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Towards Mandarin fluency - Team 鹊 TAC’14 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Ninibo Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 3806 days ago 88 posts - 116 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 17 of 69 08 February 2014 at 10:26pm | IP Logged |
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So! I finally started a new book! It's a translation of After School 放学后 by Higashino Keigo 东野圭吾, a crime novel. I'm forty pages in and i like it so far. It's fast paced and not too difficult. Its about a girl's school teacher who somebody is trying to kill. It's only 200 pages long, so unless i start disliking it too, i should be done with it quite fast.
I also started watching a new drama. It's called 我的自由时代 and the English title is In A Good Way. I've only watched the first episode so far, because they are 90 minutes long, but i'm interested in seeing where this is going. It's set in the 90's in Taibei, so there are lots of cassette tapes, pagers and so forth. It makes me feel old. [edit] I forgot to add: watching this drama brought home hhow bad my listening skills are. With the chinese subtitles i got close to 100%, but without them it's closer to 50%. In the beginning i got a heart attack, because i didn't get anything, until i realized that there are characters in this who speak only taiwanese. This was comforting, because i thought my listening was so bad, that i didn't even hear what they said according to the subtitles. I guess now that they are in Taibei there will be less taiwanese. Still, i need to work on my listening skills. Edited by Ninibo on 08 February 2014 at 10:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ninibo Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 3806 days ago 88 posts - 116 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 18 of 69 13 February 2014 at 8:43am | IP Logged |
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I think i listened to the chinese version of Frozen's Let it go twenty times yesterday alone. Such a great song. I wonder how widely 随他吧 is used for "let it be/go".
Anyway, i finished Fangxuehou. I liked it, it kept me interested and i wanted to know who the culprit is. So, the book is about a teacher a girl's school who realizes someone wants to kill him after there are a few attempts on his life. Then the first murder happens after archery practice... It's very fast paced, but i guess with just about 200 pages it has to be. I wasn't totally surprised by the conclusion, but there was something i didn't expect. I have another book by Higashino Keigo and i guess i'll pick that up fairly soon. This puts me at 667 pages read. I'm behind my schedule, but there are ten more months to get back on track and i'll get faster at reading chinese anyway. Next i picked up Ant Tribe 蚁族 by Lian Si 廉思. It's non-fiction, and i'll write a synopsis after i finish it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ninibo Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 3806 days ago 88 posts - 116 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 19 of 69 13 February 2014 at 8:51am | IP Logged |
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And i forgot something again: i restarted listening to the advanced chinesepod episodes on my way to uni. I think they are still a little bit slow, but the topics are interesting. I get confused by the pdfs, though, because they are not full transcripts. Still, there's some useful stuff there and since they are only about twenty minutes long they are great for listening to on my commute.
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| Ninibo Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 3806 days ago 88 posts - 116 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 20 of 69 13 February 2014 at 7:41pm | IP Logged |
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On the chinese Ant and Rat tribes
Since i'm reading Lian Si's (廉思) Ant Tribe (蚁族) i thought i could elaborate a bit what an Ant Tribe actually is. Lian Si, who was the first to do an academi study on them, defines them as being recent university graduates who live in communities, because their incomes are small. He mostly studied people living in Xiaoyuehe 小月河, a district in Beijing. The book was written after he finished and published his study and he intends this book to be for non-academics. In the latter part of the book the members of the Ant Tribe themselves describe their lifes and their struggles. The book was published in 2009 and since then the Ant Tribe has had a voice. There even is a TV drama dealing about member of the Ant Tribe called 蚁族的奋斗, the fight of the Ant Tribe. A follow-up to this book has been published and i hopefully will be able to read that soon, too. (Baidu on the Ant tribe) Now there is a second "tribe", the Rat Tribe 鼠族. It's not mentioned in Lian Si's book, so i assume that's a more recent development. The characteristics of the Rat Tribe are: Often immigrant workers, low income and living in the big cities in tiny rooms often underground. Here's a photo essay on them. There's also documentaries on youtube on both of the tribes. (Baidu on the Rat Tribe) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5655 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 21 of 69 13 February 2014 at 11:41pm | IP Logged |
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That sounds really interesting. How is the vocabulary? Is it difficult to understand? I think i'd enjoy reading it at some point, but it looks like you're at a much higher level than i am. I'm not sure if it's a bit out of my league for now.
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| Ninibo Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 3806 days ago 88 posts - 116 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 22 of 69 14 February 2014 at 8:50am | IP Logged |
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I guess a good test would be to see how much trouble newspaper and wikipedia articles of the political or sociological variety give you. That said, in the beginning the vocabulary is repeated very often. The second part of the book is members of the Yizu telling their half of the story, so there's less scientific vocabulary. I found it online, so you could see if it's too hard.
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| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5655 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 23 of 69 14 February 2014 at 4:51pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks, i read the little introduction and it does sound interesting. I'll bookmark it for now and hopefully come back to it soon.
I'd never heard of the "Ant Tribe", but i have seen some of the apartments Chinese students and young workers live in. Thanks for sharing the link and talking about the book. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ninibo Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 3806 days ago 88 posts - 116 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 24 of 69 14 February 2014 at 8:45pm | IP Logged |
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I'll definitely write about that topic some more once i finish the book. There is a second one that i'll be getting to afterwards, so i guess we'll also see if the situation has improved in the years following the first book. I'll probably share some videos i found concerning the yizu then.
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