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Snowflake’s Mandarin Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 153 of 740 15 August 2009 at 2:33am | IP Logged |
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Still buried in work and it looks like that will not change anytime soon. My class at Chinese school starts next weekend. I haven't been able to cram in the simplified characters as hoped. This class may be a sort of balancing experience since the majority of the instructors at that school seem to be from the mainland. The Mandarin church congregation, that prompts me to speak the most, seems to have a lot of people from Taiwan though they use simplified characters. So when I ask those people for vocabulary corrections, they tend to give the term used in Taiwan which initially is confusing since my texts are oriented toward mainland conventions. But hey, this is all part of getting to fluency which in my case is definitely a ways off. In any case, that group is used to people joining them to work on Mandarin language skills. And the Mandarin minister is working on learning Cantonese. So at the last pot luck, there was Mandarin, Cantonese and English practiced at the table. Talk about not having to feel embarassed about my lack of Mandarin!
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| bouda Senior Member United States Joined 5595 days ago 194 posts - 197 votes Speaks: English* | Message 154 of 740 16 August 2009 at 1:11am | IP Logged |
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Hi again,
I saw you post just now in irrationale's thread and was intrigued by your mention of Chinese school, which you also mention here. Good luck!! Have you taken a class at that Chinese school before or is this your first time with this particular group? Edited by bouda on 16 August 2009 at 1:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 155 of 740 16 August 2009 at 4:58am | IP Logged |
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Thanks, I need all the luck I can get. Yes this is my first time with this particular group. The class was suggested a while back by a friend at work, who is originally from Jiangsu. At that time his son was attending there. I am a bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to language classes so between that and my schedule, will have to see how things work out.
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| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 156 of 740 25 August 2009 at 4:21am | IP Logged |
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Started Chinese school this last Sat. You basically needed to be able to read simplified characters to find the correct room numbers. My class is small and oriented toward dialogs...yay! The instructor was born and raised in a northeastern city in the mainland and her parental family spoke Mandarin at home. Plus at university, she was a language major. She was correcting my mouth shape on the Pinyin "e" sound. Some people would find the class annoying as it doesn't follow say a typical university class format...yay again! The class is supposed to be about 75% dialog. Their definition of adult is 12 yo and up so there are some highschool age kids in the class. Right now it looks to be a good supplement to other things I'm doing. At the job, I am waiting for some things to be completed so things are temporarily lighter. This weekend I never even opened my work laptop. Soooo I am picking up my romanization text again.
Update; I am concentrating on attending Sun services at Mandarin speaking congregations where the acoustics are less than wonderful. This forces me to listen more carefully and is intended to offset my audios that fool me into thinking that my listening comprehension is better than it actually is. Edited by Snowflake on 26 August 2009 at 6:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 157 of 740 26 August 2009 at 6:29am | IP Logged |
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I was talking today to the fellow who suggested the Chinese school class. The instructor is a friend of his and mentioned me. From the description, I may be her first student who has done any prior study.
I also showed another coworker some pages from a downloaded New Testament ("Biblica Chinese New Testament, Recent Translation" at http://www.biblica.com/bibles/chinese/). I was looking for an assessment of the language, 白话/白話 (bai2hua4), literary style or something else. She agreed that I need to stay away from anything with a literary style, at this stage. Anyhow she equated the writing style to a very popular English translation which is a dynamic language equivalent. She also said the Chinese translation does not use colloquialisms and thought it a good choice for my purposes. I'm getting a little speaking practice in, at work, these days. Edited by Snowflake on 26 August 2009 at 6:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 158 of 740 01 September 2009 at 5:57am | IP Logged |
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热闹/熱鬧 = re4nao5, bustling with noise and excitement; lively
乱/亂 = luàn, in confusion; disorderly These are basically two sides of the same coin. Per my Chinese school instructor, re4nao5 has a negative connotation which I have not seen reflected in the definition. Chinese school class...This last Sat the student, who knew absolutely no Mandarin, did not return. The other students attended last year so the instructor decided to accelerate the pace. She is going to continue with teaching Pinyin since I'm rather weak on that. I wonder if she is teaching Pinyin the way it is taught in the mainland. Anyhow after class, the instructor asked permission to always speak to me in Mandarin... basically use English only when I don't understand. As it is I tend to ask unknown-word shi4 shen2me? The vocabulary is slightly different than what I'm used to which is a good thing. For instance they use 马马虎虎/馬馬虎虎 (ma3mahu1hu) while I tend to use 还好/還好 (hai2hao3). Both mean so-so. Ma3mahu1hu is more casual. The instructor is also going to load me a dvd... sun1wu4kong1 (孙悟空/孫悟空, the monkey king). I attended one of the Mandarin church congregations' small group meetings. I thought most of the people in that group are from Taiwan, but that's not the case. The group members are from all over China. Some who were originally from Hong Kong, told me of their difficulties learning Mandarin. One went to university in Taiwan and thought she just needed to change her accent a little bit. At a store she asked for socks and was given paper. And her professor could not understand her writing so she struggled with that. I found the group extremely encouraging. Edited by Snowflake on 08 September 2009 at 3:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 159 of 740 05 September 2009 at 4:05am | IP Logged |
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Feeling fortunate....while my Mandarin is going at a slow pace, I get lots of support and help from native speakers. A cousin here, who has been trying to learn Mandarin, mentioned that she gets attitude from native speakers. I was very surprized as her background is pretty much the same as mine.
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| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5957 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 160 of 740 07 September 2009 at 11:09pm | IP Logged |
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This weekend marks one year of listening to native speaker material. Finally got out the DVDs that a friend, from Taiwan, gave me and watched the first episode of Meteor Garden II. Doesn't fit my tastes though it's interesting to see what phrases pop out at me.
Was watching "Hero" last night....won't be using this term though it helps give color to the movie. gua3 ren2, 寡人, solitary; lone person; I, the sovereign (a special Chinese word, a modest self appointed name); Royal we (a modest form of) Just tried a review using Anki. The software worked quicker than the other SRS's I've tried. So am now looking for my copy of “Remembering the Hanzi”. Naturally it can't be found. Given my mental block about characters, there is really no graceful way to ease back into studying them.....soooo I expect to be banging my head for a while. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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