Dr Mack Rettosy wrote:Hi David,
Wonderful log. Just finished reading through it all. It's incredibly inspiring how you've kept at languages through a demanding career in medicine. How wonderful that your hobby allows you to make connections with your patients! Also, congratulations on the news of an expanding family! Bringing a child into the fold will present scheduling challenges but also opportunities (like your interest in raising bilingual children).
I'm all in on Mandarin at the moment, so wanted to share a few ideas for Mandarin listening materials.
Have you considered a youtube premium account? Doing so allows you to download videos and listen w/o data or wifi. There's also the benefit of being able to multitask (use another app) or shut off your phone screen (save battery) while listening. Subscription is $15/month but the first month is free so you could give it a try? I ended up paying for the subscription and using it as my singular listening source. Some ideas of what to listen to:
- 评书 Pingshu Chinese storytelling. e.g. 袁阔成 play list has 80 hours of content https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... lq8sLDkPjl
- 相声 Xiangsheng cross-talk. A traditional form of "stand-up" with heavy word and tone play. Dashan is a foreigner who has achieved near native fluency (like MvJ's Japanese) has some good contemporary performances.
- Interview series I would like to get more into is called "Thirteen Talks". Journalist Zhiwu Chen interviews scholars, writers, artists, etc. example.
- 一席YiXi, which is essentially China's version of TED talks
I'll leave you with that, but happy to share more.
Curious, did you ever manage that beach-destination vacation you had planned for the first two weeks of March 2020? Myself and my SO also vacationed during that time and had quite the memorable experience with COVID-19 beginning to spread (fortunately, it was only domestic travel).
Thank you for commenting and sharing the materials (looks great, and I needed more Mandarin sources to check out as right now I have tons of Japanese resources, but with Mandarin I had less on deck)! A lot of that may still be well above my current humble level. Honestly I had never thought of YouTube premium, but you make a good case for it. Given that the due date is imminent, I won’t start now (won’t have enough time to play around with it and make good use of the trial), but later this year I’ll give it a go and check it out! As for the vacation, yes I did go to Florida. it was the first 2 weeks of March 2020, so we likely had a similar experience.