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Sprachprofi’s TAC 2009

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27 messages over 4 pages: 1 24  Next >>
Sprachprofi
Nonaglot
Senior Member
Germany
learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6282 days ago

2608 posts - 4866 votes 
Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese

 
 Message 17 of 27
27 January 2009 at 8:10am | IP Logged 
Today I studied lesson 15 of NPCR (first lesson of the second book) in-depth to make sure that I had internalized 得 well. I also added some words to Anki:

排队 - pai2dui4 - to stand in line
特别 - te4bie2 - especially
参观 - can1guan1 - to visit a place
兵 - bing1 - soldier
该 - gai1 - be somebody's turn
发展 - fa1zhan3 - to develop
普 - pu3 - in general
流利 - liu2li4 - fluent (speak a language)
现金 - xian4jin1 - cash
付 - fu4 - to hand over, pay
府 - fu3 - government body

I had actually seen most of these before, but I probably couldn't use them actively.

Edited by Sprachprofi on 27 January 2009 at 8:35am

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TheNightBefore
Newbie
United States
Joined 5631 days ago

29 posts - 31 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 18 of 27
27 January 2009 at 9:41am | IP Logged 
Hello,

I just read in your first post that you spent a month in China. Did you enjoy it from a tourism perspective and how useful did you find it for learning Mandarin? I'd like to visit China in a few months for about the same length of time and am wondering what to expect.

Thanks!
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Sprachprofi
Nonaglot
Senior Member
Germany
learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6282 days ago

2608 posts - 4866 votes 
Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese

 
 Message 19 of 27
27 January 2009 at 11:46am | IP Logged 
TheNightBefore wrote:
Hello,

I just read in your first post that you spent a month in China. Did you enjoy it from a tourism perspective and how useful did you find it for learning Mandarin? I'd like to visit China in a few months for about the same length of time and am wondering what to expect.

Thanks!

Yes I would say so ;-) I went to China for 6 weeks to take an intensive Mandarin course at the Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU). I made a lot of progress. Moreover, the student dormitories of the BLCU are in a non-touristy part of Beijing, so I had plenty of exposure to average Chinese people, and only a handful of them spoke decent English. Of course I did some sight-seeing too, and Beijing is really a gem in that respect, with so many beautiful things to see.
When you go to China, bring an empty suitcase. Everything is incredibly cheap (if you can haggle in Chinese) and you will want to buy lots of things. I had to send part of my purchases back by mail.
Food is amazingly good, too. Just stay clear of Western food (they even screw up pizza), avoid anything that is expensive or declared a "delicacy" and be sure to ask if a dish is too spicy.
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Sprachprofi
Nonaglot
Senior Member
Germany
learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6282 days ago

2608 posts - 4866 votes 
Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese

 
 Message 20 of 27
08 February 2009 at 6:47am | IP Logged 
I discovered that reading "Inciallah" in Italian takes way too much time at this point and I only understand about 60% of the words. I decided to finish "Italians" first, a non-fiction book about Italians living abroad. It's a lot easier and I only run across one word every other sentence or so that I don't understand.

Still my reading speed is bad in Italian. Now I wonder how it compares to my reading speed in English and French. I decided to test it while flying to/from California at the end of the month / beginning of March, reading "Ben Hur" on the way there and "Ombre sultane" on the way back.

I have stopped trying to force myself to do Greek because it looks like we won't be going there this April after all.

I'm generally not putting in much time these days because my final exam in marketing is coming up on February 20th and that requires a lot of studying.

Since studying for this exam is hard as I have absolutely no interest nor aptitude for the material, I decided to indulge myself in the rest of the things I do. Right now, this means I have taken up Maori, which I am studying with the help of Knuckles, some online sites (waiting for Kauderwelsch to come in) and the Unilang Maori forum. It's a really cool language and I can't get enough of it, which is the whole purpose.

I'm still working on Mandarin of course. Somehow studying Mandarin is something I can do for fun as well (most of the times); I suspect that it's Anki that shows me my progress a lot better than Mnemosyne did. I really like seeing that a card I only just learned will only come up in 15+ days again because I already know it so well, things like that... and quite often I look at my progress using the Hanzi statistics plugin, and decide to learn a couple more characters to move the number up :-) I'm also feeling that I can understand written Chinese (e. g. Faye Wong lyrics) a lot better than I used to, recognizing recently-studied characters in them makes me happy.

Edited by Sprachprofi on 08 February 2009 at 6:51am

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Sprachprofi
Nonaglot
Senior Member
Germany
learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6282 days ago

2608 posts - 4866 votes 
Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese

 
 Message 21 of 27
12 February 2009 at 12:59pm | IP Logged 
50 Days of TAC - Big Update

Today is the 50th day (already?!). Here are the statistics:

Chinese: 1234 Hanzi, that is 401 new, 8 per day. It's about the speed that I had originally devised. If I keep going like this, I should know 3600+ characters by the end of the year, even though my starting level was lower than I expected. But it seems I can't study too many characters anymore without context because I run into synonyms all the time. We'll see. I have also studied the NPCR up to lesson 17 (in the second book) and read a couple chapters of "San ren xing", my easy reader. I am happy with the improvements in my reading ability.

Modern Greek: no more studying since the last update, so this means that I only took some lessons and learned 200+ sentences. I've lost interest for the most part.

Italian: read a total of 175 pages. Could have probably read more, but the initial book I chose was (more interesting but) too difficult.

Swahili: up to Assimil lesson 11.

Maori: materials haven't come in yet, but I've memorized 70 words from online courses.

Time: 48 hours in the TAC.
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Sprachprofi
Nonaglot
Senior Member
Germany
learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6282 days ago

2608 posts - 4866 votes 
Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese

 
 Message 22 of 27
07 March 2009 at 8:04pm | IP Logged 
While in California, I haven't studied nearly as much Chinese as I should have, because I was always tired or going out. On the bright side, I have met Professor Arguelles and learned something about techniques from him, bought a lot of materials from cheap bookstores in Berkeley and read 1 2/3 books on the flights: the complete Ben Hur and most of "Ombre sultane" (see this month's French book club). Plus a few chapters of my Chinese reader "San ren xing". And I have discovered that my spoken Italian is not nearly as rusty as I had feared it was, as I was talking to Professor Arguelles in Italian for close to an hour.
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Sprachprofi
Nonaglot
Senior Member
Germany
learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6282 days ago

2608 posts - 4866 votes 
Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese

 
 Message 23 of 27
01 August 2009 at 3:01pm | IP Logged 
I'm going to take another stab at it. I have posted updated goals in my blog, where I will also be reporting progress.

I should probably reduce the amount of Chinese characters I'm going for, but after my recent success at the IJK I don't feel like it.
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bouda
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5409 days ago

194 posts - 197 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 24 of 27
01 August 2009 at 3:10pm | IP Logged 
我每次看到有人在学中文总是很高兴! 你常常有机会跟中国人说话吗?

Edited by bouda on 03 August 2009 at 11:21pm



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