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Mandarin: Year 3.7 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 4939 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 89 of 111 24 March 2014 at 12:46am | IP Logged |
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100 pages of reading looks to be done on schedule, phew! (especially phew after not really starting until near the end of the second week of March).
Finishing AFTER THE ACCIDENT: I was on page 16 before March, finishing it was 35 pages. Then I didn't have my Kindle with me for the planned Monkey's Paw when I was out of town, so next was finishing another Chinese Breeze: CAN I DANCE WITH YOU? I picked that up from where I had left off a while back on page 9, finishing that was 36 pages, so 71 so far. Then I started in on the second story in my Chinese Reader 3, "Chen Huan Sheng Shang Cheng", and have gone through 24 pages of that so far, so at 95 pages total so far. After the Accident remained impressively boring for the whole duration. Can I Dance With You took a bizarre twist very early, and the title is very misleading, but it was a little more interesting. Chen Huan Sheng Shang Cheng is kinda odd, the story itself is about some guy headed to town to sell food, but the real weird thing is that it seems quite a bit easier to read, even though it uses 1000 characters instead of the 300 or 500 of the Chinese Breezes. The only explanation I have is that using such a limited set of characters makes the Chinese Breeze's grammar a little too convoluted. In any case, I can get through the Chen Huan Sheng story with barely a look at the glossary in the back, let alone a real dictionary so that's cool. There's four more stories in the volume after that one, hopefully they are all like that! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 4939 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 90 of 111 25 March 2014 at 9:41am | IP Logged |
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Not quite done with the Chen Huan Sheng story, but I did pass 100 pages for March, so woot!
One funny Chinese-related thing this weekend I forgot about was that I went to a kendo tournament to see some friends who were competing. It turns out that all the kendo-eers wear little nameplate bib-things at their waists with character(s) on them, along with their names in English. So I had a good ol' time reading the characters as hanzi and seeing how they related to the Romanized names. The 'English' names were vaguely decipherable. They were transliterated, and some pronunciations worked, but some syllables didn't due to Japanese having a different sound for the character or whatever. The Chinese names were obvious, of course. There was a HUANG 黄 and a CHEN 陳. Nice and easy. And there were some Korean names - the one I remember was Park, which apparently turns into 朴, so I called that person Pǔ in my mind. There were a lot of multisyllable Japanese names that apparently came down to only one or two characters, I wonder how that works out. But for the shorter Japanese names, a surprising number of them were vaguely close if you read them as Chinese. Kinda cool that you can see the cross-connections between the two languages like that. I soon realized, though, that I knew pretty much every character I could see. That was neat. (Except for those pesky competitors - there were a few - that were using hiragana or katakana or whatever those scribbly sort-of-character things are. That shouldn't be allowed, it ruins my fun! :P ) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 4939 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 91 of 111 31 March 2014 at 8:26pm | IP Logged |
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Finished the Chen Huan Sheng story, and went right on to the next story in the reader, and passed a big milestone with that - it's the first story I've read from start to finish in one sitting. Crazy. :)
It was short (10-12 pages or something I think), but still, an accomplishment in a way, and I actually laughed a couple of times during it at some unexpected words. Most interesting story in the book thus far. Two old guys sitting by the river comparing city vs. country life. Whoda thunk? I peeked through Game of Thrones for the first time in maybe six months or so, and bumbled through a couple of pages. I think in another few months it might be doable. I went ahead and ordered Storm of Swords in a fit of optimism. For now, though, going to backtrack a little and finish all the red Chinese Breezes just so I can get them off the shelf. So that covers the reading department pretty well I think. For speaking, I've been trucking through Pimsleur from the library at 2-3 lessons day. This is really helping with 'word order' issues, and it seems to actually be sticking in my head. I know enough vocabulary that if I can just get the stupid basic grammer down pat I should be able to plug all these oodles of words. Anyway, up to lesson 16 in there, hopefully will finish through 30 in a week or so and then ponder Pimsleur II or back to FSI. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 4939 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 92 of 111 04 April 2014 at 2:23am | IP Logged |
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Up to Pimsleur 21. The only limit on these so far is my spare time. I've taken up listening to one on a walk and one during a household task each day to try and not eat up too much time on 'em. They are really cementing the grammar pretty well. I think wai po will be happy to hear me actually sort of able to talk next time we see her.
Finished the Chinese Breeze I REALLY WANT TO FIND HER. Each one of these I read I understand more and more, so even though the stories are kinda lame I think it's good for me. And this one had a decent ending at least. In other reading news, my Graded Chinese Reader 500 & 1500 arrived in a mere week and a half from Hong Kong, pretty impressive. I'd ordered them from http://www.purpleculture.net/ since they weren't really there on Amazon, and figured I'd see them in a few months. Now I feel like ordering more stuff from them, it was so fast. :P In you-ought-to-be-doing-something-more-useful news, Diablo 3 can be set to Chinese right out of the gate, no fussing with regions required (though it has to do a big download the first time you do it). It's traditional characters, and all the voiceovers are in Chinese. Good times. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 4939 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 93 of 111 08 April 2014 at 9:31pm | IP Logged |
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Finished WHOM DO YOU LIKE MORE. The first Chinese Breeze I started and it's finally wrapped up. This one kinda sucked, lots of confusing sentences and the protagonist is pretty lame. But, it's over. Until I re-read it. :P
One more of the 'red' ones to go - LEFT AND RIGHT, which I read about half of on vacation last summer. I think it still has sand in it from the beach! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5871 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 94 of 111 09 April 2014 at 8:07am | IP Logged |
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Aw, you didn't like 方新？ :) He's not the best protagonist but he's not going to be so great at the 300 word level. Maybe he'll get better! I'm starting the second book in the series today, "Secrets of a Computer Company". He's married to 小月 now and trying to start his own company. There's a list of new characters, something about software piracy. Looks pretty good.
proudft, what did you think about the audio? Did your Chinese Breeze come with the mp3 CD? The first chapter was read at a nice slow speed but they really got faster by chapter 8. I found it impossible to follow along without help from the book. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| proudft Senior Member United States Joined 4939 days ago 124 posts - 156 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 95 of 111 09 April 2014 at 9:27am | IP Logged |
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Yep, I have the CDs, though I confess I haven't listened to them much. I tried to listen to the audio in the car a few times on some long road trips but the volume level made it impossible to hear. Like if I turned it up enough, the music was too loud, and the guy's voice was much louder than the lady's. I had also tried a few times to just sit there and listen to it on the couch but I couldn't decipher the sentences fast enough.
But, that was all quite a while ago... a year at least. My reading speed is getting a lot faster now, fast enough that I can basically read & mostly-comprehend the sentences in these Breezes at MY speaking pace, so I am definitely going to try listening and reading at the same time... hopefully the hanzi will clarify the audio for me. Might be kinda backwards from how the audio was meant to be used but I guess you sort of have the same plan. :) Finished the exciting Left and Right, which despite the bizarre subject matter was actually one of the more interesting ones. I don't remember the beginning of the book too well since I read it like 8 months ago but the last third went pretty smoothly, and when I revisit it with the audio it should all come back to me. :P Now I get to decide about read-with-audio on these red books or start in on some level 2s. Ah, who am I kidding, I'm gonna do both. Up to Pimsleur 26. Even if I run out of time during the day for sittin' and listening, I am doing one a day on a walk, which I really have to do anyway, and a half hour lesson is almost perfectly 2 miles, which is a fine walk in my estimation. I find it funny remembering various posts here and there that say 'after you do the Pimsleur Level 1s you'll be able to ______', because, man, all this stuff seems really basic, with not very much vocabulary. But word order is important, and I screw it up all the time, especially as soon as yao or zai start to get involved, so the lessons continue to be good for me. I also continue to forget that the opposite of hen <something> is bu shi hen <something> instead of just bu hen <something>. Maybe typing it out here will mean I will remember it forever now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5871 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 96 of 111 09 April 2014 at 10:00am | IP Logged |
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Wow, you're working on speaking, reading and listening! It's really hard keeping a balance on all three fronts! I've completely omitted speaking since this is just a hobby and there's no real pressure coming from anywhere for me to speak. I can put simple sentences together but it I'm so slow that it would be ultra painful for anyone to have to listen to me.
I've also noticed that the audio voices are louder depending on who's speaking. For me the male voice is softer. weird. I'm starting on green today! ^^ Include the titles of your level 2s if you decide to start. I have "Secrets of a Computer Company" and "If I Didn't Have You", but I'll only be working on the first. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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