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Mi Cuaderno: Español, Mandarín (TAC ’14) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| PointsDotsLines Diglot Groupie United States Joined 3793 days ago 76 posts - 110 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 9 of 16 03 January 2014 at 7:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The software I use is "Sogou Pinyin" >>http://pinyin.sogou.com
It's one of the popular methods among the native speakers. But the website doesn't have any English explanation. I Googled it and found this explanation >>http://fluentinmandarin .com/content/how-to-type-in-c hinese-using-sogou-pinyin ....(Note: somehow there's a gap bet. 'c hinese' that I can't edit it out...sorry) See if it can help you download and set it up. Your computer's own Chinese input works well too. Do you use Mac or Windows? For Mac, just add "Chinese" to the input menu; For Windows, go to Control Panel > clock, language, region (change keyboards or other input methods) > change keyboards > Add > Chinese/simplified or Chinese/traditional +++ The similar phrase in Spanish would be "¡Venga! ¡Venga!" haha:) I used to watch major cycling races like Tour de France, Vuelta a España. During the individual time trial stages where those cyclists race alone against the clock, directeur sportif would ride in the team car following behind the rider and yell out "¡Venga! ¡Venga!":) Edited by PointsDotsLines on 03 January 2014 at 7:15am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| nj24 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4450 days ago 56 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian, French | Message 10 of 16 03 January 2014 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Ah, sorry. I must have quickly read through your last post and didn't see that you wrote that 화이팅 was used the same way. That's interesting that it's a loan word.
Thanks, Charles! I have a Mac. Didn't know that it had that feature. Just tried it out, and it works beautifully. This will be quite helpful for memorizing characters.
Good to know! Interesting that different phrases would be used for different situations. For example, "¡Venga! ¡Venga!" to encourage someone in person at a sporting event/etc. but "sigue así" if your are writing a comment on a school paper or in a note to someone. Spanish speakers on Lang-8 often write "Sigue así" after their corrections on my entries or sometimes "¡Animó!" but I think the latter has a slightly different meaning and takes into consideration that the task at hand is a large and difficult one. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| PointsDotsLines Diglot Groupie United States Joined 3793 days ago 76 posts - 110 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 16 03 January 2014 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Great that the Chinese input feature works well for you:) But I'll have to say.... the best way to memorize characters/words is to write them by hand -- stroke by stroke;-)
¡Muchos saludos y espero que tengas un buen día! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| nj24 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4450 days ago 56 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian, French | Message 12 of 16 14 January 2014 at 1:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Looks like it's time for an update. :) Thanks again to everyone who has commented on my log so far.
Spanish Update After studying one language consistently for over two years, it seems that it has eventually becomes a natural part of my daily habits. I don't think a day goes by where I don't have some kind of Spanish exposure, even if it's just listening to music or the radio. Usually, it's much more intense than that though. I usually read a Spanish book in the morning, listen to music throughout the day, and watch an episode of a Spanish show in the evening. However, all of these activities are passive. I need to try to integrate activities into my daily schedule that challenge active skills (writing and speaking) until these become habits too. Anyhow, here's how my Spanish studies went over the past week: Reading Reading is my main way of picking up new vocabulary. I love how reading acts as a natural SRS. I'll come across a word and wonder when on earth I'll ever see it again, and then, lo and behold, it turns up in a different book or a news article days later. I like to read two books at the same time: one that is challenging and the other that is just at my reading level that I can breeze through. I'm reading an economics book right now that is helping me pick up a lot of specialized vocabulary along with a copy of The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis. I actually haven't found the economics book to be too difficult, and I think the Lewis novel is right at or a little below my reading level. I should finish both soon. (How I developed my Spanish reading skills)... FSI is a really great program because it slowly introduces you to reading passages in Spanish. These passages become longer and longer as the program progresses. Along with these FSI passages, I used Biblegateway.com to read the Bible in Spanish with the parallel English passage on the side. I could also listen to the passage being read in Spanish. This was great for building my confidence before I decided to pick up a Spanish translation of The Hunger Games. Maybe I should have started with an easier book series (I had never even read them in English), but I pushed my way through. I had an online copy that allowed me to copy and paste passages directly into Google Translate. When I first started out, I was pretty much copying and pasting every paragraph. Slowly this became several sentences. Then dropped to a handful of words. Now I find that I can read translated works quite easily. I have a little bit more difficulty with works originally written in Spanish so I am planning to tackle Cien años de soledad in the next month or so. I've already read two books by Gabo. Anyone who is just beginning to read books in Spanish, feel free to ask me more questions about my method. When I am reading, I try to pay careful attention to grammatical structures. Even if I can figure out the general meaning of a word from the passage, usually I will also look it up just to be sure. I find that my brain likes to be 100% sure of a word's meaning before it will memorize it. I don't use Anki or anything like that to memorize the vocabulary I come across, but sometimes I'll think about a word I read and look it up in the dictionary to reinforce it. Listening Listening is coming along quite well. The other day I played an album that I hadn't listened to since this past summer. It had been one of my favorite albums, one that I used to listen to over and over. At the time, however, I usually couldn't follow the lyrics. However, when I listened to it the other day, I was amazed that I could actually understand the songs. If you ever need a confidence boost and you've been studying for at least six months or a year, go back and try to listen/watch/read native materials that you were exposed to at the beginning of your language studies. Then you'll truly see how far you've come. In December, I finished watching the Spanish television series Gran Hotel. I've been looking for a new show and started watching El Internado (two of the actors from Gran Hotel appear in this show as well). It's quite different from Gran Hotel, and I wasn't quite hooked by the first two episodes, but it's been slowly growing on me. I also was looking for a show that would expose me to South American accents and slang as that's the predominant Spanish that one usually hears in the US, and my language exchange partner is from South America. I also wanted a show that would revolve around everyday situations so I could experience modern language being spoken at home, at a store, etc. Gran Hotel hadn't been much help there as it took place in 1905 in a hotel. But I finally found the perfect show in dubbed episodes of Drake and Josh (search "Drake y Josh" on YouTube). It's a show that ran on Nickelodeon from 2004-2008 and revolves around the life of two stepbrothers with opposite personalities. The episodes are only 20 minutes long and the voice actors are quite good. It's great if you don't have a lot of time to spend watching a show and want to pick up useful exclamations, words, and phrases. Writing So far this year I've written twice on my Lang-8 account and also written an introduction for Team Lobo (thanks again to mrwarper for his corrections in the team thread). Here's a copy of my introduction so you can judge my level of Spanish. This is with MrWarper's corrections (two missing accent marks, need to leave out "los" before Estados Unidos, "los personajes" instead of "las personajes," "leo novelas" instead of "leo las novelas," and "me pongo" instead of "me pone.") Rather encouraging that there were only these handful of corrections for so long of a piece.
Someone who corrected one of my entries on Lang-8 wrote, "Your Spanish is awesome. At least, you write like a native Spanish speaker." That was very encouraging (even though he was just being very nice…I still have a very long way to go to get to that point). :) Speaking I didn't manage to meet with my usual language exchange partner this week, but I did have a great conversation in Spanish with another friend. I think it lasted about thirty to forty minutes. I talked about my job and we also talked a little about history and about a book I am reading. I actually hadn't planned at all to talk in Spanish, and it was impromptu, and I was a bit rusty from not talking in weeks, so I guess I shouldn't be too hard on myself. He seemed to understand everything I said even when I stumbled over verb conjugations. Anyhow, I need to schedule a time to talk with my language exchange partner this week or maybe I'll talk again with my friend if he has any free time. I am also planning to spend some time talking out loud to myself in Spanish. Interestingly, I had two dreams this week where I was having conversations in Spanish. I know it wasn't just Spanish sounds, because I remember what I had said when I woke up. I found that this happened after several hours of Spanish study directly before going to sleep. Kind of cool. Mandarin Chinese Update One of my experiments this year was to see how well I could juggle studying two languages at the same time. I think I need to work more on this as I have not been studying Chinese everyday. I did finish the pronunciation module in FSI and the first lesson in the DeFrancis book. I've also watched a couple of episodes of Growing up with Chinese. I'm hoping to make more progress in the DeFrancis book this week. So far, I really love the way it is laid out, and I liked that it also included pronunciation drills along with the conversation drills. I am of course yet to completely master Mandarin Chinese pronunciation. I need to figure out the best way to incorporate DeFrancis into my daily schedule. The audio for each lesson runs between 30 to 50 minutes so it shouldn't be too hard to find time for it each day. I've also been listening to a bit of Chinese radio so that I get used to the rhythm of the language. Anyone have any favorite Chinese TV shows? I feel that watching a show will help continue to draw me into the language. I saw that there are quite a number of shows on DramaFever. I'll also try to write my introduction for the Chinese team 鹊 this week. That will be quite a challenge. Most Important Goals for this Week: Speak More Spanish & Study More Mandarin :) Bonus Resource: If you've read all the way to the end of this post, you deserve a prize. Check out this cool website called the Akinator. It's a game like 20 questions where you think of a fictional or real person, and then the genie tries to guess who you have thought of. The site is available in 14 different languages including Spanish and Mandarin. And can be rather addicting. Enjoy! Edited by nj24 on 16 January 2014 at 12:09am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| PointsDotsLines Diglot Groupie United States Joined 3793 days ago 76 posts - 110 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 16 14 January 2014 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't know any Chinese TV shows, but if you don't mind watching something long (2 hrs+), here are some films that I like:
Back to 1942 (一九四二): IMDB link/trailer The Flowers of War (by Christian Bale) (金陵十三钗): IMDB link/trailer Lust, Caution (色，戒): IMDB link/trailer These three films are set during WWII so some scenes may not be pleasant to watch. They all have both Chinese and English subtitles (found them on Youtube). Enjoy watching:) PS: Look forward to reading your intro in Chinese. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| nj24 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4450 days ago 56 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian, French | Message 14 of 16 15 January 2014 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for the recommendations, Charles! 謝謝
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| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5049 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 15 of 16 15 January 2014 at 10:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for the link to Akinator, nj24. I'm enjoying it! You should post it in the links and resources section for the whole forum to see.
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| nj24 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4450 days ago 56 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian, French | Message 16 of 16 16 January 2014 at 12:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Glad you are enjoying it, iguanamon. Great idea. I'll post it now.
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