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Mandarin in 8 Months | ||
Tags: Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| TheNightBefore Newbie United States Joined 5821 days ago 29 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 9 of 22 30 January 2009 at 9:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I’m a little over half way through Chinese in a Flash. I’ve also been listening to about 20 minutes of BBC Chinese audio without understanding anything but the most common words and “Obama.” In a week or so, I’ll probably start checking out Amazon and google to get an idea of good Chinese literature and maybe browse a Chinese book store if there are any around here. I’d really like to skip the Harry Potter phase. I’ve done it before in French and Spanish, and for Halloween, and I’m always amazed how little I know the language after ripping through 800 pages of Potter. Nevertheless, I think we can all agree, it’s the greatest thing printed in the last 25 years (at least) and, therefore, can’t be read too many times.
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| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6052 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 10 of 22 01 February 2009 at 12:49am | IP Logged | ||
Ha! I know exactly what you mean :) I listen to "voice of the people" radio 老百姓的声音。 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TheNightBefore Newbie United States Joined 5821 days ago 29 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 11 of 22 08 February 2009 at 10:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Tonight, I recognized the character meaning "honest / loyal / devoted" tattooed on Allen Iverson’s neck during the Piston’s game. Leave it to AI to be a human Chinese flashcard. Still working with the paper kind, too.
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| TheNightBefore Newbie United States Joined 5821 days ago 29 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 12 of 22 18 February 2009 at 1:48am | IP Logged | ||
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I should complete Chinese in a Flash by month's end. During class, I’ve recovered ground using Anki, a program that includes everything but missile defense capabilities and, ironically, a shuffle button. If you want to play hide and seek with flashcards that routinely disappear into the fifth dimension, Anki is for you. If you want to shuffle and view the cards, obviously overrated, good luck. Additionally, can anyone recommend a Chinese bookstore in Boston?
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| GoldFibre Diglot Senior Member Kuwait koreaninkuwait.com Joined 5981 days ago 467 posts - 472 votes Speaks: English*, Korean | Message 13 of 22 18 February 2009 at 6:01am | IP Logged | ||
I might be misunderstanding what you are looking for, but this sounds like the "Cram" feature in Anki. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TheNightBefore Newbie United States Joined 5821 days ago 29 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 14 of 22 06 March 2009 at 1:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Here’s the deal after ~2.5 Months:
I finished the four volumes of Chinese in a Flash totaling 1792 Hanzi. I’ll continue reviewing the cards while concentrating on the traditional characters and the characters’ common combinations. I just received a copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in simplified characters from Amazon. I wanted to start reading epic Chinese literature immediately after Chinese in a Flash, but the process of selecting a book (not to mention reading it) overwhelmed me. Enter Harry Potter. However, I did learn enough about Chinese lit from Wikipedia to choose Three Kingdoms as the next book; the text is available on Gutenberg.org and I can follow online and copy and paste the characters into an electronic dictionary. Looking at the first page of HP, I know the vast majority of the characters. Thus far I’ve successfully used an Oxford Dictionary to find unknown characters according to the radical. Words are a different story. By typing various combinations of the pinyin into nciku I can figure out the structure of words by trial and error. Needless to say, this takes forever. Realistically, I think it might take a month or two to finish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TheNightBefore Newbie United States Joined 5821 days ago 29 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 15 of 22 08 March 2009 at 1:59am | IP Logged | ||
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After four hours of reading Harry Potter, I’m now on the second page. So not including the nice owl picture mercifully occupying half the first page, I’ve read .5 pages of mandarin text in four hours. Now we’re getting somewhere!! Seriously though, it’s pretty awesome to figure out the Mandarin for muggle “麻爪” and to make some progress, however slowly. I have a relatively low key spring break week ahead of me so I should have plenty of time to study.
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| TheNightBefore Newbie United States Joined 5821 days ago 29 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 16 of 22 22 March 2009 at 4:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Two weeks into Harry Potter and I’m on page 19. I entered 400 words into Anki for the first chapter and 300 for the second.
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