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Snowflake’s Mandarin Log | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5765 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 17 of 740 29 August 2008 at 12:49am | IP Logged |
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Was extremely happy seeing that forum member, Kealist, has a link for a Mandarin audio of a Harry Potter book...will have to show that site to the native speakers at work since I cannot read Chinese yet. I started listening to one of the clips and found it heavier on the Beijing dialect. It brings a smile since the native speaker, at work that I talk the most to about the language, is from Beijing. She seems to avoid using r's. Early on I asked about the r-forms. The woman said that the non-r forms are more formal. The man said he uses the r-forms though I haven't noticed any the times I've heard him speak.
It's been a tough work week and the drills have been hit less. I've been listening to music a lot and working on unraveling lyrics (it's going to take a while on the better liked songs). It also makes me think about starting to read, but I'd have to decide between simplified and traditional characters. I'm not ready yet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5765 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 18 of 740 30 August 2008 at 7:19pm | IP Logged |
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The subject of learning to read and write doesn't seem to go away. I bought 2 CDs today in Chinatown. It seems that whenever I come across a song, with a tune that I like, the lyrics are available in traditional Chinese. I got out my college reading text and have started looking at it.
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| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5765 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 19 of 740 01 September 2008 at 3:29pm | IP Logged |
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I succumbed and am writing sentences from the dictionary, in simplified characters. Some of the constructs seem strange compared to what I practiced in school. I'm also looking at getting a laptop just for my Chinese work, with the intention of later switching everything on it to display in Chinese.
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| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5765 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 20 of 740 03 September 2008 at 6:44pm | IP Logged |
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Talked to a friend, who was born and raised in Taiwan. As expected, he took off the kid gloves. I think he basically is trying to get rid of my American accent. He got me to curl my tongue a lot more on the sh, xi and r sounds. He was finally satisfied when my tongue was curled probably 300% more than usual. Then he mentioned that the Shanghainese curl their tongue even more than that. I also asked him for his assessment of some Chinese lyrics by an American singer, who writes in Chinese. I was wondering whether the flow sounded "right". After sending those to him, he said the lyrics were OK. So now I'm considering whether to use the lyrics for translation, or to work thru some website material. BTW, my face hurts after doing drills with my tongue curled the way he was pushing.
It's getting complicated looking at a computer for Chinese work.... looking at character recognition software and a Wacom-type tablet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Hedge Bilingual Diglot Newbie China Joined 5771 days ago 19 posts - 20 votes Speaks: EnglishC1*, Norwegian* Studies: Mandarin | Message 21 of 740 03 September 2008 at 8:47pm | IP Logged |
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I use my Wacom a lot for writing characters. but I don't often use character recognition. I use it with Anki, writing out my sentences/Hanzi. Saves paper and practice writing:).
I don't have any recognition software, but I use http://www.nciku.com/ which has a drawing area and recognition. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5765 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 22 of 740 04 September 2008 at 7:29pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for mentioning Anki and the Nciku site!
Edited by Snowflake on 04 September 2008 at 7:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5765 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 23 of 740 06 September 2008 at 9:55pm | IP Logged |
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Got the laptop and wacom tablet, downloaded Mnemosyne and am getting familiar with the tools. I can see that using the pen will be alot easier on the wrist and therefore hopefully more productive. After getting used to the tools I currently have, will be downloading trial character recognition software. I was looking at OCR software, but that would require getting a scanner. This year I've spend a small fortune on laptops and such with kids in college and now this....sigh. Came to the conclusion that while I'm practicing simplified characters, I will have to learn to read traditional characters at some point.
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| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5765 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 24 of 740 07 September 2008 at 9:44pm | IP Logged |
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Well I spend several hours today entering characters and sentences into Mnemosyne. The ability to write characters in Nciku with a pen made it go pretty faster so I was happy about getting the wacom. The bad news is that after taking a breather, with the machine shut down, all but 2 entries in Mnemosyne are gone. I don't know if the problem is Windows Vista, Mnemosyne, a combination of the two, or what. Now I'm going to look at Anki and whatever else may be available for doing SRS work.
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