How to make your own language course (Sichuanese)

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Vegemighty
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How to make your own language course (Sichuanese)

Postby Vegemighty » Thu Oct 06, 2016 4:41 pm

My wife speaks Sichuanese, so I have a great resource there. Unfortunately compared to Standard Mandarin there are few good resources. So what I'd like to do is get some sort of structured plan, get my wife and in-laws to record the audio and basically make my own language course.

Is there a good outline of how to make your own course?
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Re: How to make your own language course (Sichuanese)

Postby rdearman » Thu Oct 06, 2016 5:44 pm

Vegemighty wrote:My wife speaks Sichuanese, so I have a great resource there. Unfortunately compared to Standard Mandarin there are few good resources. So what I'd like to do is get some sort of structured plan, get my wife and in-laws to record the audio and basically make my own language course.

Is there a good outline of how to make your own course?

If I were going to do that I would get a very good course like Assimil and use it as a template. Obviously you can't copy verbatim, but you could review and note how they begin, when they introduce some grammar rules, etc, etc. Then review some other courses and see how they do it. You might want to look at the FSI courses, since they are public domain, and you could use their dialogues verbatim and have your in-laws record the translations.
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Re: How to make your own language course (Sichuanese)

Postby Hrhenry » Thu Oct 06, 2016 6:30 pm

rdearman wrote:
Vegemighty wrote:My wife speaks Sichuanese, so I have a great resource there. Unfortunately compared to Standard Mandarin there are few good resources. So what I'd like to do is get some sort of structured plan, get my wife and in-laws to record the audio and basically make my own language course.

Is there a good outline of how to make your own course?

If I were going to do that I would get a very good course like Assimil and use it as a template. Obviously you can't copy verbatim, but you could review and note how they begin, when they introduce some grammar rules, etc, etc. Then review some other courses and see how they do it. You might want to look at the FSI courses, since they are public domain, and you could use their dialogues verbatim and have your in-laws record the translations.

I second the use of FSI as a template. FSI substitution drills would also be a good template, since it'll get you thinking more about the vocabulary you'll actually need and use.

R.
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Re: How to make your own language course (Sichuanese)

Postby tolgylop » Fri Oct 07, 2016 5:25 pm

I don't know anything about the Sichuanese dialect apart from what I just read and watched on the internet (some links below). But, it appears to be very close to standard Mandarin, withjust a few sound shifts, tone shifts, and some relatively minor vocabulary differences. I think it is about as different from standard Mandarin as Spanish is from Portuguese.

It should be fairly easy to adapt the FSI material, learning to pronounce the pinyin in the Sichuan style (as directed by your wife) and having her make other corrections as needed. If you learn the standard pinyin pronunciation rules, too, you will be well ahead of the game if/when you take up Mandarin. In fact, depending on what other uses you have for Chinese in the future, it might be just as effective to learn Mandarin first, then learn to make the required changes for Sichuanese.

Whatever you do, be aware that pronunciation (especially with regard to tones) is absolutely critical in any Chinese dialect. Spend a lot of time on that in the beginning. Otherwise, progress is likely to be slow. Given yor linguistic background, you will probably find Chinese relatively easy to learn.


http://www.gochengdoo.com/en/blog/item/ ... ern_accent
http://www.npr.org/sections/chengdu/200 ... ccent.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWZBF5rWoMo
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Re: How to make your own language course (Sichuanese)

Postby Cainntear » Fri Oct 07, 2016 6:32 pm

I'm not a fan of phrase-based courses generally, but for the untrained course writer, they're certainly a lot easier than anything more sophisticated. "Hello, my name is Joe." "I would like a coffee." It may be boring as hell, but it's a start. As you go, you might find yourself noticing useful patterns you could make into FSI style pattern drills. It's far easier to notice patterns as you go than to start looking for them. For example, think of a word in English starting with ST

...

If you thought of start it's probably because you just read it. Now think of another.

...

You may be thinking of stop, because it's related to start. There are loads of words starting with st, but it's actually qute hard to think of more than three or four, because looking for words with certain letters isn't something we usually do, so we're not wired for it, unless you're a crossword fan. We're all far better placed to notice things when working on something more constrained.
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Re: How to make your own language course (Sichuanese)

Postby Axon » Sat Oct 08, 2016 8:30 am

What a coincidence! I'm working on a Sichuanese course too! Or at the very least additional resources. I was in Chengdu for two weeks in August and made several recordings, and I'm returning this month. Once there I'll have a lot more time to record and polish what I have.

Honestly, I feel pretty strongly that the learner should have a base in Standard Mandarin. It's far, far easier to find resources and especially courses for Mandarin that explain the very different ideas of syntax that an English speaker would have trouble with. Once you're capable of wrapping your mind around Mandarin grammar, Sichuanese is significantly more accessible. Like a previous poster said, a lot of it is phonetic changes.

My own goal with Sichuanese is just more comprehension. Everybody in Chengdu who speaks it can understand Mandarin fine, so apart from a few restaurant phrases I don't feel I need to produce much of it. I'm far from fluent in Mandarin anyway, so I've got to take the opportunity of being in China to practice that. So the recordings I've made have been glossika-style, with sentences in both Mandarin and Sichuanese by the same speaker. Dialogues with Mandarin glosses are absolutely in the works.

Vegemighty, if there are soon to be two new resources for learning Sichuanese, it's in everyone's best interest if they're consistent with regard to romanization. I'm a phonetics fiend and so it's pretty important to me to get the sound changes across to the learner. I've given a little thought to coming up with my own pinyin, but that might be unnecessarily complex. I'd love to talk with you more about your progress so far and your plans with the course.
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Re: How to make your own language course (Sichuanese)

Postby Vegemighty » Mon Oct 10, 2016 1:59 pm

What a coincidence! I'm working on a Sichuanese course too! Or at the very least additional resources.


Ba Si!

I've studied Mandarin before, through pimsleur and the FSI course and some textbooks, still not decent. But whenever my in-laws switch to mandarin, its amazing how much more I understand.

So far I've gone through just a few units of FSI with my wife, translating the given phrases and dialogues into Sichuanese. And its already been useful for me, just having the structure there. For example, I learned that Xiansheng is not used much in Sichuanese and they prefer to use the term Sifu. So in putonghua they might say "Ni shi Wang xiansheng ma?" they'd say "Ni si Wang sifu wa?"

I think I'll need to find a way to record audio to continue
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Re: How to make your own language course (Sichuanese)

Postby Cainntear » Mon Oct 10, 2016 8:20 pm

Vegemighty wrote:I think I'll need to find a way to record audio to continue

The fact that you're posting on the internet makes me think you've got all the hardware that you need... :-)

What are you using? Windows? Mac? iPhone? Plenty of us use audio tools, so you'll get plenty of recommendations as soon as we know what you've got.
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Re: How to make your own language course (Sichuanese)

Postby rdearman » Mon Oct 10, 2016 9:30 pm

Actually someone (Tommas) posted a link to a very good microphone recently which is perfect for that type of thing. Here is the Blue Microphones website for their Yeti: http://www.bluemic.com/yeti/
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Re: How to make your own language course (Sichuanese)

Postby leosmith » Tue Oct 11, 2016 3:13 am

I'm going to recommend against doing it. I think your path of least resistance is to get your Mandarin up to B2 or better, including reading, then use what limited resources there are to get a foothold, and finally polish it off by using native material. I don't think it will take long for a B2 Mandarin speaker to reach a similar level in Sichuanese.

Other than being the path of least resistance, there are other reasons. I've seen so many people start out to create a useful language course, only to lose steam, and presumably give up on the language too. If you reach a high level in Mandarin, you could use learning programs in that language to help you. And now you know there's another guy here already working on a course, so maybe you can use his.

Just a suggestion. Good luck whatever you choose to do.
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