User Comments - polyglotwannabe
polyglotwannabe
Posted on: What to Expect
December 29, 2011, 09:22 PMGreat thing about this podcast/discussion is, it's got me doing some great introspection on why i want to learn Chinese and what parts of learning it are most important to me.
Rambling thoughts:
1. I've shied away from "pīnyīn-only" learning because characters are so cool to learn! But i've rethought that so i'm gonna try going pīnyīn-only for a while.
2a. One motivator is the large number of Chinese students in my academic program and at my university. There basic listening/speaking is of great value to me.
2b. A more concrete goal, to eventually be competent to do research in China, is waaaaay far off hence not all that motivating in the short term. If i ever reach that point i'm sure i'll want good reading/writing skills too, but that can wait and is more of a life-long project.
So 2a/2b are arguments that support pīnyīn-only in the short term.
3. Another motivating goal, just because i love love love languages, is to get to where i can pull actual "in the wild" content (written and spoken) and understand even a little bit of it. Seriously, even understanding the station ID and time announcement on stations like China Radio Intl (Zhōngguó guójì guǎngbò diàntái) or other stations gives me a little thrill!
3a. This isn't really a great use of learning time if i understand 1% of what i'm hearing. But it's an important motivational boost for me, so i need to either (i) replace it with real-life vocabulary-controlled conversation and get my thrills from that or (ii) find a happy medium so i'm getting that little thrill every so often but not wasting tons of learning time.
3b. I'm actually toying with the question of whether very occasionallylistening to Chinesepod casts way above my knowledge (say, Intermediate or higher as a Newbie) can sort of scratch that itch in a more pedagogically beneficial way. At least then i can look up some of the words between the few that i recognize.
3c. It also comes into play that i can't understand written content "in the wild" with pīnyīn, unless i run it through a pīnyīn converter. But Google Translate makes that pretty easy.
3d. In sum, wande's advice about not moving up too quickly is probably wonderful advice to make the most of your study time and everyone should heed it. :) But i also have to consider my short-term motivation level so i will probably end up moving up too quickly just to keep myself amused.
4. But the ultimate long-term motivation is making progress and gaining skill, so effectiveness is really more important as long as i can maintain minimal motivation.
5. OTOH -- no one's grading me or making me do this, and i don't have any concrete plans to travel to China, so it's gotta stay FUN! I just love languages.
I'm really just babbling but thanks so much reading this far! I would love any thoughts on the above.
Posted on: What to Expect
December 29, 2011, 08:55 PMDoh! I see why you posted that now. Thanks for the explanation.
Posted on: What to Expect
December 28, 2011, 06:58 AMIs audio available somewhere? Forgive my "slowness on the uptake", but what's the advantage of using "Twinkle Twinkle" to learn pīnyīn versus more conventional methods?
(Much appreciated regardless.)
Posted on: What to Expect
December 27, 2011, 07:08 AMOh, and regarding whether to learn characters or not, i'd say my real goal is to learn to recognize them well enough to pick the right option when i type in pīnyīn.
Posted on: What to Expect
December 27, 2011, 06:58 AMThanks. I think my expectations are pretty reasonable based on a long time thinking about learning Chinese and learning about the language. Still, this is a really useful summary of what i've picked up, good for all of us just starting out. I like that it includes some vocab too.
The "few weeks" suggestions for learningpīnyīn are based on how much time daily? (I tend to pick language stuff up fast, so i'm sure it's highly dependent on the individual.)
Posted on: Boxing Day
December 27, 2011, 06:32 AM"Do you really think that we would have a public holiday for shopping?" -- In the US, although of course no holiday is officially designated as such by statute, many holidays end up being little more than de facto shopping days. Not something i'm proud of and goes with the extreme commercialization here, but that's how it goes. (See meihuar2006's post below -- until ppl get so disgusted that they don't show up on these days, it'll keep happening.)
I wish we celebrated Boxing Day here. In its origin, it seems like a cool tradition. I attend a Monday night church in the US that had a Boxing Day celebration tonight involving making packages for the poor, but alas, i was out of town.
Posted on: Long Time No See!
November 23, 2011, 06:16 PMI had an interesting conversation as i was showing this lesson to two colleagues, one from the PRC, the other from Taiwan. Consensus was that你怎么样？ (nǐzěnmeyàng?) is very much a mainland Chinese colloquial expression, and that你好吗? (ni hao ma?, although i should probably use traditional characters) is still very much in use in Taiwan.
Since the podcast indicates that "ni hao ma?" is a bit stilted in contemporary Mandarin, i thought that was an interesting note. Can i infer that Mandarin spoken in Taiwan is more traditional in phrases like that?
Posted on: I Want This
August 17, 2008, 09:08 PM@wildyaks:
That's really interesting. So your native language is German, and the English banter in ChinesePod doesn't bother you, but in FR it does?
Generally as a native EN speaker I like the banter. If it were excessive, I'd get annoyed, but the lessons are pretty compact anyway and the banter makes the hosts seem more personable.
Regarding ES/IT - I'm fairly proficient at ES and have been doing fairly well with some of the Intermediate Italianpods. I love Catherine and Marco's banter, too, and it contributes a lot culturally so perhaps you'll enjoy that more than the FR.
Posted on: I Want This
August 15, 2008, 08:27 PMI really feel for qiren -- that's gotta be frustrating to try to learn a second language in a third language! :)
Maybe as Chinese grows more important, Praxis will offer this service in more "first languages". Or maybe some Francophone entrepreneur will see a market for something like this.
---
Meanwhile, this is my first post. I downloaded a few lesson mp3s before signing up, loved them, and decided to take advantage of the free trial to see what I'm missing.
This podcast-based format is great for allowing me to multitask (e.g., while exercising), and Jenny and Ken do a great job.
So yeah... hopefully I'll hang around, although being INFP I try to be careful about making promises.... ;)
Posted on: Scheduling a Time
December 30, 2011, 05:08 AMMany people consider their to be standard, or at least moving rapidly toward standard, for the reason you cited (although it's been pretty standard in even educated spoken language for a long time anyway).