Re: alaart's log (mainly Japanese/Chinese)
Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2019 3:07 pm
Did language exchange yesterday and studied the vocabulary.
Joined a Chinese class today. Conversation lecture, very difficult. Japanese-Chinese exchanges seem to talk mostly about cultural differences. So they will pick some rare topics, things from Japan which I have heard of remotely at best, and pronounce them in Chinese, like famous people, locations, cultural customs and history: "You know %(&$"&)/ right, everybody knows. He was from $(/)(% and is famous for $%)(/(), and I read a book about him, you know the famous book called %")(%)"=."
Often there is no chance for me to get that, till I understand what it might be from the context, especially since I'm on the weaker side in culture. Soo difficult.
Also they just love to talk about rare Kanji from Japan and China, and some absurd words that use them, which I also never get.
The Japanese butcher up the consonant pronunciation and everybody (but me) understands, but their tones are really good. Then, when I talk, with arguable much better pronunciation but with wrong tones, everybody is puzzled including the Chinese native speakers, till I get the tone somewhat right, and suddenly AH - they understand me.
I think they pay much much more emphasize on tones in Asia, and I sort of knew that, but I didn't quite get to what extend. I think now that pronunciation is like 90% tone. Now that I know that, I'm a bit mad at my lectures in Germany, where focus on tones was like really zero.
I actually studied much much more tones then my fellow students I think, to the extend that I neglected the other fields and got very bad grades in Chinese class. I used yabla-Chinese for that, but maybe it was not sufficient. I think I'll try audio-recording my Chinese now, and get feedback from native speakers or pay a teacher just for pronunciation.
Also gave another German lecture in Japanese, this time I could explain the grammar better, but I picked easier material today. Used slow german.com, great Website.
P.S. Ah, I forgot the best part: If I understood it correctly the teacher asked us to compose a Haiku style poem in Chinese, and then some people might have responded with a poem. Yes, definitely too hard for me that lecture!
Joined a Chinese class today. Conversation lecture, very difficult. Japanese-Chinese exchanges seem to talk mostly about cultural differences. So they will pick some rare topics, things from Japan which I have heard of remotely at best, and pronounce them in Chinese, like famous people, locations, cultural customs and history: "You know %(&$"&)/ right, everybody knows. He was from $(/)(% and is famous for $%)(/(), and I read a book about him, you know the famous book called %")(%)"=."
Often there is no chance for me to get that, till I understand what it might be from the context, especially since I'm on the weaker side in culture. Soo difficult.
Also they just love to talk about rare Kanji from Japan and China, and some absurd words that use them, which I also never get.
The Japanese butcher up the consonant pronunciation and everybody (but me) understands, but their tones are really good. Then, when I talk, with arguable much better pronunciation but with wrong tones, everybody is puzzled including the Chinese native speakers, till I get the tone somewhat right, and suddenly AH - they understand me.
I think they pay much much more emphasize on tones in Asia, and I sort of knew that, but I didn't quite get to what extend. I think now that pronunciation is like 90% tone. Now that I know that, I'm a bit mad at my lectures in Germany, where focus on tones was like really zero.
I actually studied much much more tones then my fellow students I think, to the extend that I neglected the other fields and got very bad grades in Chinese class. I used yabla-Chinese for that, but maybe it was not sufficient. I think I'll try audio-recording my Chinese now, and get feedback from native speakers or pay a teacher just for pronunciation.
Also gave another German lecture in Japanese, this time I could explain the grammar better, but I picked easier material today. Used slow german.com, great Website.
P.S. Ah, I forgot the best part: If I understood it correctly the teacher asked us to compose a Haiku style poem in Chinese, and then some people might have responded with a poem. Yes, definitely too hard for me that lecture!