I had the last two years), I'll need to take the train to a nearby city to apply to a university (and probably ask about the costs of living in their dormitories, to see whether paying the rent, bills and commute costs would be more expensive or not)... I pretty much abandoned the idea of the Pinyin syllable->possible Hanzi flashcards. I just started going through my old vocabulary deck, but only Pinyin->Hanzi+English definition this time. I tried re-learning about 500 words a day, which was about 3 hours of Anki'ing a day, at first. But of course, I burnt out at about 4200 cards re-learnt. I tried listening to some podcasts from Taiwan, and I think my listening comprehension might've improved slightly, but nowhere near enough. I'm not sure how should I study/practice Mandarin now. Chances of studying in Taiwan this year are negligible, so I'll probably end up studying in Poland (one university in my voievodship offers “English Philology with a specialisation in Chinese Translation (and/or interpretation, they are homonymous in Polish),” for which I'm planning to apply. AFAIK the regular course is free of charge (except for a ~22$ application fee). Their website says, while selecting students, they only care about some contest results (I didn't participate in any), and one's results in the English part of the final exams (I scored 93% in the oral part, 98% in the written part's basic level, and 96% in the written part's extended level, so I hope I stand a chance). PS.: I'll get to the article translation monthly challenge in a jiffy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kraemder Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5183 days ago 1497 posts - 1648 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 140 of 144 03 July 2015 at 11:01am | IP Logged |
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Wow. That's a big deal. My mother passed away due to cancer and it was a big deal to me although my mom
suffered from mental illness and she was a stressful person to be with regardless. I wasn't able to really focus on learning for a while after. I can't say how long it took to get beyond that but it took time. That said, maybe studying languages, which is fun, can be a good escape. Glad to see you posting. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ezy Ryder Diglot Senior Member Poland youtube.com/user/Kat Joined 4348 days ago 284 posts - 387 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 141 of 144 15 July 2015 at 2:32pm | IP Logged |
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Kraemder, thanks for stopping by.
I'm not sure if it's appropriate for me to say; but things seem to be taking a turn for the better. I think I don't need to stress over the university thing any more (having been qualified, brought all the documents, and received a copy of the student admission (or whatever it translates to)). Also, I weighed myself this morning(ish), and what the scale has shown was a nice surprise - my goal weight. 66.1 kg (~145 lb) (oscillating between 66.1 and 66.2 when I tried again, to make sure). I started trying to lose weight in late February 2012 (IIRC), having reached my peak at 96.6 kg (~213 lb). My BMI is about 22.8 now, so it should be moderately healthy? Though probably still a bit high for Taiwanese standards... The last (but not least) good news is a bit more related to language learning. That is, I found a Taiwanese language exchange partner, with whom I can practice the spoken language, too. She helps me with Mandarin, and I help her with English. We mostly write in English, unless I feel I might be able to phrase something in Mandarin. She also had a great idea on how to practice speaking. We record ourselves, and send each other the audio file, often providing a transcript, to aid comprehension. This way we don't need to worry about “dead air,” due to lacking listening comprehension or accent, nor all the stress associated with real-time conversation. As for my plans, I'll try speaking more in Mandarin, get through the backlog in my character writing deck, and perhaps learn additional 2,000 characters before the lectures start, to get to 5k. 2000 characters / 78 days = 25.64 characters a day. Seems manageable. (I bet the university will only teach Simplified, though... Oh well.) Edited by Ezy Ryder on 15 July 2015 at 2:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ezy Ryder Diglot Senior Member Poland youtube.com/user/Kat Joined 4348 days ago 284 posts - 387 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 142 of 144 13 August 2015 at 3:19am | IP Logged |
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Just some quick info.
In a few hours I should be on the plane; and hopefully, the next post I'll write from Taiwan :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ezy Ryder Diglot Senior Member Poland youtube.com/user/Kat Joined 4348 days ago 284 posts - 387 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 143 of 144 15 August 2015 at 5:21pm | IP Logged |
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I'm in Taiwan :) It's great. Hanzi everywhere I look. On the street signs, advertisements
(even on my laptop), household appliances, buses... just awesome. My friend helped me rent a room, and today, do some groceries (I couldn't take everything with me due to airline regulations, and limited space in my travelling case). So far, we mostly speak in English, but I'm trying to use more and more Mandarin. She advised me to try speaking a bit slower, because yesterday I just mumbled due to the stress, and was almost completely incomprehensible. But today, it seemed to be a bit better. I think I've said at least one or two full sentences she understood. And for the first time I understood a full sentence in spoken Chinese (in real life) :) When buying a proper power socket adapter, I heard one of the employees say to my friend „If you won't be able to get it to work, you can just come back here and exchange it for another one” (I don't remember her exact words, so I just put here the translation). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ezy Ryder Diglot Senior Member Poland youtube.com/user/Kat Joined 4348 days ago 284 posts - 387 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 144 of 144 21 August 2015 at 10:24am | IP Logged |
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I got my Chinese name: 阿波
My first week in Taiwan has passed. I love it here. I feel more at home here, than anywhere else in the world (granted, I haven't been to many other places though xD). The people are all so nice, hospitable, kind... My landlord for example, has taken me for a lunch out, offered to show around the neighbourhood, even taught me a word in 台語. Sadly, I haven't worked as hard on my Chinese as I should (even though I'm getting slightly better at asking for directions and understanding bits of the answer), but yesterday my friend took me to the local bookstore. So at least I got some books, much cheaper than it'd cost me to get them on-line, and I don't even have to wait for them to be delivered to Poland. Here's a list of what I got: 安德闇影-Ender's Shadow (by Orson Scott Card) 教父-The Godfather (by Mario Puzo) 儒家與韋伯的五個對話-Five dialogues between a Confucian and Weber (by 葉仁昌) 鋼筆草，行，隸書範本-Model of Cursive, Semi-Cursive and Clerical Script for a fountain pen (by 蔡狄秋) I've been looking for something like this for a long time. 莊子-Zhuangzi (allegedly by 莊子 (probably my favourite Taoist philosopher)) It's kinda like a bilingual text, has both the original, and modern Chinese (and some explanations, perhaps some historical notes too...). Awesome. All these, for less than US 50$. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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