Help me learn Mandarin Chinese

我口

Another thing about skritter that I didn't realize at first is that you can swipe up on characters to erase them and start over again, which is useful for learning new characters when you just want to write them 20 times in a row.

chinese script doesn't show up on this pc.

oh i was wrong. I shoulda known - wǒ bi shi etc..

你鄙视我？我更鄙视你！

Why are there more than one characters for xin (heart, mind rad.61)? That's been confusing me somewhat

i think there's only one form, isn't there? 心, except for the two forms it appears in when used as a radical, in which case it looks like 忄 or (used in the 慕 in 羡慕 or in the 恭 in 恭喜发财 KUNG HAY FAT CHOY).

lots of similar looking characters to get it mixed up with, though.

必？ 小？ 伈？

卵 is a cool character

soz, lots to respond to

http://sinoglot.com/blog/2012/06/back-up/

found this interesting re mandarin pronunciation made me rethink some
tongue positioning issues pronunciation issues even after 6?? years of speaking the lang

― dylannn, Thursday, 28 June 2012 19:38 (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i never tried the flashcard/electroflashcard thing because i found the best way to put chinese characters in my head was the boring way my chinese teachers told me to put chinese characters in my head: writing them over and over again, copying out chinese texts etc

― dylannn, Thursday, 5 July 2012 19:34 (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't like the idea of learning the spoken language then trying to figure out characters either. just grind thru learning tohose fucking characters while learning the spoken language at at some point things will joint up together. i found out i could learn a lot by watching subtitled chinese tv just tpfilling in my knowledge of characters by being able to match up sound to shape.

― dylannn, Thursday, 5 July 2012 19:36 (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

btw I applied for HSK level 2 and now I'm shitting my pants.

that's cool. did we talk about the hsk on this thread before? have we talked about hanban before?

there's no composition thing for hsk level 2 is there? composition is the killer.

re skritter/writing characters: i do 60-70% of my daily communication in chinese and sometimes i doubt i could reproduce close to half of it with a pen and paper. it's all typed, spoken.... there was a point where i was writing thousands of characters off the dome (with hardcore studying beforehand). but now if i have to write something by hand, it usually comes back to me very very slowly and only because i have the building blocks stuck in my head. but a lot of it has evaporated. let this be a warning to you.

First lesson lunchtime today! Woop!

How was it?

dylannn: Yeah, we've talked about the HSK before. I don't really know what's in it yet, apart from the word list, which I'm reasonably comfortable with.

Well, it was pretty straightforward. Although the other girl in the class turns out to have a lot more experience than me, but that's not really a bad thing. I have to practice at least 3 hrs a week. Learning this is using parts of my brain I didn't know I had.

It's really great when you discover that you're behind in one aspect of the language but ahead in another.

http://phonemica.net/

possibly not really a great learning tool or anything but the recordings on phonemica are fun

i love lianyungang dialect, which is wildly different from non-coastal jiangsu dialects and sounds great.

http://phonemica.net/entry.php?id=13

far out, completely forgot how to write 喜 tonight

drink more 7-up
or get married

have more chinese new years

wikipedia thinks composition only for level VI

Good. I returned to Skritter after three weeks, 2500 item backlog and I'm so out of touch that I actually feel stupid, so composition can gf

learning chinese is like marrying a junkie, i swear

everything is going beautifully and you feel on top of the world, then one day you come home and all your cash has gone and there's shit on the walls

Every time I see the wdyll July thread title I think "baba"

区_区

just hit 1,000 written characters in skritter (93.2% retention) ^_______^

hooray!

i'm wondering about my Mandarin lessons. I've had two so far and my third is this lunchtime. Thing is, they're very useful but also very expensive for me and I find I never get round to doing the homework whereas if I were to subscribe to Skritter, it would be a lot cheaper and I find I have lots of time I can spend just using that, rather than digging out loads of paper and making notes etc.

have you considered dropping the classes, hitting skritter for, say, six months, plugging in pre-packaged lists (e.g. the HSK set) and joining a speaking group?

ime unless there's a very clear goal at the end of classes, there's not a huge incentive to keep it up (mine costs au$1,750/yr but results in accreditations with a reputable university)

it might be an idea. I'd not heard of HSK before. I'm thinking Skritter is more practical for my needs, especially since I doubt I can afford the class + Skritter. Only good thing about the class is I can ask questions if I get stuck. Otherwise, attending a class makes it feel more like school (homework etc), whereas Skritter makes it feel more like an educational game.

If you find a good casual speaking group that meets regularly, you can ask questions there. The one I go to has a good balance of en-native and zh-native speakers, and is always hugely worthwhile.

i think i've discussed it elsewhere on this thread but. i find a lot of chinese classes are taught by people with a real minimal idea of teaching chinese to foreign learners. if you're paying for a class, you better be happy with the teacher and have a clear idea of the goals of the class (ie. based on hsk, whatever).

skritter + chinesepod (best online mandarin learning program/community) + commitment is prob good enough until you have an idea what you really want to do.

i think i've discussed it elsewhere on this thread but. i find a lot of chinese classes are taught by people with a real minimal idea of teaching chinese to foreign learners. if you're paying for a class, you better be happy with the teacher and have a clear idea of the goals of the class (ie. based on hsk, whatever).

Yep. I'm lucky in that all three of my teachers are excellent, and the course coordinator is cluey and genuinely invested.

i have likely mocked chinesepod other places (i'm not sure i have and i don't know why i need to put that disclaimer in as if somebody who closely follows my online postings is going to gotcha me by digging up an instance of me saying chinesepod is shite) and i do have a few minor problems with it but check it out, dl. the beginner lessons are engaging and useful.

aa, you might want to check it out, too, because it does quite well at intermediate material, especially for building your listening and comprehension.

the team that puts it together includes a lot of people (like john pasden) who are experts on language acquisition and know what they're doing.

john pasden overview of chinese learning career

http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2007/05/06/how-i-learned-chinese-part-1

I did have a look at Chinesepod a long time ago, way back before I was any good at listening, so yeah, probably time to give it another go. btw Pasden wrote a new supplement to that article just last week: http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2012/07/31/how-i-learned-chinese-part-3

Last night I got 83%/88% in an HSK 2 practice test, despite not understanding the point of a whole section.

i haven't posted in a while, but the final for my first mandarin course is monday! so far, i excel (relatively) at remembering characters and recognizing and properly pronouncing tones, and i am completely fucking awful at recalling basic vocabulary on the fly.

was just thinking it would be dope if itunes had chinese language podcasts (i.e. recordings of chinese shows rather than just podcasts aimed at chinese language learners)

thinking of doubling on mandarin in add to japanese next semester for my asian studies undergrad is this madness y/n

What level of Japanese are you at? I wouldn't do that unless I were at least fludly conversant in one, but that's just the way I approach language tbh.

i am completely fucking awful at recalling basic vocabulary on the fly.

That's harder than recalling individual characters imo, so don't beat yourself up about that. Best of luck for your exam btw, even though it sounds like you'll absolutely shit it in.

depends on what your goals are, i think. if it's to fulfill a language requirement (2 langs for undergrad asian studies degree mostly right?), it's easy enough to grind thru a 100 level mandarin course. you'll prob come out with a vague basic knowledge of mandarin that will fade quickly and some valuable knowledge of written chinese that might help in approaching japanese texts (you're mainly interested in japan, right? modern japan?). i find students that approach chinese after studying japanese (like, those with some fluency or good intermediate skill at least) have FUCKED UP pronunciation issues (and always want to tell me how oh this kanji means something TOTALLY different in japanese isn't that interesting) (and most aren't interested in fixing their pronunciation issues because they aren't interested in the vast treasure trove of sinophone culture and literature and just want to get back to their comic books goddamnit DESPITE THE FACT THAT it's common knowledge that the japanese were illiterate fishermen until given the gift of the chinese writing system btw).

in the middle of doing a degree in chinese lit, i knew i had to get another asian language credit and chose korean. i did one semester of an intro korean class, a class on korean linguistics, and one or two modern korean lit classes taught in english (by bruce fulton #1 boss of modern korean->english translation but actually kind of a jerkoff).

it seemed interesting to me at the time that korean, japanese, and chinese attract totally different students. even if they were mostly getting a generic asian studies degree. it was a totally different crew focused on each language.

i think the advanced chinesepod podcasts are good because it's legit useful 口语 and presented at normal speed or whatever and they're usually halfway interesting but if you need it, you've got vocab notes to refer to after and a space to pose questions about word usage and whatnot.

chinese telenovelas on tudou or youtube are good for learners, more than podcasts which can be hard to follow without two things that the telenovelas have: visual clues and subtitles. it's cool to be able to use the visual clues to guess at vocab in context, and the subtitles are a good way to learn characters because you're associating the sounds with the words. you're constantly listening superhard to what's being said and simultaneously raking your eyes over the subtitles to figure out what's being said. and thank god for china being a nation of mutual unintelligible dialects because so much chinese tv is subtitled----- so the min speaker in fuzhou can understand a beijing beamed news broadcast the 话 that's not absolutely 普通.

and just wanna say mad respect to yall, aut al and zS, for sticking with this shit. in my experience with mandarin as a foreign language learners, it's fucking hard uphill slogging to learn chinese without an immersive language environment.

haha thanks dylannn. It's certainly tricky, but I've got two classes a week, two speaking groups a week (that I miss frequently but they're always there) and a load of music, web sites etc. around, so there's always stimulus. None of that compares with proper immersion of course.

re your point about Japanese students learning Chinese and arsing the pronunciation: a bloke in my class grew up in Malaysia, learning Cantonese by watching local telly + subtitles, and his 普通 is corrupt even to my ears (e.g. 'sh' comes out as 'ss'). He also rips through dialogue really quickly, so it's always a struggle when I'm paired with him.

I have some 简体-subtitled Chinese TV shows that I'm still too intimidated to watch. I tried again just this week and couldn't keep up. Having said that, though, it's weird how you can be sitting at a table with a load of people speaking naturalistic 普通话, picking up maybe 30% of the words, and then suddenly (after say half an hour) the whole conversation is crystal clear, like the babel fish in your ear has suddenly righted itself.

十四是十四，四十是四十，但是十四不是四十

whoops

四是四，十是十，十四是十四，四十是四十

http://v.ku6.com/show/mn6TsS2nS-Dz6uHmBAeqhw...html?loc=youce_tuijian

xps to dylannnnn i'm pretty interested in east asian languages in general, i just happened to start with japanese. my plan is to do a transfer program after i get my undergrad and work in japan, mb even using as a hub for further studies (it'd be easier to fly to/from china/korean and japan than from the us, right?). my focus might end up being studying the linguistics of the various sinitic/altaic language groups, but it's too soon to tell really

btw I applied for HSK level 2 and now I'm shitting my pants.

― undermikey: bidness (Autumn Almanac), Tuesday, 24 July 2012 19:01 (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

think i fucked this