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Mandarin(ASL,SEE,Japanese,Arabic) Journey | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6329 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes  Speaks: Latin* | Message 25 of 52 11 October 2007 at 11:43am | IP Logged | ||
Excellent question. All answers in the quoted article and the related materials on Wiki and other sources. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6593 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 26 of 52 11 October 2007 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | ||
I just noticed this! Yeah, SEE is quite frowned-upon by the ('big D') Deaf community. :-) It does include a good deal of signs that are similar to ASL, but uses the syntax of English, including tenses, possession, etc., which is not used in ASL. I believe its intent was to help deaf children/people learn English properly. Since the Deaf community considers ASL as part of their culture, they feel SEE is akin to introducing, say, Pig Latin as a replacement for English. Or at least that's my interpretation. Personally, I find the grammar of ASL to be quite easy. It's at least as easy as Mandarin grammar for the English speaker! If you haven't already, check out www.lifeprint.com. Bill Vicars is a great resource for learning ASL. Edited by apparition on 05 November 2007 at 12:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| senor_smile Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6329 days ago 110 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Russian | Message 27 of 52 21 October 2007 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Apparation: Thanks a lot for the link. lifeprint is actually how I started learning ASL in preparation for the class, before knowing that it was SEE. anyway, I have put that on hold while I'm learning around 50 vocab/week in SEE in my class.
Furyou_gaijin: Thanks a lot for the link. That information is very useful to someone studying japanese and Chinese at the same time. I find it quite interesting how more complex signs that contain a character such as 学 in them, don't get simplified but remain as 擧. So, I have made so little progress: it's pathetic(by my own measurements). I started the method proposed by alljapaneseallthetime.com... i.e. entering whole sentences, Kanji and all into an SRS, and having the full hiragana forms and english translations in the answer side. I entered them all in mnemosyne, so as not to mix up the cards I already have from japanese class and colloquial japanese book that I use in Supermemo mobile. I have to say, it seems extremely effective, except for the fact that i'm rarely on my computer. I have started getting up early, trying to take after Prof. Arguelles' recommendation of having regular sleep patterns... e.g. going to sleep and waking up at the same time every day. Current Supermemo Stats: Japanese 310 items memorized: 310 pending: 0 to repeat: 0 mandarin 1269 items memorized: 1175 pending: 94 to repeat: 34 I also rather like sign language(ASL and SEE). I am very surprised at the minimal amount of time need memorizing words for each week's classes. It seems so much easier than learning spoken language. Maybe I'm a visual learner? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| senor_smile Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6329 days ago 110 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Russian | Message 28 of 52 05 November 2007 at 1:08am | IP Logged | ||
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It has been two weeks since I entered here. I have finally finished pimsleur mandarin 3, and am now shadowing all of the audio of the colloquial chinese books. I have all of the conversations edited out so It's just foreign language(mandarin). I have been doing this for over a week in my car, and have just finished the last lesson, understanding every word I repeat. I feel quite accomplished at this point. all of the vocab building really made understanding every conversation in the book easy. I think I have founnd the method that works for me. I find that the first time I listen to a conversation, I may pick up barely 50%. But, I will shadow it, and find that there are few things I don't understand. Everything I don't understand is simply things said in such a fluid way, due to the conversational speed and natural flow of the language, that I just don't recognize the word. One such instance the word man4(slow). while shadowing I could have sworn that he was saying mai4(sell) or even mai3(buy). I finally went back to the book that night and found my mistake. This is especially convenient since I can listen to all of the conversations in my car, and I sometimes am in my car for 1.5+ hours due to going to school, work, and driving places for work.
Current Supermemo Stats: Japanese 390 items memorized: 390 pending: 0 to repeat: 0 mandarin 1479 items memorized: 1365 pending: 114 to repeat: 22 It looks like I'm coming pretty close to my goal of 100 words a week. At this rate I should be to 2100 words by the year end (not quite 3000, actually far from it). da4-jia1 hao3 shui4 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6593 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 29 of 52 05 November 2007 at 1:03pm | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, vocab is rarely an issue (not that you're not special!). The tricky part is getting used to how the words fit together smoothly both when receiving and signing yourself. Natural speed fingerspelling is also rather difficult to read until you've gotten used to it. YouTube is great for practicing receptive skills. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| senor_smile Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6329 days ago 110 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Russian | Message 30 of 52 11 November 2007 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Apparation: That's an awesome idea. Does anyone know of any good sign language or chinese beginner level videos on youtube? I am very good at wasting time searching for things, and being that I've only been to youtube through links, I wouldn't even know where to begin searching. I just took my midterm for sign language, which was the teacher signing 11 fingerspelled words and 22 sentences, and then 4 essay questions about deaf culture. I felt confident that I got a majority right, if not all. We shall see.
I feel that I have had a little more self motivation this week. I calculated that at the current rate of 100 plus or minus a few words per week, I would only get to 2100 words by the end of the year. I didn't set out to really increase the number of words, but I did indeed enter far more new words this week, and somehow I've gone through all of them. I'm done with the colloquial chinese (1) audio, in that I've listened to every audio conversation at least 20 times, while having shadowed each at least another 20 times with full understanding of what I'm saying. It's a wonderful thing to know words, hear them and not understand, wonder to myself what a specific series of words means, and then have a light bulb come on and instantly understand 100% the next time the audio replays, all while driving to seattle for work. Now, I'm doing the same thing with the Assimil Chinois course. I really like the way the Assimil Chinese works, but the absence of vocabulary like other courses initially made me thing it was not as good a course as the colloquial chinese. I figure they both have their strengths and weaknesses, but I like the simple fact that the assimil has ONLY chinese in all the audio. It makes it perfect to just listen to. No editing needed. I'm already up to lesson 25 with 98+% understanding. There have only been a couple instances where I had no idea whatsoever what they were saying, and had to consult the book(e.g. ba1-li, paris), and a few vocab words that I simply didn't know. I'm surprised though at the simple fact that having only done all the Pimsleur chinese and colloquial chinese 1, that I can understand so much. I really like the way chinese sounds, although I know I have so much more input needed before I can really even understand basic real life situations, as is proven every week with the dozens of chinese conversations exchanged among native chinese in my school. Now, on to the weekly stats update: Current Supermemo Stats: Japanese 432 items memorized: 432 pending: 0 to repeat: 14+15 mandarin 1588 items memorized: 1536 pending: 52 to repeat: 1+18 1536-1365= 171 I've gone through 171 new words, and so far the ones that I've been requizzed on after a couple of days I've gotten right or rememorized very quickly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| senor_smile Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6329 days ago 110 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Russian | Message 31 of 52 15 November 2007 at 12:27am | IP Logged | ||
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I now have a new goal. I must learn 2800 words by the end of the year. I am beginning to think that 200 words a week is somehow easy, although a month ago I thought 100 words a week was nearly impossible to keep up with. My repetitions every morning are exceeding 200, although my retention is increasing. It is well above 80%, which I get by taking the total number of repetitions it gives me, and seeing how many cards are entered as needing review. So, if my repetitions are 240 and I end up with 32 cards, 32/240=.1333. Does anyone else keep this much track of their statistics? Is this normal retention for this amount of new information?
mandarin 1750 items memorized: 1655 pending: 95 to repeat: 0+22 The 22 revisions needed are a few new ones, and some ones that I've been working on all day/evening that I'm not ready to move on yet. i must get it down to 0 before going to bed. 晚安 Edited by senor_smile on 16 November 2007 at 12:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| senor_smile Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6329 days ago 110 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Russian | Message 32 of 52 16 November 2007 at 12:47am | IP Logged | ||
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mandarin
1750 items memorized: 1690 pending: 69 to repeat: 0+0 Today I started lesson 40 of assimil chinois I really have no idea what they're saying. I listened to it several times, and shadowed it a few. There are several words that I do recognize, however, so it goes to show that in the wild I can understand quite a bit, even if there are several lexical items that I don't yet know. Chinese fluency seems so impossible to attain, however. There are so many ways to say things. I saw a copy of Orwell's 1984 from another room on this forum. it had the english original and the chinese. I used chinesepera-kun in my browser to look up all the characters I didn't know. Even with looking up the characters and finding definitions for myself, I was completely unable to follow a single sentence. The words just seem so randomly placed. I'm sure it will begin to make sense eventually, maybe after I have thousands of hours of listening and a 10,000 word vocabulary???????? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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