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Facing Mandarin in Zen mode | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5772 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 9 of 15 11 January 2014 at 4:24am | IP Logged |
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After reading native materials for a while, you'll realize that the explanations usually given about characters and Chinese words are incomplete. Also the western understanding of "word" (or at least the American understanding of it) does not exactly match how native Chinese speakers understand it. Edited by Snowflake on 11 January 2014 at 4:28am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3860 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 10 of 15 14 January 2014 at 7:19am | IP Logged |
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Cool!
The characters although at the beginning I'm not able to remember them, after some days of reviews with anki really start to stick on my memory! Negative part, only on passive side (I'm not able to read a keyword and write the corresponding chinese character). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3860 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 11 of 15 17 January 2014 at 12:46am | IP Logged |
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What to say... I'm studying the characters actively. It's boring to repeat it :) But with Anki it's going really better now,
and this is also boring to repeat :D My goal now is to arrive to the 700 characters and start to read some native resource as recommended by @Snowflake! I can't wait :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3860 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 12 of 15 25 January 2014 at 12:38am | IP Logged |
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At a certain point I need to rely heavily on my imagination to remember some character... I have to create stories on
my mind to associate the image with the meaning. Still using Anki. In this moment I discovered I'm treating Mandarin like treating crosswords or games like that... 700 characters goal is much huger than what it seemed at the very beginning. But at least I'm studying for it every day. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 4961 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 13 of 15 25 January 2014 at 12:12pm | IP Logged |
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Well, single characters really do have meaning on their own, but the context is really what defines the meaning. I
have a log, if you're interested, but what I think will REALLY help you a lot is to grab an illustrated Chinese dictionary. This type of dictionary should have very basic words on things you see every day. As I've been going through my illustrated dictionary, I realized that I am picking up characters very quickly: I don't need to create stories, or come up with some fancy gimmick to get myself to remember the characters... instead, I end up "learning" how all of the words are connected. It is quite awesome, I recommend you try learning the characters for words from an illustrated dictionary :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3860 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 14 of 15 28 January 2014 at 11:34pm | IP Logged |
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thank you for the advice :)
some days ago I went to a Chinese restaurant and was amazing to read the menu and realise that I knew some of the characters! Amazing but... they were completely out of context!!! And still there is to me not any logic in the "compound characters", like... employee for example: mouth + shellfish?? And putting many characters in the same word produce the same effect (to me in my whole complete ignorance about this beautiful language) :) Or the chinese owners were lazy and put random characters aside the dutch terms :) One day I will be enlightened (I hope) :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| aerozeplyn Senior Member United States Joined 4961 days ago 141 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 15 of 15 29 January 2014 at 5:04am | IP Logged |
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Honestly, I believe characters are exactly like English words. Take the word "believe": think of it as being created
using different radicals... the "be" radical, the "lie" radical, and the "ve" radical. I know, it's a stretch, but hear me out: For the words--err um "radicals"--"be", "lie", and "ve", it doesn't really make sense why these came together. I'm sure if I sit there and study the history of the word, I'll find out that some letters came from misspellings of the past, others from different languages, and others no one is certain. Either way, if you're trying to make logical sense of something, then you're doomed to fail... sorry, but you don't always get what you want in the world of learning :D But really, what are you more interested in? Are you actually interested in making sense of why characters are created by different radicals? or are you REALLY more interested in just using the actual word, so you can read or listen to understand the language? You can't have both as quickly, so pick one. For employee, i'm guessing you mean 员 since that is 口 + 贝 , but do its parts REALLY need to make sense in order for you to know that "员" might mean employee? Do they have to make logical sense for them to have a meaning? No. Nope. it's not necessary. Just learn how to pronounce 员, just like you have to individually learn that the English sounds for "bee-leave" is represented as "believe". Stay away from the gimmicks and just trust your brain. Enjoy the process, and feel free to be analytical and think, "ooo employee is a mouth and a shellfish...interesting. maybe this is because employees will typically take your goods, kinda like the hired fisherman eating my shellfish >[". No, don't say that to yourself, but feel free to continue to analyze it and do what makes yourself happy, just don't forget to trust your brain and believe in yourself. While you will never remember 100% of material in one sitting, you'll remember a small percentage, and that pattern will continue and grow when you reinforce more. Just trust yourself :) Edited by aerozeplyn on 29 January 2014 at 5:05am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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