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TAC 2013 Team 鶴 All Chinese All The Time | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| BloodyChinese Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4356 days ago 39 posts - 61 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2 Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 1 of 14 14 December 2012 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Note: Since I've also taken an interest in Korean and progressed a bit in my Chinese studies, the title of this log and what I've written about before no longer reflect what I am currently doing.
I will write something useful here as soon as possible. Edited by BloodyChinese on 28 January 2013 at 3:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5641 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 2 of 14 15 December 2012 at 4:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Good luck. I'm half Korean and didn't start learning Korean until I was 18 year olds. Since I live in a predominantly white area, I got a lot of racist remarks due to being Korean, which made me resent being Korean and never wanting to learn it. However, after high school, I was gone from all of that, found out a lot about Korea and started learning the language.
I'll be checking out your log from time to time, so good luck learning Chinese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BloodyChinese Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4356 days ago 39 posts - 61 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2 Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 3 of 14 15 December 2012 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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@The Real CZ
Thanks! I am glad you managed to overcome these negative associations with your own race. I suppose this has never been a problem for me as I never got any racist remarks, really. Probably has to do with the fact that I have to tell most people I am half Chinese in the first place, which usually triggers a reaction of astonishment and sheer disbelief. There is also the 我们中国人! (wǒmen zhōngguórén/We Chinese People)meme that I grew up with, an (ungrounded!) sense of superiority that is really widespread among Chinese immigrants. I could never understand where this sheer nonsense comes from, but it is almost the exact opposite of the equally astonishing sense of inferiority that I've encountered among most South Asians I've met. Historically speaking, Korea seems to have been on receiving end of things, and I've often heard that Japanese people don't think too highly of Koreans. Is that true? They're probably just jealous of the beauty of some Korean girls :P Progress report: Pimsleur: 4/90. Went through the first four lessons and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this program. I also picked up a rather useful phrase that wasn't covered at my university yet; the expression for "I don't understand what you're saying"(我不明白你说什么? wǒ bù míngbái nǐ shuō shénme?) Assimil: 4/105. As with the Pimsleur program, I thought that my first few months at my University would enable me to breeze through this program, but it turns out that much of the conversational type of Chinese covered in these programs is actually new to me. Went through the first four lessons here as well. New vocab and expressions are going straight into my SRS(Anki)routine for later review. Remembering Simplified Hanzi: 100/3100. Memorised the first hundred Hanzi using one of the publicly available Anki decks that also contains the Pinyin and meaning of the characters. I already read the introduction to the book months ago so I am familiar with the Heisig method. Actually, it isn't difficult for me to learn most characters with their pronunciation and actual meaning straight away, so I am only using stories for complicated characters that won't stick in my memory right away. Hanyu Jiaocheng: 20/30 lessons covered(of Volume 1a and 1b) Glossika Basic to Intermediate Conversational Chinese: Listened to the first 4 lessons. Learned a couple new things, but this is definitely the toughest part of my current program as I can only understand and repeat what he is saying due to already knowing all the words covered. The speed is overwhelmingly fast. If I had done this the day I started Mandarin, this would have intimidated me. He advocates going back to the beginning of the respective lessons again and again until you get comfortable with the dialogue and words covered. Thankfully, there is a transcript for the first 20 lessons. If you can deal with the difficulty, you'll get exposed to actually useful vocabulary(not like the formal/strange stuff I learn at my University!) and grammar needed for daily life. By the way, I am using Skritter for writing practice, Sogou for easy character input, Pinyinput for Pinyin and Perapera Chinese as my pop-up dictionary(using Firefox). Offline, I am mainly using Wenlin 4 and Pablo. I am also making use of the Chinese Grammar Wiki, which explains difficult grammar points better than the books I am studying right now(Link: http://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/) Edited by BloodyChinese on 15 December 2012 at 11:09pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BloodyChinese Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4356 days ago 39 posts - 61 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2 Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 4 of 14 18 December 2012 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Right now, I think that University is actually slowing me down instead of really helping me. I just get seem to get swamped in endless assignments and stuff that doesn't directly help me speak and read Chinese.
Still, I managed to work on my own program so I can report some progress: Remembering Simplified Hanzi: 300/3100(+200) Pimsleur: 8/90(+4) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5641 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 5 of 14 23 December 2012 at 12:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Actually, since I graduated high school, I'm in the same situation you are. I mention that I'm half Korean and people don't believe me. Though these days I don't really mention it, as I finally get to enjoy white privilege lol.
You mentioning classes reminds me of why I never took any classes for learning Korean. Assignments are just busy work and your time could be spent doing useful activities, but that's school bureaucracy for you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5326 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 14 23 December 2012 at 1:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I have always forund my own ethnic background to be the most boring possible (15/16 Norwegian, 1/16
Swede). Not exactly the exotic mix I was after, but at least it has not given me any bad feelings towards any language or culture. I suspect the the day will come when you will be able to be proud of all parts of your heritage, and I think you have made a great choice in studying Mandarin. That is what everyone else is dying to study, and you even have a conversation partner at home. Perfect! I am not familiar with the differences between mainland Mandarin and Taiwanese, I know exactly one word in Mandarin. :-) Are the main differences due to vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation or a combination of all three? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4839 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 7 of 14 23 December 2012 at 1:58am | IP Logged | ||
Racism is a bastard. That said, I wish I knew what part of Africa my ancestors were from, so I could learn their language and culture as well. Oops... thread hijacking. Stupid me... uh.. um... good luck with your adventure, BloodyChinese! I'll be following as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BloodyChinese Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4356 days ago 39 posts - 61 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2 Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 8 of 14 23 December 2012 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks!
Progress: Remembering Simplified Hanzi: 700/3100(+400) Pimsleur: 12/90(+4) Assimil: 12/105(+8) My Hanzi learning method differs slightly from Heisig's ideas. I am actually just using his character order and a full Anki deck that I am modifying as I go along the way. I learn the writing, pronunciation and basic meaning as my main aim is to quickly become able to read larger sentences and movie subtitles so that I can use media and apply some of AJATT's ideas. My method is rather simple: For simple characters(less than 10 strokes) I don't use any fancy stories; for more complex characters I do create stories but I heavily rely on spontaneous associations(these are the best for long term memory retention) that involve seeing vivid images in the characters themselves and associating them with certain emotions. They don't have to be rational at all, some of the associations and images that form in my head as I see a new character for the first time don't even make sense at all, yet they serve their purpose until I no longer need to think about the story to recall the pronunciation and basic meaning of character. I also replaced all Heisig keywords with something that is closer or same as the actual etymological meaning of the character. This pays off in the long run. If you have a photographic memory like me, it is very helpful to group the pinyin and basic meaning right next to each other; that way, the story will immediately make you recall both. Stories and strange associations are important because you sort of reserve new space in your mind for the new characters, but also fit them into already existing frameworks(the components that make up the story). This is better than writing out a character 20 times like so many teachers suggest. Your brain probably switches off after the first 5 repetitions and there is very little conscious involvement with such a practice. If you do not like the story technique, you can also try out the following technique: 1. Look up the stroke order of the character 2. Close your eyes and paint the character on your "inner screen"(black on white or whatever works for you) 3. Do this again and again until you can do it in seconds without too much thinking This is an acquired skill for most people, so don't be taken aback if you find this difficult to do. It gets easier the more you do it. As a full-time student, I think it is possible to learn 100 new Hanzi a day provided you also study textbooks and do listening and reading comprehension exercises. This cramming method has its advantages and disadvantages: +Very quickly, you'll be able to read intermediate sentences in their entirety, and, provided you also learn most of the basic grammar structures, you'll be able to understand them. To not have to look up every second character feels good, I tell you. There will also be less second-guessing. +Prior to using this method, I only learnt words in context but noticed that I depended so much on context that when the second character of a word would turn up as the first character in a new word, I would often not see it immediately and if I did, there was a chance I wouldn't know the correct tone as many standard Chinese pronunciations of words leave the second character of words(Chinese words are mostly composed of two characters) in the neutral tone. This is a problem for me as I've noticed that many Taiwanese people actually know and pronounce the second half of these words with their "true" tones. Learning characters in isolation, even though it is often frowned upon, makes you see the characters everywhere and at least for me, it helps with knowing the correct tones immediately(which is everything for Chinese people) +If you use the Heisig character order, you'll have a meaning attached to every component of subsequent characters you encounter. This makes it much easier to form stories and associations in your head. -Time consuming as hell. I spend about 3-5 hours reviewing and learning these Hanzi. Additionally, it will be tough keeping the 3100 Hanzi fresh in my memory once I am through this run. But I think this will be well worth as I just don't want to know only 1400 Hanzi after 2 years at University. Wouldn't be able to use any media with that amount and therefore, I wouldn't have early access to material intended for native speakers. -Lack of context. If you do not follow this up with learning lots of words and sentences, there is not much point to doing this method. -A certain number of characters change tone and/or pronounciation depending on the context(not talking about tone sandhi here). Example: 大学(dàxué->University) vs. 大夫(dàifu->doctor) or 银行(yínháng->Bank) vs. 行李(xíngli->luggage) @Solfrid Cristin I am not familiar with the differences between mainland Mandarin and Taiwanese, I know exactly one word in Mandarin. :-) Are the main differences due to vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation or a combination of all three? Let's just say that it was humbling to visit my mother two days ago and trying out all sorts of approved phrases on her, which she would immediately understand but reply to with entirely different phrases saying that they meant the same but sounded better. The differences are found in all the aspects you mentioned, although the grammar is mostly the same. The vocabulary is affected the most. Taiwanese people understand nearly all of the expressions found on the Mainland, but have their own names for pretty much everything, including basic things such as taxis or busses. Pronunciation is often different in Taiwan. You will look up something in a so-called dictionary and point out how something is spelled, but of course the native guy insists on knowing the one true pronunciation(tm). The change in pronunciation almost always occurs with the second character of a word. That's just the tones. If you can visualise the pinyin notation, Taiwanese people love leaving out the 'h' in most words like Shànghǎi or Shān(=mountain) which are pronounced as Sànghǎi and Sān(can be misunderstood as meaning 'three') Also please note that I am referring to Taiwanese Mandarin, also called 国语(guóyǔ), and not to Taiwanese. The latter term may refer to any Formosan language such as the languages of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan but more commonly refers to the Hokkien/Southern Min language. Most of my relatives speak that language which is not intelligible to Mandarin speakers. @The Real CZ You mentioning classes reminds me of why I never took any classes for learning Korean. Assignments are just busy work and your time could be spent doing useful activities, but that's school bureaucracy for you. It would be so awesome if Universities finally lived up to their name and included the latest research in language education so that teaching languages would finally not be a game of hit or miss. Much of what you do at University seems to be focused on keeping you...busy and spinning your wheels. So AJATT is right I think. At most, Universities help some people stay motivated through sheer fear of failing the next exam. When motivation should come from within and make you feel that the language you are learning is not just a chore but something that grants you access to the things you genuinely enjoy doing. Edited by BloodyChinese on 24 December 2012 at 9:30am 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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