Hi all ~

Anybody else having trouble getting Traditional PDFs w/the RSS feed and iTunes after the website rebuild?

I finally tracked down the download/RSS feed options hidden behind the tiny RSS icon located after "My Lessons" at the bottom of the page (might I suggest placing that link in a few more obvious locations? It's not under "Help," and the links that are there there don't work to customize anything).

However, the checkbox for Traditional PDFs seems to keep unchecking itself. Are they no longer offered? Simplified PDFs come through just fine.

An unrelated issue - I tried removing & re-bookmarking podcasts I'd already downloaded to figure out the PDF issue, but now iTunes refuses to re-dowload the whole lesson. Any help???

Xiexie,

~SJ

As a treat, my Chinese teacher gave us a brief introduction to caligraphy last week. It was a lot of fun but is a lot harder than it looks. Even attempting the individual components that make up the characters was a challenge in itself.

You can see my efforts on my blog.

Has anyone else attempted caligraphy?

Hi!

For those who are looking for stroke orders of characters or a dictionary with recognition (like Wenlin), I can recommend you the following site:

www.mdbg.net

For the recognition, go to 'advanced word dictionary' and then click on the brush icon

No idea of how good the dict is, but for beginners it does its job well.

olpc

Hi, I have a windows mobile cellphone with a stylus, and I would love to use it to practice writing chinese characters. Is anyone aware of software for this purpose? Thank you

Hello everyone,

Just to give a heads up - this is a rather long post.

Things are progressing well. I have had to scale back the study efforts a little bit on account of having to do full time college starting this week. I don't expect to make the types of gains in reading that I have been making in the past few weeks until Classes are over in the summer.

I have almost finished studying the 520 flashcards from last week, expecting to add the final ten today. I will begin to make the next batch either today or tomorrow. Last week I added 100 flashcards. Ten of which were words that I previously learned, but found myself having trouble with. The remaining 90 were new terms. This week, I am adding about half of that. Currently, I plan on adding 50 words. 45 new terms, and 5 are words that I learned already, but are mixing up with newer terms, or other things to that nature. I am also in the process of converting the worst of the handwritten cards to the printing method discussed in the last email.

This has been a marginally better week than normal for speaking Chinese for me. I made it through 5 lessons in 7 days. My ideal is to do more like 10 lessons in 7 days, but that may be unrealistic. What I have tried is doing a new lesson every day, and redoing a lesson that I have learned previously. Currently, I have my lessons arranged in something I call 'books'. Each book has 10 lessons. My first three books consist entirely of newbie lessons, and starting at the fourth I have one elementary lesson thrown in. I don't necessarily have one elementary lesson in every book, but I have no more than one elementary in each book up to book 13. Starting at book 13, I am adding both elementary and newbie lessons as they are added to the site.

As I just mentioned, I am attempting at least two lessons per day. One new lesson and one old lesson. I want to take a moment to describe this more specifically.

For the new lesson I do each day, I have two goals. The first goal is to be able to say all the vocabulary in the audio review when prompted with the english word. At this point, I am not trying to say it right away, I just am content with being able to say it even with a brief pause. So what I do is I listen to the word, pause the ipod, and say the chinese word. My focus here is to say the word paying attention to sound and tone to get it close as possible to the way the model says it. The second goal is to be able to understand the dialogue within the lesson. At this stage, I am less concerned with meeting the second goal than I am the first. This is all I am trying to do at this point when listening to new lessons, and I attempt to achieve this by listening to the entire show at least once, and typically listening to the audio reviews as many times as necessary to I reach the first goal.

For the old lesson I do each day, my goals are different than the new lesson. I find that I can usually state each of the terms in the audio review, after the first time through. I do the audio review with the goal of saying all the words perfectly without using the pause button on the ipod. I also, at this point, attempt the phrases. I am not necessarily concerned with being able to recall the phrases at this point, because the phrases often have vocabulary that I havent been introduced to yet. I just want to practice using the phrases. The goals for the old lesson I do each day are not as clearcut, but the overall intention is to be better at doing the lesson afterwards than I was before doing the lesson that day. For simplier lessons, I might be able to do it perfectly. For others, it may not go so well.

I have a system for keeping track on where I am in my lessons. My tracking system has a number of steps. Like I said earlier, I have the lessons arranged on my Ipod in books consisting of ten lessons each. So this means that the first step in the tracking method is to change the album name that is assigned by Itunes when I download a lesson from the site to a name that I select to arrange it into the books. For example, if the default album name is 'show' I change the name to 'Chinesepod.com book 01'. I do this for the audio review (fix), the show, and the dialogue. This makes for 30 files within one book (or album), and keeps the lessons in a managable manner.

The second step in the tracking system is to change the name of the lesson. There are three objectives that I am trying to reach by doing so. The first is that I want the three files for the lesson to be grouped together. The second is that I want to distinguish between the show, the fix, and the dialogue. The third is that I want to be able to remember what the lesson number is when I change the track number (Ill get to that in a minute). So I use a format that go something like this;

old file names might be -

Newbie - I'm cold!

Newbie - I'm cold! (Fix)

Newbie - I'm cold!

As can be seen, there is no indication of lesson number, or which is the show or dialogue. I might change the file names as such -

Newbie - 286s I'm cold!

Newbie - 286f I'm cold! (Fix)

Newbie - 286d I'm cold!

Notice how it is easy to tell what is what and what the lesson number is? I like it much better.

The third step is to change the track number. Now that the lesson number is listed in the file name, I can change the track number to a number that makes better sense. This allows me to arrange the lessons within a book as I see fit. For example, in book 6, I arranged all the internet related newbie lessons, I.E. (surfing the internet, sending emails, and chatting online) into a group by modifying track numbers.

The fourth and final step, which can be best taken after the previous three have been taken, is to utilize the rating system that is built into the Ipod to keep track of how many times I have reviewed a lesson. So after I do the new lesson in a given day, I would 'rate' that lesson with a 1-star. After doing the review of the old lesson each day, I would change the lesson from a 1-star to a 2-star.

All this may seem complicated, but it really is not. These changes can simply be done by using the 'get info' option that is found on the right mouse button menu when right clicking on a file. All these fields can then be changed as such. I hope this is helpful to someone. I can certainly say that having a book of ten lessons with thirty files is much more managable than having 300 lessons or more in an album.

I have also undertaken a plan on writing the characters, and studying the pinyin chart. As far as writing the characters, I plan to simply go through my 'learned' stack and practice writing the term on a sheet of paper. I might write only a few characters a day. For the pinyin chart, what I did is downloaded the chart from the website, and started making flashcards for the different sounds. I plan on buying a four sided dice, and adding five to ten sounds per day. What I would do each day is shuffle my stack of pinyin flash cards, and draw a card. After drawing the card, I would roll the four sided dice to see which tone I would attempt. Suppose I rolled a 3. I would then attempt to pronounce the term in the third term, and play back on the pinyin chart to see if I am correct. I would repeat until I get it correct. My plan is to master the pinyin chart by the end of April.

Well, I have written alot. I wanted to describe the work I have been doing on the site since I have started back in November. I must say that I have been at it everyday with the exception of a week during December when I was having difficulties. I am happy with my progress, especially my progress with reading chinese characters. The speaking stuff is coming around too, but it is slow and more difficult for me.

I guess at this point, I want to know if these weekly updates are meaningful and useful to anyone. I do these updates mainly for three reasons. First, it gives those who have been around for a bit an idea of the work I am doing and the results I am getting. I have received good feedback that has influenced my study habits thus far, and I hope to receive more. Secondly, I describe what I am doing in the hopes that newer people may read this and be able to use things that I have learned in my experience. I simply want to be helpful. Finally, I find it reinforcing to show my progress each week. It helps me keep going, knowing that I will give an update each week showing how I have improved.

With that being said, I don't mean to add clutter to the board. If these updates are not useful, or if they are irritating, I will stop doing them. Just send me a message through the chinesepod mail system, and if several people say that they are either not useful or irritating, I would promptly stop posting to the community. The last thing I want to do is be a nuisance.

Guess that is all for this week.

Please goto this link if you would like to see a screenshot that illustrates what I have been discussion in this post..

http://us.share.geocities.com/gcharestiii/untitled.bmp

Hi!

I found a chinese old-school cartoon on youtube. It presents 36 characters formed with the pictographic method (象形字 xiang4xing2zi4, pictogram/ pictographic character). 象形字 is one of "the six methods" of forming Chinese characters. Read more on wikipedia.

I guess this is suitable for elementary and intermediate poddies.

Here is the cartoon. Try to listen first and see if you can figure out what the characters are. I'm am sure you already know the sound of some of them.
Down below are the characters, their pin1yin1 transcriptions and the english translations.
Thanks to zengguolai who uploaded the movie and submitted the characters on youtube :)



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       三十六个字
san1 shi2 liu4 ge5 zi4
 thirtysix characters


01 日 ri4   sun
02 山 shan1  hill, mountain
03 水 shui3  water
04 林 lin2   grove, forest
05 木 mu4    tree, wood
06 鸟 niao3  bird
07 象 xiang4 eleph ant
08 草 cao3   grass
09 田 tian2  field, farmland
10 竹 zhu2   bamboo
11 马 ma3    horse
12 夫 fu1    man
13 刀 dao1   knife, sword
14 舟 zhou1  boat
15 鱼 yu2    fish
16 网 wang3  net
17 燕 yan4   swallow
18 云 yun2   cloud
19 雨 yu3    rain
20 伞 san3   umbrella
21 石 shi2   stone
22 火 huo3   fire
23 龟 gui1   turtle
24 鹿 lu4    deer
25 豕 shi3   hog
26 叟 sou3   old man
27 虎 hu3    tiger
28 弓 gong1  bow
29 舍 she4   house, residence
30 羊 yang2  sheep
31 花 hua1   flower
32 门 men2   door
33 犬 gou3   dog
34 子 zi3    son
35 女 nǚ3    woman
36 月 yue4   moon

 

Here are parts of the dialogue. The translations are sketchy. There are many blanks which you might want to help me fill in.


ni3 kan4. Look.

01 日 ri4    sun
02 山 shan1  hill, mountain
03 水 shui3  water

dongxi lai la. __?__

mu4, lin2. Tree, forest.

wo3 dong3 le5. hen3duo1 hen3duo1 shu4mu4 zai4 yi4qi3 jiu4 shi4 sen1lin2. I've got it! A lot of trees being together, makes a forest!
dui4! Right!
ni3 zai4 kan4! Look again!
xiao3 niao3r5. Small birds.
chi chi chi <---?? __?__

06 鸟 niao3  bird

xiang4. Elephant.
dui4. Right.

07 象 xiang4 elephant

ni3 shi4 zen3me5 ren chu1 lai2 de5 ne5? __?__

_ _ _ bi2zi5, si4 _ tui3. ___ nose, four legs.
dui4 ba. Right.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _, jiu2 shi2 zhei2 yang2 _ _ xaing4xing2zi4. __?__
_ _ shen2me5. __?__
cao3. Grass.

08 草 cao3   grass

wo3 lai2 xie3. Let me write. [i come write]
hao3 le5, lai2. Ok, continue.
_ _ xiang bu xiang nong ming _ _ zhong de tian2. ___ field.
_ _ la. __?__

09 田 tian2  field, farmland

zhe4ge5 zi4 nian4 zhu2, zhu2sen1 de5 zhu2. This character reads "zhu2" (bamboo). "zhu2" as in "zhu2sen1" (bamboo forest).

zhe4 shi4... This is...
...ma3. ...horse.

11 马 ma3    horse

fu1. Man.

12 夫 fu1    man

hai2zi5, wo3men5 yong4 xiang4xing2zi4 _ _ _ _ _ hao3 ma5? Let's use pictogram to ___ ok?
hao3 a! Ok!

ei, jia <---?? __?__

haha, mei2 shi4. Haha, never mind. [没事 mei2 shi4 no matter]

ta1 xiang3 guo4 he2. He wants to cross the river.
shi4 a, ke3shi4 mei2you3 _ fan2. Right. But that's no problem.
_ zen3me5ban4 _ ? What is there to do?
no. There you go.
dao1!........hehe, chuan2! Knife!.........hehe, boat!
bu4 dui4, nian4 "zhou1". No, it reads "zhou1" (an other character meaning boat)
_ _ _ chuan2 jiu4 zhou1. ___ boat.

13 刀 dao1   knife, sword
14 舟 zhou1  boat
15 鱼 yu2    fish

_ _ _ _ _ le. ___
lai2. _?__
wang3. Net.

16 网 wang3  net

__ _ _ _ _ _ ___

xiao3 niao3 fei1 lai2 le5. niao3. The small bird has flown up to here. Bird.
aa? Ah?
bu4 dui4, shi4 yan4zi5. No that's wrong. It is a swallow.
_ _ _ dui la. ___ right.

17 燕 yan4   swallow

uuuuuuuuuu <---?? ___
yun2. cloud.

18 云 yun2   cloud

eia, xia4yu3 le5. Oh, it's raining.
bu yao _, bu yao _. ___
ni3 _. ___
haha, san3. Haha, an umbrella.
_ _ hao3 la. ___

19 雨 yu3    rain
20 伞 san3   umbrella

eyaa, fan _ le, kuai _ _ _ _. ___ [quick]

shi2. A stone.

21 石 shi2   stone

_ _ _ _ _ da4 shi2 dao4. ___ [big stone come]

hao3 leng3 a, ayo. Very cold, ___.
na4 jiu4... Then...
...huo3, tai4 hao3 le5!.....hao3 a. ...a fire. That's just too good!.......fine.

22 火 huo3   fire

gui1. A tortoise.
hao3 da4 de5 gui1! A very big tortoise!

23 龟 gui1   turtle

zhou1. Boat.
zhen1 da4. Really big.

_ _ _. ___
_. _

lu4. Deer.
Shi3. Hog.
Jiu4 shi4 zhu1. That's a pig.
sou3, jiu4 shi4 lao3ren2. "sou", that's an old person.
hu3, da4lao3hu3. Tiger. A big tiger.
eya, kuai _ _ lao3ren2. Oh, quick, ___ person ___ .
hao3, yong4 gong1jian. Ok. Use the bow.
hao3, lao3hu3 da3si3 le5! Good, the tiger was killed! [da3=beat, si3=die]

24 鹿 lu4    deer
25 豕 shi3   hog
26 叟 sou3   old man
27 虎 hu3    tiger
28 弓 gong1  bow

Fang2zi5. House.
zhe4ge5 zi4 nian4 "she4". This character reads "she4". (she4 = house)

29 舍 she4   house, residence

xie4xie5. Thanks.
yang2. A sheep.

30 羊 yang2  sheep

xie4xie5 ni3 jiu4 lao3 wo3. (<--- not sure if lao3 is right) Thank you for rescuing "old me".
bu4 yong4, bu4 yong4. No, no..
xie4xie5, ni3 shou1 yi1 xia4 ba. [shou1 = to accept] Thanks, please take it.
hao3, xie4xie5. Ok, thanks.

xiao3 lao3hu3 zai4 ku1 le. The little tiger is crying.
na4, ba3 ta1 _ dai4 _ shan1 ba. Then take him back to the mountain. <-- Ok??
hua1. Flower.

31 花 hua1   flower

zhou1 tai4 xiao3, hui4 chen2 d_. The boat is too small. It's sinking. <--Ok??
bu4 neng2 yi4qi3 zou3 le. We can't all go together.
jiu4 shi4 a. That's right.
na4... Then...
yang2 yao4 chi1 hua1. hu3 ne? yao4 chi1 yang2. The sheep want's to eat the flower. And the tiger? ...wants to eat the sheep.
ni3 ka_ gei zen3me5ban4 de __?__ how to do___
mm..., hu3 bu4 chi1 hua1. mm..., tigers don't eat flowers.
_ _ _ _ _ _ qu ba. __?__
hao3 a. Ok.

haha, _ lei4 d_. _ shi _ hua1r5 _ _ _ _ shang. _ liang zi bu _ qing le ma? haha, ___tired___flower_____?____
gai1 hui2jia1 le5. We really should be going back home.
eng. dui4. Yes. Right.

ma3, fu1, hua1, yang4, hu3, xiang4, lu4, shi3, niao3, gui1. horse, man, flower, sheep, tiger, elephant, deer, hog, bird, tortoise.

men2. Door.

32 门 men2   door

ooo, d_ jia1 le5, d_ jia1 le5. __We're home____  <-----?????

_ _ _ jiu4 shi4 gou3. ___ a dog.

33 犬 gou3   dog
34 子 zi3    son

zi3. Child.

_ _ _ shi wo3. ba4ba5, ba4ba5. __?__. Daddy, daddy.

nv3 jiu4 shi4 ma1ma5. A woman. That's mummy.

35 女 nǚ3    woman

A, ba1ba5 gei3 ma1ma5 dai4 hua1r5 le5. A, dad gave mummy a flower. [gei3...dai4 = give...carry/wear]

36 月 yue4   moon
 

            ->>>> the end <<<<-



If you found any typos or errors, or want to fill in some blanks: Please leave a comment. I'd be glad.    \(^_^)/

Take for example:

繁体：傢具  -> 简体：家具

繁体：家庭  -> 简体：家庭

In simplified, both "家" are identical despite there different origin. Does this also mean both "家" are considered the same character?  Or put another way, could I describe the 家人 as 家具的家，人口的人？

I'm sure this question applies to other characters as well, just no others come to mind.