Language Learning Forum: Life of Mandarin (list of audiobook)

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Life of Mandarin (list of audiobook)

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Forum Name: Language Learning Log
Forum Discription: Your personal language learning logbook: milestones, successes, brick walls & goals great and small. Document your progress and get support, tips and encouragement from other forum members.
URL: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9414
Printed Date: 21 November 2024 at 10:06pm

Posted By: kealist
Subject: Life of Mandarin (list of audiobook)
Date Posted: 04 March 2008 at 3:16pm

Decided to start a daily language log to keep checks on myself in my daily study, and
to track my progress.

- audio

I am compiling a list of Mandarin audiobooks here in the hope that (1) other people
will use them and (2) other people will help me with this list by finding texts for
these books in both languages (as long as they not still protected by copyright)

How to Download Books: (easy, but time consuming)

Open the Link from this page
Click the "+" next to each track that you want
Right-Click the green download button on the left side (the right side is Thunder:// protocol). Select "Save link as..." to download the file where you want it
Repeat with each additional track you want. This can take a long, long time to download 100+ tracks

Mandarin Audiobooks:

Confirmed matching audio and transcription:

Fortress Besieged - S: 围城 T: 圍城 (14.3 hours) -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_203_368_1.Htm - audio (32 parts) - http://www.china-fun.net/book/work/modern/weicheng/ - EN - http://www.mwjx.com/other/book/story/top100/005.wc/index.htm - ZH

Gulliver's Travels - 格列佛游记 (~3 hours) -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_234_621_1.Htm - audio - http://www.dreamkidland.cn/cpth/glf/index.html - ZH

Old Man and the Sea - 老人与海 (4.2 hours) -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_203_881_1.Htm - audio (11 parts) - http://book.sina.com.cn/nzt/1092210700_laorenyuhai/ - ZH

Star Wars - S: 星球大战 T: 星球大戰 (~8 hours) -- http://www.pingshu8.com/musiclist/mmc_203_1665_1.htm - audio (13 parts) - http://www.mypcera.com/book/ke/wai/starbattle/001.htm - ZH1 - http://www.starwars.idv.tw/story/novel/EP4/001.htm - ZH2 - 塔图因是一个巨大而明亮的星球 (1st line)

True Story of Ah Q - 阿Q正传 (~2 hours) -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_203_325_1.Htm - audio - http://www.marxists.org/archive/lu-xun/1921/12/ah-q/index.ht m - EN - http://www.yifan.net/yihe/novels/luxun/aq.html - ZH

Confirmed slight differences between audio and text (i.e. can someone find a
matching written version?) :

Anna Karenina - 安娜·卡列尼娜 (~50 hours) -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_203_849_1.Htm - audio (136 parts) - http://www.kuwang.com/literature/foreign/anna/index.html - ZH - http://www.literature.org/authors/tolstoy-leo/anna-karenina/ - EN

Jane Eyre - 简爱 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_203_874_1.Htm - audio (59 parts) - http://www.pku.edu.cn/study/novel/jane/cjane01.htm - ZH - Chinese text is at least pretty similar.

Unchecked:

1001 Nights - 一千零一夜 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_227_897_1.Htm - audio - http://www.yifan.net/yihe/novels/yiqian/yiqian.html - ZH

Around the World in 80 days - 八十天环游地球 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_201_382_1.Htm - audio (37 parts) - http://www.yifan.net/novels/science/fan/bsthrdq/hrdq.html - ZH

Complete Anderson's Fairy Tales - 安徒生童话全集 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_227_850_1.Htm - audio - http://down5.52en.com:8097/book/%CE%D2%B0%AE%D3%A2%D3%EF%CD% F8_0007_Andersen.zip - EN(zip) - http://www.tianyabook.com/antusheng/antu.html - ZH (eek!! don't know what order they are in)

Family - -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_203_386_1.Htm - audio (51 parts) - http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~fli/bajin/work/jia/index.html - ZH

Gone with the Wind - 世界名著-飘 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_203_531_1.Htm - audio (127 parts)

Grimm's Fairy Tales - 格林童话 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_227_861_1.Htm - audio - http://down5.52en.com:8097/book/%CE%D2%B0%AE%D3%A2%D3%EF%CD% F8_0067_grimm.zip - EN(zip) - http://www.vastman.com/story/gelin/gelin.htm - ZH

How the Steel Was Tempered - 钢铁是怎样炼成的 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_203_860_1.Htm - audio

The Invisible Man - 隐身人 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_203_697_1.Htm - audio (28 parts)

Outlaws at the March - 水浒传 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_203_845_1.Htm - audio - http://www.yifan.net/yihe/novels/shuihu/shuihu.html - ZH

Pippi Longstocking - 长袜子皮皮 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_227_787_1.Htm - audio

Robinson Crusoe - 鲁滨逊漂流记 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_203_525_1.Htm - audio (32 parts) - http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/521 - EN - http://www.liuxue.net/wenxue/f5/lubinxun/ - ZH - Audio and ZH not the same

Le Tireur de pousse-pousse - 骆驼祥子 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_203_490_1.Htm - audio

Journey to the West - 西遊記 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_7_76_1.Htm - audio (100 parts)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms - 三国演义-- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_33_239_1.Htm - audio (365 parts)

Jin Yong 金庸 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinyong - wikipedia page

Blade-dance of the Two Lovers T: 鴛鴦刀 S: 鸳鸯刀 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_218_316_1.Htm - audio(1 part) - http://www.novelscape.net/wxxs/j/jingyong/001/001.htm - ZH

The Book and the Sword - T: 書劍恩仇錄 S: 书剑恩仇录 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_218_310_1.Htm - audio (7 parts : 36 hrs 33 min) - http://sokamonline.com/NovelMain/JinYong/book.cfm - ZH

Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils T: 天龍八部 S: 天龙八部 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_218_311_1.Htm - audio (50 parts) - http://wuxiapedia.com/novels/jin_yong/demi_gods_semi_de vils - EN - http://www.freewebtown.com/smallway/ebook/tlbb/index.html - ZH

Flying Fox of Snowy Mountain T: 雪山飛狐 S: 雪山飞狐 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_218_314_1.Htm - audio (76 parts)

Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre 倚天屠龍記 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_218_315_1.Htm - audio (40 parts) - http://wuxiapedia.com/novels/index/heavenly_sword_drago n_slaying_sabre - EN

The Legend of the Condor Heroes - T: 射鵰英雄傳 S: 射雕英雄传 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_218_308_1.Htm - audio (40 parts) - http://wuxiapedia.com/novels/jin_yong/eagle_shooting_he ro - EN

Ode to Gallantry T: 俠客行 S: 侠客行 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_218_312_1.Htm - audio (85 parts) - http://sokamonline.com/NovelMain/JinYong/walk.cfm - ZH

The Return of the Condor Heroes - T: 神鵰俠侶 S: 神雕侠侣 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_218_309_1.Htm - audio (40 parts) - http://wuxiapedia.com/novels/jin_yong/divine_eagle_gall ant_knight - EN - http://www.simnovel.com/section_list.php?id=24 - ZH

The Smiling, Proud Wanderer 笑傲江湖 -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_218_313_1.Htm - audio (219 parts) - http://www.lannyland.com/wanderer/wanderer.htm - EN - http://www.simnovel.com/section_list.php?id=357 - ZH

Sword of the Yue Maiden - 越女剑 (~1:10 hours) -- http://www.pingshu8.com/MusicList/mmc_218_317_1.Htm - audio (1 part) - http://www.qiqi.com/cgi-bin/bk.pl?fd1=book&fd2=wx&fd3=jiny&# 111;ng&in=jy02&pid=jy0202&id=2 - EN - http://sokamonline.com/NovelMain/JinYong/woman.cfm - ZH

March-11-08 - Updated methods
March-24-08 - Added Library
March-27-08 - Added Audiobook Section
March-03-08 - Added links to Audiobook Section
March-29-08 - More links to Audiobook Section
October-04-11 - Made the mistake of editing in Chrome, had to redo everything. Added Star Wars audio (!) Removed HP and 36 Stratagems (audio gone)

Replies:

Good luck with your studies!

You might have accidentally chosen the type "practical self-study question" if the thread ended up in that forum...
Serpent on 04 March 2008

Uyghur Resources:

Here is one of the main uyghur websites (tor beti):

http://biliwal.com/ - http://biliwal.com/

Other interesting links (if I think of anything else, I will come back and add it in):

www.meshrep.com/ - www.meshrep.com/
http://www.rfa.org/uyghur/ - http://www.rfa.org/uyghur/ (Radio Free Asia's Uyghur broadcast)
http://www.uighurlanguage.com/ - http://www.uighurlanguage.com/ (the guy who runs this site does uyghur proficiency testing. Tughluk is a pleasant guy.
http://www.anatilim.com/ - http://www.anatilim.com/
http://wiki.yulghun.com/ - http://wiki.yulghun.com/ (Apparently someone tried to make a Uyghur wikipedia--haven't looked at it yet)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UyghurLanguage - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UyghurLanguage
http://www.ukij.org/oyghan/ - http://www.ukij.org/oyghan/ (Uyghur software) For windows typing is pretty well designed now. It uses the Saudi Arabian input method. For OSX, there is still no right-to-left support for OpenType fonts. Programs that use their own font handling can work well (Mellel, Adobe), but other stuff is useless.
http://www.uyghurdictionary.org/ - http://www.uyghurdictionary.org/ a decent dictionary, none are that great online, or books for that matter.
http://dict.yulghun.com/ - http://dict.yulghun.com/ This is the dictionary I use--it is the same as the electronic dictionary Irpan, as far as I can tell.

Library of books

Japanese:
Remembering the Kanji Vol 1
Breaking into Japanese Literature
Nakama I
Nakama II
Furigana Dictionary
Japanese with Ease Vol 1
Japanese with Ease Vol 2
How to Play the Clever Bass

Mandarin:
Integrated Chinese Level 1, Part 1
Practical Audio-Visual Chinese
(.125)Parallel Text of Anna Karenina and audiobook

Latin:
Lingva Latina Pars I Familia Romana
Lingva Latina II Roma Aeterna

French:
French in Action
French without Toil
French with Ease
Oxford French Dictionary
Le Petit Prince
Nouveau Testament (Semeur)

German:
German without Toil
Cartina Method Learn German in 20 Lessons...Illustrated

Greek:
Teach Yourself Greek
Oxford Greek Dictionary

Swedish:
Teach Yourself Swedish

Dutch:
Dutch without Toil

Spanish:
Spanish without Toil

Croatian:
Teach Yourself Croatian

Korean:
Elementary Korean

Procedures:

Japanese:

Goal: Finish Assimil at least by the end of the semester (halfway through May). Continue practicing conversation with Japanese friends. I've also been going through some of the stories on franklang. After finishing Assimil, I would like to FINALLY read Breaking into Japanese Literature.

Daily Activity:

One lesson per day

Listen to audio of lesson twice to see how much I can comprehend.
Listen to audio of lesson twice while reading the English.
Listen to audio of lesson while trying to shadow the recording.
Scriptorium exercise of writing the whole lesson
    a. Read sentence aloud in Japanese.
    b. Read sentence aloud in English.
    c. Look carefully at the sentence and understand it.
    d. Copy the sentence reading each word aloud as I write it. (writing only Kanji)
    e. Read the sentence that I have read and check carefully to make sure I understand.
Listen to the recording several times to try to understand as fully as possible.

Beginning state: Passive wave lesson 68; Active Wave 18.

Time: 1 hour per day.

Mandarin:

Now I have decided to spend at least an hour L-Ring a day of Anna Karenina in Mandarin.    I would like to get some spurts of 4 or 5 hours in there to see how it proceeds.

Previous idea:

I've been a bit aimless on this after I finished the first semester of study (finished level 1 part 1 of Integrated Chinese) in the winter, and have had conversations and read some things on and off.   I am going to start working through Chinois sans peine since I have recently acquired it.   I am of the traditional character school, so I will be retyping it to use traditional characters lesson by lesson.    I will also be using Practical Audio-Visual Chinese Level I text because I have it.   My goal is to finish Assimil by the end of the summer. I will also be experimenting some with L-Ring.

Goal: Assimil at least one lesson per day.
       optionally 30 minutes of L-R a day

Time: 0.5 to 1 hour per day

Uyghur:

Goal: Read new texts for class and shadow them.   Improve my vocabulary immensely.   I hope to be able to read a novel in Uyghur by the end of the summer. Vocabulary is my main problem. Grammar is pretty internalized at this point. Using the modified arabic alphabet, I read very slow.   I want to work on my speed. For vocabulary, I will go back and look all the words I have supposedly learned over the years, and review it.

Now I am doing scriptorium exercises with previous texts I've done before because I feel that I retain most of the words in the sentences.

This was my previous daily plan:

- Vocabulary (10 minutes of vocabulary review per day)
- Reading speed (10 minutes of blind reading a day)
- Fluency - 20 minutes of shadowing texts
- Class

Changed forums, I could have sworn I posted this in here, but somehow it ended up in practical self study questions.

Because of a major linguistics field methods paper I had to do for yesterday, I mainly shadowed Japanese and Chinese while I was driving around the last 2 days, as well has having class, so I did not stick to my plan for the last couple days. Nor could my Japanese language partners meet this week, so that is a shame.

Japanese: Assimil 69.   This morning I read a few sentences out of the middle of Nakama 2, and could understand them without a problem, aside from a couple unknown kanji which I could understand from Chinese.

Mandarin: I have listened to about 25 of the first lessons, and I could understand most of them except for a few words here and there.   I think I will start with Lesson 18 and continue on from there.

Uyghur: Need to dig out my notebook from the summer and start reviewing words.   Reading an excerpt from a Uyghur book about a Swedish traveller Swen Hedin. Written Uyghur is so much denser than spoken. The more I do it, the more I will get used to it though.
kealist on 08 March 2008

Japanese: So, today, I met with one of my conversation partners and tried to speak, but I am realizing that my speaking ability is rather dead, while I can comprehend quite a bit. I am going to make an effort to go back through and study the words in Assimil that I can't seem to hold on to.   I am not progressing through the new lessons as fast because I am getting lazy.   I need to write a set of steps to do down with the lesson to systematically move through it each day in an efficient way.   I am at lesson 70, review now. I will have my second meeting

Mandarin: Yesterday went to Chinese church and while I didn't understand much at all, I did learn and figure out some words. Yesterday, I decided to sit down with Anna Karenina (I printed out the first 50 pages of my bilingual text) and tried L-Ring the first two chapters after reading them in English.   This was my second attempt at this, but I could follow along much much better, except in some of the medium and long paragraphs. I realize it would have been easier to break up the Chinese into more sections on my text to make it easier to follow along with.   I have been listening to some of the Assimil lessons in my car this weekend, but not actually reading the book.    Not to continuously change my plan, but I am going to stick with L-Ring Anna as far as I can, to get a better idea for this method. I think a few words actually did stick with me even though I didn't "understand" everything.

Just did another hour: chapters 1 through 4.   Chapters 1 and 2 were much much easier to go through the second time around.

L-R time: 2.5 hours

Uyghur: intermittent reading for 1.5 hours at work, and 50 minutes of class. Texts are about 60% unknown vocabulary which is annoying, I have yet to find a source for anything different than that though.   Spoke for about an hour and a half with a friend on Saturday.

I also need to get into an exercise routine.
kealist on 10 March 2008

Updated my first post with some changed methods.

Japanese: Because I tried following the scriptorium method I found that it improved my ability to retain comprehension of words without further work. I am also learning some of the kanji as a side affect. I find that at these lower lessons, I am having trouble focusing on studying, so this should help me maintain my momentum and keep moving and understanding them. Yesterday I did this with Lesson 68. I am planning on doing 69 in a few minutes.

Update: Did Scriptorium for Lesson 69. My retention was not as good this time, but I was a bit tired today.

Mandarin: L-R the first four chapters of Anna Karenina again this afternoon. I could retain my place much better this time through, and I understood a little bit more. It took around an hour. Sometimes I feel on the verge of having a headache, but it goes away. I am doing this at work in my office, so there is some background noise. I will do it again tonight and hopefully go through some more chapters.

Update: Did not end up doing more except for reading through ch 11 in English to prep for doing it in Mandarin.

L-R time today: 1 hours
L-R total time: 3.5 hours

Uyghur: Nothing today.
kealist on 11 March 2008

Today was a little disappointing. Not enough time to get things done because my schedule was pretty much full.

Japanese: Reviewed and listened to previous lessons probably a total of 20 to 30 minutes. Whited out about 8 lessons worth of romanji of the next few lessons. This is extremely time consuming, and extremely annoying. My comprehension of the lessons I did with scriptorium is pretty solid still. I am happy about that.

Mandarin: Nothing. I will try to read a few things before going to sleep. Review a lesson in my old finished textbook or something. I have no energy for L-Ring today. I will try to wake up early and do some before work in the morning.

Uyghur: Finished the excerpt of the Swen Hedin book in class today. I did a brief few minutes of scriptorium with some of the sentences from the lesson, but didn't get a solid amount because some calls came in at work.
kealist on 13 March 2008

Japanese: Scriptorium Lesson 71. Took me around 45 minutes. I could read most of it without furigana afterwards.

Mandarin: L-Red for about two and a half hours while at work. There were a couple of minute or two long distractions where I had to stop, but it didn't feel like it was so disruptive. I read through the first nine chapters of Anna. The first four were VERY easy to follow along with, but the others were much tougher. I have really begun to notice some differences in the Chinese text and audio. I don't know whether that will be something bad later on, or if I should try to find the EXACT matching version. It's probably 95% identical. In the later chapters (five through nine) I found myself getting lost or thinking I was further along than I was. The names are really helpful as steps to make sure I know where I am in the text.

L-R time today: 2.5 hours
L-R time total: 6 hours

Uyghur: Nothing of consequence. Spent a few minutes looking through the Modern Uyghur Grammar (Morphology) book I picked up from Turkey. Haven't had a chance to do much. I will be reviewing vocabulary for a few hours in the morning tomorrow. Should have done some more today.
kealist on 13 March 2008

Today I read the autobiographical portion of http://books.google.com/books?id=UgwBAAAAMAAJ&printsec=fr 11;ntcover&dq=Heinrich+Schliemann&as_brr=1 - Ilios by Heinrich Schliemann . His focus on memory is interesting. Though I feel he had much more drive from his life circumstances than I do. I would be curious to read his http://books.google.com/books?id=-c5GAAAAIAAJ&printsec=fr 11;ntcover&dq=inauthor:%22Heinrich+Schliemann%22&lr=&as_brr= 1#PPA6,M1 - La Chine et le Japon , but my French is not so wonderful at this point. I could at least understand the jist of the page or two that I read. I would like to try L-Ring it after I feel comfortable with Chinese.

Japanese: Scriptoriumed lesson 72. Spent about 40 minutes on it.

Chinese: I have to head back home tonight, so I will try to do an hour or two of L-Ring before I sleep.

Uyghur: Around one hour of scriptorium. Watched a movie. My comprehension of the movie was iffy, but I could basically follow it.

I will be traveling for 5 days next week, and I will be in a place where I will not have time for language study. I may be able to do one thing for 30 minutes to an hour a day, but that's all.

I have decided to go to China for the summer. I should have a lot of time to devote to pure language study because aside from language classes, I have no other commitments.

kealist on 14 March 2008

My five days of traveling ended up being about nine days without a chance to study language.   I am picking back up today....I will update this more after I do something.

Went used book shopping today...

Bought a German book today that reminded me vaguely of Assimil. It is titled
German in 20 Lessons...Illustrated (1967) Looks like it using the Cortina Method-whatever that is.

Also bought Elementary Korean complete with CD for about $15 basically new. Whenever I have time to learn Korean, I will probably start with this. But that will be after I make a lot more Mandarin progress.

Japanese: Listened to about 10 lessons today. I felt like my understanding was slightly "deeper" than in the past, despite not looking at Japanese for 9 days.   So I feel good. Tomorrow, I will begin with scriptorium of new chapters again.

Time: .5 hours

Mandarin: L-R for half an hour the first 3 chapters again to get back into the swing of things after my break.   But I am so low on sleep I gave up on my hopes of doing a couple hours as I am spacing a little bit.   Tomorrow will be another opportunity.

L-R time today: .5 hours
L-R total time: 6.5 hours

Uyghur: Class (watching a video) and did some translations for some homework.

Time: 1.5 hours
kealist on 24 March 2008

This week is being overshadowed by papers in school. I have lost some momentum with studying, so I will be trying to get that back this week.

Japanese: Did some reviewing today. And went through some flash cards in Anki. I've been rethinking about doing RtK or not. I think the scriptorium may help me a lot with my kanji slowly. I just don't like the idea of only learning the meaning associated with the kanji.

Mandarin: Nothing much today.

Uyghur Learned vocab for about 20 minutes today
kealist on 26 March 2008

Japanese: Listened to about 10 assimil lessons today just trying to understand. Getting a little deeper

Mandarin: L-R starting from chapter 3 on of Anna Karenina for one hour. Feel back in the swing of things, but didn't get a 3 hour chunk yet. I DID however make an audiobook section on the first page of this log for mandarin audiobooks. I will try to locate the texts for these books as I have time. Hopefully this will encourage some others to make and find them. My mandarin is poor enough that it makes looking for texts difficult (especially ones that match the audio). I want to find a better matching Anna Karenina. I hope to find a sentence inwhich I know all the words which is different than the text I have so I can search for a different one on google.

L-R Total time: 7.5 hours

Uyghur: Vocabulary review and quiz today.
kealist on 27 March 2008

OK, I have done a major overhaul of the first post to add in information about Mandarin audiobooks, and I would like to add texts to this list. If anyone wants to find a text, PLEASE DO SO and tell me about it as well. And if you can confirm that the text matches the audio, please tell me as well. I know my text of Anna doesn't entirely match the audiobook, but it is still manageable.

Uyghur: Mid term due tomorrow, so I will mainly be working on that.

kealist on 27 March 2008

Lost some momentum the last couple weeks, but I will pick it back up. And I got caught up in trying to organize my first post rather than actually study. It is one of those trips that I easily fall into: learning about learning languages or collecting materials rather than actually learning them.

Japanese: Did scriptorium of Lesson 73. Spoke Japanese with one of my partners for around an hour. It felt a lot more natural this time, but my vocabulary is too limited. Need to learn more words.

Mandarin: hope to do a couple hours of L-R tonight

Uyghur: Read a story in class today. It was simple grammatically. My sight reading is still pretty slow, but it is much faster the second time.
kealist on 31 March 2008

The last couple days I have just been doing some miscellaneous listening through the day,and working on my Mandarin parallel texts. I finished one!   It took a while, but it is the 2 hour http://www.kealist.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/200 8/04/ahq.doc - The True Story of Ah Q The English translation seems to match pretty literally with the chinese (even though my chinese isn't so good) but they parts should in general be lined up with one another. I tried to break it up sentence by sentence as much as possible. It is in traditional characters though. Please use it and enjoy!

I met with a Japanese friend the other day who calls her self a book worm, and I asked her what she would recommend out of Japanese literature. It got me more curious about trying to do L-R with Japanese. But I think I should stick with one language with that technique for the time being. I've lost some discipline since my long break, and making parallel texts is more of a distraction. But I feel like Mandarin is a little more difficult for me to follow when I don't have a parallel text.   If I can finish my text of the Sword of the Yue Maiden, I will have two shorter stories to work with rather than my ridiculously hefty Anna Karenina. I want to get a more medium sized one as well.   I'd made a text for Alice in Wonderland in Mandarin shortsightedly because I don't have the audio for it.

I like the idea of reading original Chinese literature over foreign translated.

I've also updated the first post links recently, so I suggest that you check it out if you want to use any Mandarin materials.

kealist on 03 April 2008

coitoergosum wrote:

Thank you very much for your hard work.
I downloaded your Anna Karenina text. I have trouble dispaying it correctly. Here's a print screen: End of Chapter I. http://rapidshare.com/files/104731947/Anna_Karenina_kealist_ End_of_Chapter_One___Print_screen.jpg - Link-jpg.
Is your original version like that, too?

It's not, but let me check it out on a different computer, and I just uploaded a PDF version (that one was not the most recent; this one is). Please try again because this will fix it for you. I discovered a horrendous amount of bugs in Word while I was making this text, so I don't doubt that it shows up differently on different computers. Remember that the Chinese text does not exactly match the audio, but for most places it seems to.
kealist on 04 April 2008

coitoergosum wrote:

Thanks. I've just checked your pdf file. It seems OK. Unfortunately pdf format is no good for me, because you cannot use a pop-up dictionary. Why don't you make an rtf or doc file with cells? That would solve the problem.
Thanks for your great links once more.

You are welcome to use what I made; however, I'm not going to remake the document for you. It fits my purposes, and I made it about 4 months ago. Feel free to adapt it to your preference. I am putting the word document link back up as well so you can do what you want.
kealist on 04 April 2008

coitoergosum wrote:

You needn't do anything especially for me.
That way would be much better for every one, even for yourself. You'll find it out, after a while.

Thanks again, for what you've done so far.

I wouldn't agree with you more, but the time cost of doing it at this point is too high for me. I've learned a lot about parallel text creation since I made that document. I'd just rather use my time work on creating new texts.
kealist on 04 April 2008

The spacing should be trivial on the Ah Q formatting because of how I broke it up, and maybe it is the case for the Anna document, but I think I didn't break it up so cleanly.

Bought a bag of language books from the library for $7 yesterday:

Hör Gut Zu: A Beginning German Audio-Lingual Reader
Beginning German
Shorter College German
Essentials of Reading German
A Standard German Vocabulary of 2932 Word and 1500 Idioms
An Outline of German Grammar
Dent's Treasuries of German Literature: German Short Stories

Japanese Now Vol 2
Naganuma's Practical Japanese (2 tapes)
Japanese book (Not sure what it is offhand)

College Korean

Roots of the Russian Language
A Practical Handbook of Russian Style
Spoken Russian Book Two
Advanced Conversational Russian
How to Pronounce Russian

Études Sur La Langue Ossète

New Latin Grammar

Charles Dickens' Dzwony (polish)

Buntús Cainte: A First Step in Spoken Irish (part one through three)

Two Chinese books (not quite sure what they are)

Teaching Language in Context
Teaching Foreign-Language Skills

Rodale's Quinto Lingos

The Quinto Lingo's seem like a real treasure to me. Each article is organized in columns of the German, French, English, Spanish and Italian texts side by side.

Japanese:

Scriptorium Lesson 30. Was fun. Whited out about 4 lessons worth of romanji and the phonetic transcription.

Mandarin:

Worked on some bilingual texts today at work, no L-Ring yet.

Uyghur:

Started working on a bilingual text of the only thing available in both English and uyghur of length. This will be good practice, although I would like to do scriptorium with this, I will type it, so I can have something others can use. I will get a friend to record the audio for this, so I can do some L-R later on! Having a good English translation is already helping. If I can do at least a page and a half of typing a day, I will be making some great progress in being able to read comfortably. I am excited about this.
kealist on 08 April 2008

Been too long since I have updated. I got a bad sore throat for over a week, so that killed my desire to study language.   I started back my discipline today.

I've been doing some thinking of my long term goals of languages that I would like to learn, and I want to start thinking about what is most important. Items with a * are languages I have studied or am currently studying.   There are also languages such as Ecuadorian Quechua that I have a continually improving grammatical understanding of but no desire to learn. This summer I will be working with another language such as Wutun Salar, or Monguor which I don't know how much interest I have.

Uyghur* - on my way to fluency
Mandarin* - simple conversation only
Japanese* - getting to a conversational level
French* - needs to be refreshed, used to be conversational
Latin* - used to be at a high level, but much is forgotten.
Greek
German
Hebrew
Russian
Korean

Is there going to be some kind of challenge this summer for learning a language (like the previous 6 week challenge) that people are interested in? I would like to try it with Hebrew.

In a few days, I will make some more comments about stronger desires for the languages I wish to learn.

Japanese:

Did Assimil lesson 31 scriptorium.   Talked to my Japanese friend for about 45 minutes in Japanese.

Uyghur

scriptorium for about 30 minutes. 1 hour of class (uyghur-english translation).
kealist on 21 April 2008

Total annihilation challenge: Mandarin

So, after thinking about my last post and my plans.   I feel that I should spend much much more time on the language I'm working on this summer before moving on to something else and spreading myself thinner.   I've been pretty lazy about Mandarin, but it is something that I would really like to work on.

I plan to continue my L-Ring for Mandarin, and try to get at least an hour if not two a day.   But I am going to have a plan.   My plan is this: I will skip over Anna Karenina for something slightly easier at first. I plan to do L-Ring of these books in this order.

1. Sword of the Yue Maiden - 越女剑 (1 hour * 3) = 3 hours
2. True Story of Ah Q - 阿Q正传 (2 hours * 3) = 6 hours
3. The Book and the Sword - 書劍恩仇錄 (36.5 hours * 3) = 109.5 hours

Total Time: 115.5 hours
New Text Time: 39.5 hours

I think this will be a better method to pursue than starting off with Anna. In fact, Anna might not be a good book to do--not so sure. I'm thinking of starting an actual Chinese novel such as The book and the Sword afterwards.    But 1 and 2 are definitely easier reads. I may not be able to start until after school ends (on the 18th)

I also think I'm going change my log into two or three logs separated by language.
kealist on 29 April 2008

I just want to say that your log is very inspiring. I have downloaded "Sword of the Yue Maiden" from the links you have provided, have blind-shadowed it a couple of times and will also listen-read it in the near future.

Keep us posted!
jeff_lindqvist on 29 April 2008

jeff_lindqvist wrote:

Great! I am glad to hear someone is using some of those resources I spent so much time organizing! :) Please let me know how L-Ring goes!
kealist on 29 April 2008

Just an update.

I watched about 26 hours of Chinese tv last week. I learned a few words with subtitles, but not a whole lot.   I did start to notice a difference in logic with Chinese and English though. Can't really qualitatively state it though.

I started working on the first short story in Breaking into Japanese Literature Natsume Souseki's First Night because I was getting tired of doing Assimil lessons. But it's pretty slow going and it's been a couple days.   Mother's day was mainly the reason

After this week, I will start the Mandarin TAC (once finals are over).
kealist on 12 May 2008

Yesterday I started on RTK again. I am up through about 215 right now. The logic of characters is making more sense to me, somehow. I am actually enjoying it.

I'm having a bit of an internal conflict on whether to do Mandarin or Japanese full on this summer. I kind of feel like I should immerse myself in one rather than both. My Japanese is better and kind of more interesting, but Chinese is much more important in my career goals. It feels like time is so short, but I think I should focus on one first and the second later. However, I think that RTK should be helpful in both cases.
kealist on 13 May 2008

Yes, RTK would be very helpful in learning chinese characters as well --both traditional or simplified! As you already know, learning how to remember and write characters by building them up from their individual components is such a powerful and effective method. Finally characters seem to have some sort of structure --not just an arbitrary combination of strokes.

After you finish RTK and begin to focus on Chinese, you'll see the same character primitives/structures popping up in the hanzi not covered in RTK vol. 1. You can then simply apply the Heisig method to learn these characters.

In my opinion, the material in Heisig's book is like the alphabet of chinese characters. You shouldn't focus too intensively on memorizing characters until having first mastered RTK vol. 1. It's a matter of both efficiency and effectiveness.

Just my 2 cents....
kumori on 26 May 2008

kumori wrote:

Thanks for the comment. I've not been on her for a long time, mainly because I find that I waste a lot of time reading stuff on this site rather than being productive. So one quick status update on my Total Annihilation 2008 of Mandarin. I've been going through Zhongwen.com paper dictionary and memorizing characters using an SRS. I think I am past the annoying part, where characters are untypable. I was hoping to get through around 1000 characters per week, but of course, it's a little bit more than I can choose--because of the need to type each character into the SRS. I'm at 700 character now in about two weeks, and it's been pretty enjoyable. There are a few that are really not sticking well, but for the most part I can do them without much thought. I hope I can make it to 3000 within the next 3 weeks and then continue on slowly and do sentences at the same time. I also have been listening to chinese as much as possible all the time, and it's been good. Found taiwanese show I like Corner with Love. I've been watching the episodes a couple times. I wish it didn't have subtitles, but I try to cover them up with another window generally.

So that's it for a while. Maybe next time I will be at 3000.
kealist on 13 June 2008

So, my summer was a little less productive than I wanted, but I still made progress. Only made it through 1100 characters. But I'm slowly trekking on. Watching and listening to a lot of chinese stuff. I may take a break from the zhongwen.com chars and go to Cracking the Chinese Puzzles (T.K. Ann) to see if it helps my progression at all.

kealist on 28 August 2008

Thank you for your log! When seeing the link for Mandarin audio of a Harry Potter book, I almost shrieked!
Snowflake on 28 August 2008

Well, i haven't downloaded any more audiobooks for a while, but it looks like you have to use the thunder:// protocol now. haven't quite figured out how to use that yet. Looks like http://www.xunlei.com/ - Xunlei has some kind of adware program to download these types of files. I will look when I am on a windows machine again. Makes me sad that they are not so easily downloadable anymore. let me know if anyone has success
kealist on 29 August 2008

Ok, a little bit more of an update.   My plan for the summer had been to learn at least 3000 (or 5000) characters. I didn't even make half that, but I think that I could have easily.   I learned the first 700 in around 2 weeks.   and the last 10 weeks i picked up about 400 more.   slightly unbalanced, but I find that I will skip some days and get overloaded by revisions.   (Such as right now I have 350 cards to go through). I haven't used mnemonics at all really, just trying to remember. It's not so bad, but some cards are difficult to remember.

I was wanting to do to all Chinese all the time for the summer and I did listen to a lot, but until this week I haven't really figured out how to do that well. I have finally converted the websites I use into mandarin. I've been watching a lot of dubbed movies lately (star wars movies, lotr, dumb and dumber(!!!!), disney movies) which is a lot more fun. I watched a series this summer that was enjoyable and have been listening to the same 25 songs all summer in my iPod.   I enjoy it, and I slowly pick up things and I feel pretty comfortable listening to Chinese. I understand slightly more and more, but my comprehension is still low.

So I want to rush through 3000 characters in the next 4 months before christmas. I don't know if I can still do grad school in Taiwan next year after the summer, but I still believe it is possible.   Just need to stay having fun.

Hope everyone's studies are going well.
kealist on 29 August 2008

I hate Xunlei. My system is already configured to use Japanese encoding for non-Unicode programs and Xunlei's Chinese interface is just messed up. Furthermore, as you've said, it's riddled with ads and possibly adware/spyware.
Alkeides on 29 August 2008

amphises wrote:

Good to know, I still haven't had a chance to try it. If you know of alternatives, please let me know.

Didn't make so much progress today. I was going to study characters this morning, but I got distracted speaking to this random Japanese woman on skype for about an hour and a half. I haven't used Japanese since April, but we spoke most of the time in it. AT first I was truly rusty, but it started coming back. I guess Assimil was really good for internalizing language over a period of time. I can almost still hear some of the tracks in my head.

I'm going to start actually trying to make stories for the fanti because I think it will help me retain them easier with less repetition and forgetfulness. maybe it was dumb to do it otherwise, but I have been experimenting.
kealist on 30 August 2008

Does anyone have an alternative download place for any or all of those links? I can't get any of them because of that "thunder" BS.

thanks for collecting all the links though, those will be of great help once i can find a working link for all the audio versions.
doviende on 30 August 2008

doviende wrote:

Well, I installed the Xunlei program on my computer and aside from all the characters displaying as garbage (not really sure what kind of crap encoding system they use, but most chinese programs end up the same way), it works pretty easily for downloading. Don't know the extent of spyware it does, but I will see how it goes. In all honesty, it downloads faster this way than http.

If I can find my bilingual copy of 阿Q正传 (seem to have misplaced it in a move), I'm gonna start going through it. It's a pretty funny story, and doesn't seem too long.
kealist on 31 August 2008

kealist, assuming you're on Windows. Go to control panel-> Regional and language optionsand click on the "Administrative" Tab. There you can change the language for non-Unicode programs.

I set mine to Japanese so the characters are all jumbled in kana but I think since you're concentrating on Chinese at the moment, you should be all right with setting it to Chinese.
Alkeides on 31 August 2008

I am in the process of rearranging and checking the links on the first page, so people can find audiobooks that match the Chinese transcripts. I would like to go through and figure out what each book is on the pingshu8 site and get a better database set up. I will keep working on it when I have time.

amphises wrote:

I set mine to Japanese so the characters are all jumbled in kana but I think since you're concentrating on Chinese at the moment, you should be all right with setting it to Chinese.

I've done this in the past and it has wreaked havoc on my mp3s ID3 tags. I wish people would just use unicode in the first place. I appreciate the suggestion, and I will probably just go ahead and switch it over.
kealist on 31 August 2008

So, I have changed my mind. Xunlei is great. They have all sorts of movies and tv shows on it. Such as Spongebob Squarepants dubbed in Mandarin. Aside from within the program I have not seen any ads, so it doesn't seem too dangerous. Suggest looking through the website to at least see what kind of things you can find.

I am catching back up on my character revisions. 200 left to do before I get into new chars again. Should learn some new ones later tonight.
kealist on 31 August 2008

Character update

Learned today: 38
Total: 1114

goal is to learn at least 25 / day (if not more) for the rest of the year. Gotta start with a month and keep it up. If I keep it up, I should be around 4200 characters by Dec 31st. I'm also working on pronunciation of characters from now on.

changed my anki model type to be more useful. Too bad I can't change all my previous cards automatically. Oh, well. it's not so important. Still working on the original post organization a little as well.
kealist on 02 September 2008

Character update

Learned yesterday and today today: 38
Total: 1152

missed my goal, but I still made progress.
kealist on 05 September 2008

Is there a certain order for the characters you're learning? or some source? I started out with a frequency-ordered list until about 1100, and then i started producing cards from HSK character lists, so i did up to the intermediate level in HSK.

Keep it up :)
I noticed a huge increase in my reading ability after around 1500.
doviende on 05 September 2008

doviende wrote:

Thank you for the encouragement. Keep up the work on your studies.

Well, I started doing all the "radical" components from zhongwen.com and then went through and did the second level of the genealogy tree structure. Now I'm going depth first in the tree, as well as adding characters I don't know in words I see, so some of them are kind of random, some are obscure. I wish I was doing the readings at first because it's cool to see the phonetic groups, and I'm starting to understand how characters (components) are used phonetically. An interesting http://www.zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm - article about characters (of the English sort) can be helpful. Hanzi are much more logical than I thought.

http://www.neocha.com/ - Streaming Indie Chinese music

kealist on 05 September 2008

before: 1152
learned today: 57
total: 1209

I have learned characters 1-x, 2-x, 3-x now. I like going through the dictionary in this way. It's good to learn all the similar characters at once because it forces me to distinguish between them.

My process is to write the character based on the English keyword, and then read the character according to a generic pronunciation. Not focusing too much on pronunciation, but I will at least read it several times, and start to see the phonetic relations.
kealist on 05 September 2008

Well, I really lost a lot of motivation somewhere along the line for studying 漢字. Must have something to do with the ladies, I'm not sure (joke). Anyways, I have continued to at least listening to some music or Anna Karenina most days in Chinese, although I haven't really done any active learning.   I was thinking about going through Assimil some more or maybe trying Michel Thomas for mandarin, because the course has peaked my curiousity.

I tried Michel Thomas for German, the first half an hour or so, and I was pleasantly surprised at how helpful it was, at least for getting a handle on the language. Yes, I can ask you if you want to drink water. But I'm interested to see how they do it for Mandarin.

My German friend comes back for a visit in a month and I was thinking to go through the whole foundation and advance Michel Thomas German course before then and surprise the crap out of her.

I have gained some motivation to study Uyghur more actively, until I tried to read the first paragraph of this novel I have, and ran into the same brick wall that I usually do with Uyghur literature--tough grammar with lots of words not in dictionaries. What does mangsa-mangsa mean? I just don't know.   I did pick up the Dunwoody Uyghur reader (and CDs) which has glosses, so maybe I can step through the readings and get myself to a more advanced literacy level.

I've also gained a curiousity in Shanghainese because of a lady friend.   I picked up the Dunwoody Shanghainese textbook, and it looks like a good start. Tried to buy some other textbooks on amazon.cn, but it won't accept any of my credit cards :-/   Shame really, because I could have bought about 30 books for around $60 and lots of audio. We'll see if the Shanghai project ever takes off the ground, but it's exciting nonetheless. I also bought the Dunwoody Wu Chinese dictionary just in case. It looks like a useful one.
kealist on 20 October 2008

Since I have lost most sense of organization, I'm going to reorient myself today. Give myself a plan to stick with.

Daily plan:
- Do one reading out of http://www.dunwoodypress.com/products/-/256 - Uyghur Reader each day. Listen & shadow the audio.
- Do one unit out of http://www.dunwoodypress.com/products/-/90 - Shanghai Dialect each day (once I have the audio digitized). Shadow and treat these like Assimil lessons.
- Do one or two lessons of le chinois sans peine each day shadowing and such. I have retyped about 30 of the lessons into traditional characters.
- Learn 10 漢字 each day. Get back on track with my 900 awaiting reviews in Anki. I want to review at least 100-200 a day, so I will be back on track in a week or so. Some of the characters are better lodged in my memory than others at this point, so some of it will go quickly while some of it will be relearning
kealist on 23 October 2008

Thank you for the inspiring log and for sharing the resources.

kealist wrote:

I read this scary thing about Xunlei on Wikipedia:

"By default it scans the user's computer and automatically shares all files across the Xunlei network, and often exhausts the user's upload bandwidth as it does not provide a real upload speed limiter. The user has no means of limiting what to be shared or not to be shared.[3]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xunlei

olympian on 03 November 2008

Ok, somewhat of an update. Ｉjust have mainly spent time listening to Chinese each day. Schools gonna be a big time sucker until mid-December. Over winter break I won't have to work so I can concentrate on my mandarin studies and apply for the scholarship to go abroad to study Chinese next year. My goals for the break are to get my character knowledge up to 3000. I also plan to really hit L-Ring over the break. I have the following audiobooks at my disposal now:

Ah Q
Anna Karenina
Around the World in 80 Days
Dragon Sword
Fortress Besieged
Gulliver's Travels
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Old Man and the Sea
Outlaws at the Marsh
Robinson Crusoe
Sword of the Yue Maiden
Tom Sawyer

I may just keep going with Anna at first, since I have L-R it before to a degree.

So, as an ESL teacher and as a language learner I've been thinking about methods and all that. My end goal is near-native fluency in Mandarin in the next 2-3 years. I've really no patience for a lot of traditional methods of language study, and I'm coming to the understanding that our brains can figure a lot out on their own. I read a lot of the ALG (automatic language growth) stuff, and I think some parts of it are valid. Also the http://www.apronus.com/norsk/ - Norsk Experiment shows some interesting ideas about language learning. I am coming to appreciate most of Krashen's ideas, despite lack of respect for him in the research sphere. Though I don't think comprehensible input is the golden ticket. There needs to be some useful error correction for output. I've been thinking about http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/ - AJAAT , and been testing myself listening to The Old Man and the Sea. I find that if I believe I can understand it, I have a much easier time understanding what's being said, or at least I'm trying to guess more. I think one of the key points from Katsumoto follows:

AJAAT wrote:

Anyway, don’t be taken in by any hints you may get (even from me) about discipline and consistency and commitment and all those other lame-a$$ abstract nouns[6]. When you get down to it, this method is all about having fun and just being…just chilling. I didn’t “work hard”; I didn’t really “sacrifice” to learn Japanese; I made a lifestyle choice and let the consequences of that choice run their natural course, because Japanese fluency is an inevitable result of a real and sustained Japanese environment; once you get your ducks in a row most of it is simply coasting. Dude, most of the time all I did was listen to Rip Slyme, shop on Amazon.jp and download stuff online; you’re not supposed to spend 24 hours a day attached to your SRS deck like unto an umbilical chord. No…What, do you want to be bored to tears? Do you think you’re supposed to be bored to tears?

I think TV is important because it provides contextual clues to help guess meaning.   Audiobooks really lack that context, but I can still make guesses.   I don't remember the exact plot of Old Man and the Sea, so those thoughts don't help a whole lot. There are still patterns though, and I already have a small vocabulary, so I can understand many things from that. There are so many words I've heard tons of times, but I don't know what they mean. I am still refraining from speaking unless it's pretty mentally unchallenging.

I wish my thoughts were a little more organized in my writing.   The main ideas I'm valuing right now:

1. I believe I can understand Mandarin well.
2. I will listen to Mandarin as much as I can, and I will learn things all the time.
3. My brain is able to figure out mandarin on it's own. I will guess meaning from context.
4. This will take some time, and at some point I may use an SRS for sentences. The SRS/sentences are not the point, but it can help remind me often of things. This will make things more efficient.
5. English is not necessary to learn Mandarin.
6. I will learn traditional Chinese characters through an SRS. This is simply the fastest way.   I will learn over 5000 of them.
7. My main goal is to be able to read Chinese history books in chinese. I want to be able to do this within a years time without difficulty.
8. I can relax and enjoy Chinese.
kealist on 25 November 2008

Wow, thank you so much for all the audio material! This will definitely help a lot. Good luck for your studies!
Sapphire on 25 November 2008

Sapphire wrote:

Wow, thank you so much for all the audio material! This will definitely help a lot. Good luck for your studies!

Thanks, just realize that pingshu8 is not so easy to use anymore. You have to use the xunlei software, which as is mentioned above may be rather spyware-ish. I haven't had problems with it stealing my network uploading, but it is possible. Good luck with your studies as well.

They do have Da Vinci Code listed on their site, but it seems to not be downloadable at this point in time. If you use Xunlei, you can also download Spongebob Squarepants in Mandarin.

kealist on 25 November 2008

Thanks, Kealist, for your wonderful list of Chinese audiobook resources!

I wanted to share a technique that I've found for listening-reading to the audiobooks,
using a free open-source tool, "Transcriber".

I posted an brief article about it, with a little example video: http://tinyurl.com/5us2tp - here
http://slatterypod.com/2008/12/06/transcriber-secret-tool-fo r-language-learning

So far, I've listened-read to two Chinese audiobooks with this and it's been great.
I'd love to hear what other techniques people have.
slattery on 08 December 2008

slattery wrote:

slattery,

You're very welcome. I've known of transcriber--used it on a language documentation project I worked on--but I hadn't thought of using it for L-Ring. That sounds like a great idea! although I'm curious how much work the lining up of an audiobook would be. Would you be willing to share the transcriber file for one of those audiobooks so I could test it out? I have a script to convert transcriber files to multi-column html tables if one prefers to work in that format.

Anyways, thank you for the suggestion. I have about 26 pages left to write in the next week before I finish the semester and begin on my chinese studies for the break. I am looking forward to it.

kealist on 08 December 2008

Just to give an idea, I uploaded a sample chapter here: http://rapidshare.com/files/177940148/Ch.01.zip.html

Transcriber sometimes has trouble seeking to the correct position in a large audio
file unless the audio file is in WAV format. For that reason, I usually convert audios
to WAV before using them with Transcriber. But .ogg format does work reasonably well.

Let me know if you know of a good way to share these synchronized transcripts, I think
they can be a great resources for us learners to share!
slattery on 29 December 2008

Great thread and an excellent resource for students of Mandarin. The downside: How to download the audiobooks if you don`t want to install xunlei. I`ve just done a quick search on xunlei and the things I read didn`t sound very flattering. I`d rather not have this program on my harddrive. Is there another way to get the audiobooks?

Thuan on 16 April 2009

It's been a long, long while since I have updated. I have not been studying language
since I last posted, but I have been teaching ESL. There are a lot of challenges
involved in trying to direct learners (the "herding cats" metaphor) seems appropriate).
At first I was sucking at it, but I think I have changed enough to feel more
comfortable and confident of my teaching style. Throughout the last few years I have
been exposed to Mandarin (and my trip earlier this year to China was much easier--I
could get around without any trouble) even though I haven't been studying.

In the last two weeks, I have started studying Japanese going back through Assimil
lessons and listening to them while I jog. I find that after listening to them about
five or six times my memory of the meaning comes back.

I finally bought a ticket to goof around in Taiwan for a month in December. So ideally
I would like to study up a lot so I have a lot of good opportunities to practice there
and get to know some folks. We'll see. I've been thinking about using an Amazon gift
card to buy Assimil Chinese Vol 1 & 2 rather than using the French version I have. I
just need to do something rather than debate!

L-R French sounds appealing right now, but I don't want to distract myself too much
kealist on 04 October 2011

Also, probably quite a few links on my first post of resources are broken. I will try to
spend some time next week fixing those, but I am traveling this week, so it's not a high
priority.
kealist on 04 October 2011

This is somewhat the typical "haven't posted for a while"

I've been listening to Chinese and Japanese on and off just changing my environment.
Made some progress on Mandarin while I was in Taiwan for a month in Dec/Jan.

I have a TW friend who speaks about six languages with a high degree of fluency.
That's German, French, Mandarin, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean.   He swears by the
Hippo Family Club method which he picked up in Japan.   I researched it a little
online, but
seems rather hype-ish.   He lent me his English copy of their "Anyone Can Learn 7
Languages" and I read it, but it's still been difficult for me to figure out how this
acquisition things works.   Today he gave me a copy of the recordings (7 cds worth)
because he was under the same impression as me when he first heard of it. I started
listening to the CDs and I have to say I am actually impressed.

Let me give a break down of how it works.   Each CD is the same story (Approximately 50
min) presented 7 different ways.   The first way is this:

K= Korean
G= German
J= Japanese
C= Mandarin
S= Spanish
E= English
F= French

1K 0:23
2G 1:00
3J 1:58
4C 1:43
5S 1:17
6E 1:35
7K 0:42
8F 2:20
9S 2:48
10J 1:56
11E 1:22
12G 1:15
13C 1:05
14F 0:38
15K 1:56
16J 1:31
17G 1:21
18F 0:42
19S 0:31
20K 1:38
21E 1:03
22C 1:34
23F 1:31
24J 2:53
25G 1:09
26S 4:28
27C 1:41
28G 1:11
29K 0:43
30E 1:02
31F 1:06
32J 2:12

So the other 6 CDs have an equivalent structure, so you get every part of the story in
each lesson, but they are all mixed up. I like this. The intent is just to have this
going as your environment and attempting to mimic it over time. I will try this for a
month and see how it goes.   Hopefully this will act as a resource for the near lack of
information about Hippo as well. I am impressed after finally seeing their materials,
but wasn't until I actually heard the audio.   Full speed, native speakers, not foreign
language material.
kealist on 24 February 2012

So it tells a 50 minute story, rotating through the 7 languages, about a minute at a
time. In reality, the story is fully recorded in each language, it's just packaged up in
a scrambled way. That's really interesting.

Is this method just the 50 minute story, or does your friend apply this method even
beyond the HGO / LEX resources?
slattery on 25 February 2012

It seems they have the scrambled "transnational" as well as single language versions.
Although now with MP3s it's pretty easy to make your own transnational versions with
only the languages you want.    I think they have HGO in 19 languages, but the basic
set is those 7.   I think after trying this for a week, if I am feeling like
continuing, I will order some stuff from the Massachusetts office here in the States.

I can try to explain a few things that may be helpful. Each track is a scene from the
story, so that is how it is broken up. There is background music / noise that gives
you clues as to what is happening to know what part of the story it is. Their idea is
that you should constantly play the CDs while you are doing other things as well as
spending some time "singing" (What I would consider their term for shadowing) the
languages.

This is not a cognitive approach to language learning. It is based on language
acquisition.   So my friend, views it more as an environment that is necessary to
acquire language. He thinks that LEX has made high quality materials and wants to
support them.   He uses these materials and in the same idea he rips audio from TV
shows in whatever language he is acquiring and just has them playing all the time. He
is a neurolinguist and thinks that if you are good with your mirror neurons
(imitation/mimicry of sounds) you can acquire language like a native speaker.

German and Korean are the languages I am not familiar with, so I guess those two will
be the ones I get the purest results from this.

I think this is not something a lot of people here would like, but I think I like it.
It's slow though.   I hope to be consistent and to be able to provide my experience in
using it. I've listened to it for about 7 hours the past two days, so I am doing ok.
kealist on 25 February 2012

I should also say that it can be super cheesy, but I don't mind that kind of thing. The
recordings were made in the 80s, I think. After all they love singing and dancing to
songs!
kealist on 25 February 2012