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TAC 2013: Asian Sparta

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49 messages over 7 pages: 13 4 5 6 7  Next >>
embici
Triglot
Senior Member
CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4403 days ago

263 posts - 370 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, French
Studies: Greek

 
 Message 9 of 49
03 January 2013 at 5:50pm | IP Logged 
Mandarin, Russian, German... you all make me feel like such a language light weight!

Kudos to you Crush!

I'm glad you are enjoying the Language Transfer project. I really like it as well. I did
it after the Michel Thomas foundation so it was somewhat repetitive for me. I see they
are planning Turkish and Egyptian Arabic. I'd be tempted to try them out too some day.
1 person has voted this message useful



Crush
Tetraglot
Senior Member
ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5658 days ago

1622 posts - 2299 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto
Studies: Basque

 
 Message 10 of 49
03 January 2013 at 7:13pm | IP Logged 
Just started level three of the Language Transfer course today! More work on the conditional and they introduced lots of compound tenses (have done, had done, would have done, will have done, etc.). I have a feeling i'll be repeating this level, too. I really do feel like i've learned a lot of grammar, though. I also just looked at some noun tables and found that i already knew the endings for most of the different types of nouns. I'm really itching to get started with FSI, i don't know if i want to go through Assimil first or dive straight into FSI.

I haven't done much Mandarin grammar study lately, i really need to though since learning more characters is nice but not very useful without any context to put them in.
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LittleBoy
Diglot
Groupie
United Kingdom
Joined 5103 days ago

84 posts - 100 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: German, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto

 
 Message 11 of 49
16 January 2013 at 1:01am | IP Logged 
Hello fellow Team 鶴 member!

Great array of languages. I'm slightly jealous that you're where I should be with Mandarin, if I'd been consistent with my time input :P Can I ask how you found FSI and what areas you felt it left you short in? Also, in your first post in Mandarin, you say "今年咱们不说英语了吧!", why is the "了" there?

Best of luck for 2013!
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billyshears66
Groupie
United States
Joined 4307 days ago

69 posts - 78 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 12 of 49
20 January 2013 at 6:37pm | IP Logged 
Crush wrote:
Mandarin:
I did Lesson 39 today, not any new words or structures but i did relearn a word i
hadn't seen in a while: 大夫 (dàifu) aka doctor. To anyone else using Assimil Chinese,
i really recommend removing the pauses. It makes the lessons much more enjoyable. If
you don't know how/don't feel like doing it, get in touch.


Hi teammate! I'm about to embark on the Assimil Journey for Mandarin. Could you expand
on the "removing the pauses". Why is it more enjoyable to you? How did you go about it?
I don't mind doing the work, just point me in the right direction please :)




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Crush
Tetraglot
Senior Member
ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5658 days ago

1622 posts - 2299 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto
Studies: Basque

 
 Message 13 of 49
23 January 2013 at 8:05am | IP Logged 
@LittleBoy: i don't know if it's right or not, but i threw the 了 marker to give it the feeling of "anymore", a change of state, ie. we spoke English before but we won't speak it anymore. As far as FSI, it has a lot of good grammar and really quite a bit of vocabulary, my biggest gripe with it was that so much of the vocabulary didn't feel that useful (lots of government vocab, for example). It also doesn't touch the characters, but that might actually be a good thing. Otherwise the course would take forever and besides it's probably more enjoyable to use some other method to learn them (Anki, Skritter, Memrise, etc.). Really, i still don't feel like i'm at an intermediate stage yet. My vocabulary is way too small, i have trouble understanding others when they speak, and can't speak very well. Surprisingly, my strongest abilities are probably reading and writing (especially with a dictionary).

With all other FSI courses i've done (French, most of German, and Spanish) i always felt like a new part of the language opened up to me after each unit. Not so with FSI Chinese, maybe because Chinese grammar is so hidden/less blatant than other languages i've studied, i dunno. Maybe the biggest part of learning Chinese is learning vocabulary and how to use it? There seem to be so many ways to say the same thing. I can't really say where FSI fell short in particular, it just seems to have left me off at a much lower level than the other FSI courses (and was incredibly boring). However, i must have learned quite a bit as the other courses i'm doing have all been review. It just seems like i can't say very much.

@billyshears66: the Assimil Mandarin course has huge gaps after every sentence, initially i think so you can repeat after, later it's not quite enough time to repeat but still a good second or two. The lessons don't feel natural (even as the speakers' speech speeds up). I used Audacity and one of the effects (my version's in Spanish, the effect's called "Truncado de silencio") to automatically remove gaps of more than maybe 200 milliseconds (the default). I can send you what i've done so far, though i didn't do the first few weeks.
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billyshears66
Groupie
United States
Joined 4307 days ago

69 posts - 78 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 14 of 49
23 January 2013 at 1:58pm | IP Logged 
Thanks for the advice Crush. I'm hoping to start on Assimil in the next day or two, and
I'll see how the pauses go. I have a copy of Audacity... I know there is a way to remove
everything at once, I just have to figure it out.

Thanks again!
1 person has voted this message useful



Crush
Tetraglot
Senior Member
ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5658 days ago

1622 posts - 2299 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto
Studies: Basque

 
 Message 15 of 49
25 January 2013 at 7:28pm | IP Logged 
The other day i finished the final course (so far) of Language Transfer Greek. It really is an amazing course and i recommend it to anyone looking to get their feet wet in Greek. It covers quite a bit of grammar very quickly.

I've been a bit more consistent on the Mandarin front, but not by much. Still hanging in there with my memrise reviews (currently working my way through the HSK 4 list on memrise). I've been trying to figure out what exactly it is i need to do with my Chinese to actually improve. I feel like i'm stuck :/

EDIT: i've also been feeling a lack of Spanish and French in my schedule, but don't know how to really fit them in...

Edited by Crush on 25 January 2013 at 7:30pm

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billyshears66
Groupie
United States
Joined 4307 days ago

69 posts - 78 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 16 of 49
25 January 2013 at 8:06pm | IP Logged 
Crush wrote:
I've been a bit more consistent on the Mandarin front, but not by much.
Still hanging in there with my memrise reviews (currently working my way through the HSK
4 list on memrise).


Hi Crush. If you want to add me as a mempal, here is my profile:
http://www.memrise.com/user/cschule/mems/created/

You should be able to add me from there. Maybe seeing each others points/progress will
help motivate me. There is a could of people on the team that I've added all ready.


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