User Comments - barto
barto
Posted on: August, Study Tips and Expo Insights
August 1, 2010 at 5:26 AMeh, they're just staying far away from anything complicated in QW. What study strategy could one possibly need?
Learn words, learn grammar...now use them, or you'll forget.
Language is just like anything else: man up and do it, or fail. There aren't any special tips or tricks. Ya, some things help like flashcard programs, but that's not really Chinese specific.
Posted on: Outdoor Survivors (Part 2)
July 29, 2010 at 4:55 PM小的飛禽走獸。水滸傳˙第六十一回：「晚間入城，少殺也有百十個蟲蟻。」蕩寇志˙第五回：「看見蟲蟻兒便去射，不論天上飛的，地下走的，樹上歇的，但不看見，看見便一箭取來。」或作「蟲鷖」。
Posted on: Outdoor Survivors (Part 2)
July 26, 2010 at 4:51 AMyes it is! I think that's one of the reasons it's much easier than your beautiful language! I love Japanese, but it's a lot harder, just because of vocabulary!
Posted on: Outdoor Survivors (Part 2)
July 26, 2010 at 3:33 AMChinese as a spoken language is a sound, and hence, vocabulary poor language. Not to mention the fact that Putonghua is a very, very young language with a literature and lexicon which is still in the midst of a creative process being actively stifled by the Chinese government's attempts to control the cultural narrative of the country. Oh, and blame the characters! (Why not, everyone does)
There are words for "critters" in classical Chinese though, such as 蟲蟻
Posted on: Whatever, Wherever, Whoever
July 24, 2010 at 10:34 AMThey should think about throwing some basic piece of newspaper grammar or something that even a newbie might benefit from, for instance 諸，ie 諸多
於是，於 as a marker of place/the comparative, etc. Not a personal need or priority for me, but those kind of things are often overlooked but really much more necessary to even a modest understanding of the language than most people tend to realize.
Posted on: Sex Education Class
July 24, 2010 at 7:05 AMHey chenfang,
I like crosstalk, do you know where I could get the audio files and transcripts for some? I like to cut up the audio files for listening practice.
Thank you!
Posted on: Sex Education Class
July 24, 2010 at 6:57 AM精子 doesn't mean penis.
Maybe they meant 莖子？Maybe? It's very odd.
oh and it's you2 jian1, not you3 jian1
Posted on: Sex Education Class
July 23, 2010 at 4:12 PMOh, but I should add, I know many people, for instance in Taiwan or maybe Shanghai, have grown up only speaking Putonghua, but they've learned it with a nonstandard accent (Shandong...dear me). So, they tend to get a little pissy about it. I suppose it might be like a Canadian growing up only speaking English with L2 English-French speakers in Quebec: the result is nonstandard English, but don't tell them that, they'll be annoyed...For reasons we all know, the situation is particularly common in China, Taiwan, and Singapore. They're aware of it and there's a lot of humor based on that fact too. But, the truth of the matter is Putonghua was chartered as a language based on Northern Chinese taking Beijing's pronunciation as its standard. It's also my personal preference, since it's what you tend to hear in news, on TV, etc. I'm sure my particularly fancy for standard Putonghua is more than fully supported by the government as well, but there you go, I suppose not everyone agrees with me. I certainly don't get much mileage with the opinion in Taipei (my home). I was just arguing with a friend that bopomofo is a bad phonetic system, but she insists pinyin results in bad pronunciation. Well, probably it does, but just for laowai.
Posted on: August, Study Tips and Expo Insights
August 1, 2010 at 6:37 AMThe only way to learn a language is to use it. This involves spending a lot of brute force memorizing things. There is no way around this. All "study methods" are little more than clever ways of getting people to look at something more often. If you say it often, you will be able to speak it. If you read it often, you will be able to understand it. If you hear it often, you will be able to understand it. If you write it often, you will be able to write it. if you do it a lot- then you will be able to do it! Yes, that's the big mystery of language learning.
No, seriously, put yourself in a situation where you have to use a language a lot and you'll get good at it quickly regardless of study method. You want to learn a language? Use it.
All these methods are silly, and in ten years no one will remember or care. Just like the ones ten years ago and ten years before that. It's not complicated.
Learning isn't difficult. Forcing yourself to do the task might be difficult, but the language itself isn't, because the task is always the same.
So that's why I'm not interested in study tips. Just present some information, get a little language material in there, because reading tips all day won't do nothing t'all.