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Ezy Ryder’s endeavor (TAC’14-15 旅立ち、鵲、東亞)

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Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4109 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 137 of 144
24 May 2015 at 1:34pm | IP Logged 
Being pretty much done with high school, I guess I should start thinking about university.
After having difficulties finding information on studying in Taiwan as a regular foreigner
willing to pay for themselves (as opposed to an overseas Chinese, overseas compatriot, or
"outstanding international student"), perhaps combined with wanderlust, and fear; (in the
spirit of running away from problems) I started thinking about other countries. Having
studied all this vocab and characters in Mandarin, my listening comprehension and
production skills are still minimal, and reading isn't too good either. But, maybe it could
provide a foundation in similar languages? Reading a bit of the Cantonese Wikipedia, it
seems Cantonese wouldn't be too bad, considering I have to build my 聽力 and speaking from
scratch anyway... The readings of characters also often seem to be something in between
Japanese and Mandarin.
Knowing that some users here have moved to, or live/d in Hong Kong, could anyone offer some
advice? As to, whether studying there would be any less difficult than in Taiwan? (I think
there is an embassy in Poland, for a start).
1 person has voted this message useful



Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4109 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 138 of 144
01 June 2015 at 1:52pm | IP Logged 
TAC 2015 May Challenge (overdue, as always)

I first made a hand-written draft (looking up some words and characters), and now I retyped it
here.

比夠死是個在波蘭流行的菜. 包含些樣蔬菜,肉與調料. 經常擁有一點辣的味道, 但為了它抵達自己的頂點必須等一
下. 就是說愈古老愈改變. 平常元旦的期間被做了. 我就移動以前應該學會自己做它.


I finally started making the Pinyin syllable->possible Hanzi characters flashcards. Got 18 so
far (that's like 4.36%?). Going a bit slowly...
1 person has voted this message useful



Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4109 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 139 of 144
03 July 2015 at 10:15am | IP Logged 
Haven't updated in a while. Sorry about that. I think I mentioned visiting my mother in the
hospital in some post way back, that's related to the reason why. She had a brain tumour
(glioblastoma multiforme), underwent an operation and radiotherapy, but her state kept
worsening. She was bedridden for the last few months, after suffering two episodes of
epilepsy the same night. Last week she lost the ability to speak (shortly after saying her
last farewell), and she died at home yesterday at about 4:09 AM. As you probably can guess,
there are going to be some things to be settled, which means I still won't be able to study
“full-time”. Some agreements need to be cancelled, I need to apply for a new social
security (which, at least, might be over twice as high as the one I had the last two
years), I'll need to take the train to a nearby city to apply to a university (and probably
ask about the costs of living in their dormitories, to see whether paying the rent, bills
and commute costs would be more expensive or not)...

I pretty much abandoned the idea of the Pinyin syllable->possible Hanzi flashcards. I just
started going through my old vocabulary deck, but only Pinyin->Hanzi+English definition
this time. I tried re-learning about 500 words a day, which was about 3 hours of Anki'ing a
day, at first. But of course, I burnt out at about 4200 cards re-learnt. I tried listening
to some podcasts from Taiwan, and I think my listening comprehension might've improved
slightly, but nowhere near enough.

I'm not sure how should I study/practice Mandarin now. Chances of studying in Taiwan this
year are negligible, so I'll probably end up studying in Poland (one university in my
voievodship offers “English Philology with a specialisation in Chinese Translation (and/or
interpretation, they are homonymous in Polish),” for which I'm planning to apply. AFAIK the
regular course is free of charge (except for a ~22$ application fee). Their website says,
while selecting students, they only care about some contest results (I didn't participate
in any), and one's results in the English part of the final exams (I scored 93% in the oral
part, 98% in the written part's basic level, and 96% in the written part's extended level,
so I hope I stand a chance).

PS.: I'll get to the article translation monthly challenge in a jiffy.
1 person has voted this message useful



kraemder
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4944 days ago

1497 posts - 1648 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese

 
 Message 140 of 144
03 July 2015 at 11:01am | IP Logged 
Wow. That's a big deal. My mother passed away due to cancer and it was a big deal to me although my mom
suffered from mental illness and she was a stressful person to be with regardless. I wasn't able to really focus
on learning for a while after. I can't say how long it took to get beyond that but it took time.

That said, maybe studying languages, which is fun, can be a good escape. Glad to see you posting.
1 person has voted this message useful



Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4109 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 141 of 144
15 July 2015 at 2:32pm | IP Logged 
Kraemder, thanks for stopping by.

I'm not sure if it's appropriate for me to say; but things seem to be taking a turn for the
better. I think I don't need to stress over the university thing any more (having been
qualified, brought all the documents, and received a copy of the student admission (or
whatever it translates to)). Also, I weighed myself this morning(ish), and what the scale
has shown was a nice surprise - my goal weight. 66.1 kg (~145 lb) (oscillating between 66.1
and 66.2 when I tried again, to make sure). I started trying to lose weight in late
February 2012 (IIRC), having reached my peak at 96.6 kg (~213 lb). My BMI is about 22.8
now, so it should be moderately healthy? Though probably still a bit high for Taiwanese
standards...

The last (but not least) good news is a bit more related to language learning. That is, I
found a Taiwanese language exchange partner, with whom I can practice the spoken language,
too. She helps me with Mandarin, and I help her with English. We mostly write in English,
unless I feel I might be able to phrase something in Mandarin. She also had a great idea on
how to practice speaking. We record ourselves, and send each other the audio file, often
providing a transcript, to aid comprehension. This way we don't need to worry about “dead
air,” due to lacking listening comprehension or accent, nor all the stress associated with
real-time conversation.

As for my plans, I'll try speaking more in Mandarin, get through the backlog in my
character writing deck, and perhaps learn additional 2,000 characters before the lectures
start, to get to 5k. 2000 characters / 78 days = 25.64 characters a day. Seems manageable.
(I bet the university will only teach Simplified, though... Oh well.)

Edited by Ezy Ryder on 15 July 2015 at 2:33pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4109 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 142 of 144
13 August 2015 at 3:19am | IP Logged 
Just some quick info.

In a few hours I should be on the plane; and hopefully, the next post I'll write from Taiwan :)
1 person has voted this message useful



Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4109 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 143 of 144
15 August 2015 at 5:21pm | IP Logged 
I'm in Taiwan :) It's great. Hanzi everywhere I look. On the street signs, advertisements
(even on my laptop), household appliances, buses... just awesome. My friend helped me rent a
room, and today, do some groceries (I couldn't take everything with me due to airline
regulations, and limited space in my travelling case). So far, we mostly speak in English, but
I'm trying to use more and more Mandarin. She advised me to try speaking a bit slower, because
yesterday I just mumbled due to the stress, and was almost completely incomprehensible. But
today, it seemed to be a bit better. I think I've said at least one or two full sentences she
understood. And for the first time I understood a full sentence in spoken Chinese (in real
life) :) When buying a proper power socket adapter, I heard one of the employees say to my
friend „If you won't be able to get it to work, you can just come back here and exchange it
for another one” (I don't remember her exact words, so I just put here the translation).
1 person has voted this message useful



Ezy Ryder
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
youtube.com/user/Kat
Joined 4109 days ago

284 posts - 387 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 144 of 144
21 August 2015 at 10:24am | IP Logged 
I got my Chinese name: 阿波

My first week in Taiwan has passed. I love it here. I feel more at home here, than anywhere
else in the world (granted, I haven't been to many other places though xD). The people are
all so nice, hospitable, kind... My landlord for example, has taken me for a lunch out,
offered to show around the neighbourhood, even taught me a word in 台語. Sadly, I haven't
worked as hard on my Chinese as I should (even though I'm getting slightly better at asking
for directions and understanding bits of the answer), but yesterday my friend took me to
the local bookstore. So at least I got some books, much cheaper than it'd cost me to get
them on-line, and I don't even have to wait for them to be delivered to Poland. Here's a
list of what I got:
安德闇影-Ender's Shadow (by Orson Scott Card)
教父-The Godfather (by Mario Puzo)
儒家與韋伯的五個對話-Five dialogues between a Confucian and Weber (by 葉仁昌)
鋼筆草,行,隸書範本-Model of Cursive, Semi-Cursive and Clerical Script for a fountain pen
(by 蔡狄秋) I've been looking for something like this for a long time.
莊子-Zhuangzi (allegedly by 莊子 (probably my favourite Taoist philosopher)) It's kinda like
a bilingual text, has both the original, and modern Chinese (and some explanations, perhaps
some historical notes too...). Awesome.
All these, for less than US 50$.


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