阿波's Endeavour (中文,台語)

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Ezy Ryder
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阿波's Endeavour (中文,台語)

Postby Ezy Ryder » Tue Aug 25, 2015 9:32 am

I've kept a log on the old forum for over two years, but I got tired of the slowness and common outages. Thus, I had decided to finally succumb to the promise of Not the Real HTLAL.

The Past
You can call me 阿波, Ezy Ryder, or Matthias, whichever you find the easiest to pronounce. I'm a 20 years old Aspie, and I should begin studying "English philology with a specialisation in translation/interpreting+Chinese" at the university, this October. I learnt English to a satisfying level, but I don't remember how. Which makes learning my second foreign language, not so different from learning one's first one. At first I tried learning Japanese; I learnt the Kana, a total of about 2,500 Kanji and 9,000 words. Wasn't enough. On top of that, Japan seems to be comparatively expensive. So I shifted my focus to Mandarin (Traditional characters, due to their beauty, similarity to Kanji, and above all, my interest in Taiwan). I learnt to write 3,000 characters by hand (I know it won't make me "remember them better" or anything, but as opposed to any other writing system, I actually really enjoy handwriting in Chinese), and about 13,000 words. Wasn't enough. I'm an Anki addict, and all the reviews going from words written in Chinese (I don't like reviewing sentences), to the pronunciation and meaning, left me with listening comprehension lagging far, far behind my reading comprehension. In fact, nearly non-existent. To counteract that, I tried relearning some words going from pronunciation to Hanzi and meaning. But spending three hours a day, trying to relearn 500 words a day on average, got me burnt out after some 4,000 words. Had it improved my listening comprehension? Maybe a bit. Not quite sure. I ended up with a huge character-writing backlog, that's for sure.

The Present
At the moment I'm in the beautiful city of Taichung, Taiwan. It was my first time travelling by plane, as well as travelling abroad. At first, nobody seemed to understand much of what I was trying to say, but I think I've been getting a bit better. I'm able to ask people for directions or price, order a meal; and recently I managed to get a writing brush, an inkstone and some ink, at a 書法 (Chinese Calligraphy) supplies store, where the only employee at the venue didn't speak much English. I even managed to crack a little "joke" by the cash register. Thankfully everybody I've met so far has been very nice, patient and polite. 波蘭人沒有台灣人友好;)
I bought a few books in a local bookstore (two works of fiction, two on philosophy and one on writing 草書,行書 and 隸書 (of all things) with a fountain pen), I also try to note new words in a notebook, which I also use as a sort of diary (in Mandarin, of course). I think I'll be trying to learn Mandarin with a bit more laid-back attitude for now. I'll get back to heavy Anki'ing once I get back home to Poland.
Last edited by Ezy Ryder on Fri Mar 24, 2017 5:51 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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阿波
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Ezy Ryder
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Re: Ezy Ryder's Endeavour

Postby Ezy Ryder » Tue Sep 01, 2015 4:59 am

Still enjoying the trip. Over a fortnight in, I kinda wish I could get some more practise in, but it's still great. So far I'm lucky if I get a total of just a few minutes of talking with people a day. Usually just a chat with my landlord, ordering food and stuff, occasionally asking for directions and brief exchanges with other customers sitting by the same table. In hindsight, I really regret not having worked harder on my listening comprehension.
I've also been starting to plan my learning strategy after the stay in Taichung will sadly come to an end (there's always "hope" Poland will end up like Crimea or something, and I could maybe become a refugee :D But it's probably a bit distasteful to say such things, even just tongue-in-cheek). I probably should take it a bit slow-er than I tend to. Finding the right pace, so that I won't burn out neither due to lack of satisfying progress, nor overworking, is the difficult part. I doubt I could afford such trips more often than once a year (unless I could enrol on a student exchange program...), and I think summer vacation at universities in Poland begins around July, so I should have about 300 days, give or take. Learning 10 new characters a day, I should get to 6,000 characters by then. Not quite sure how to go about vocabulary... I'd definitely want to start going Pronunciation->Hanzi+Definition; and I'm also not sure if I should add production cards as well.

Lastly, a sample of my handwriting. Hope I have improved since the last time I uploaded one.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/eq7hupflyve0bg6/HandwritingTaichung2015.jpg?dl=0
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阿波
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Re: Ezy Ryder's Endeavour

Postby Ezy Ryder » Fri Sep 04, 2015 5:27 am

Native speakers' input on my handwriting has been very encouraging. I surprised my landlord's family by being able to write stuff like 餐,挺,學,緯度,繁體字,介意, using a 成語 (Chengyu, a four-character saying), and I've also heard they haven't seen a foreigner write so fast yet. And another Taiwanese, whom I met in a bookstore, said my handwriting looks like that of a high school student (so maybe I'm on the right track) ^^ She's also told me about 水寫紙, a kind of reusable paper for practising Calligraphy without wasting ink or paper. Thankfully they had some at the Calligraphy store by the Culture Centre (and only 10元 (~0.32 US$) a sheet).
While taking the bus to the Culture Centre, I was (trying to, as it was a bit shaky) write an entry in my Chinese travel journal, when suddenly a Westerner had approached me, and asked if we passed the Taichung trainstation already. I told her I don't think so, but I wasn't sure. So I told her what it's called in Chinese, so that she'd know what to listen for in the next stop announcements, and when getting of the bus at my stop, I managed to ask the driver in Chinese, if we've passed it already, and translated the answer into English for her. Not much of an achievement, but still felt absolutely awesome :)
And yesterday at the bookstore, when looking for some Kanji Kentei preparation materials in the Japanese part of the foreign languages section (two whole bookshelves filled with Japanese resources... what a sight it was...), I've noticed a Taiwanese browsing through them as well, quite thoroughly. So, I mustered my courage, and tried to speak up in Japanese. And we've had a brief conversation, about 75% in Japanese, and 25% in Mandarin. She even helped me choose a book for studying 台語 (Taiwanese, aka Taiwanese Hokkien/Min-nan). The book seems quite interesting, It's divided into two sections: 常用單字篇 (common words chapter) and 常用會話篇 (a bit difficult to translate, basically some more grammatical things, like asking requests, questions, the time, making commands, etc.). The book has Traditional Characters and Simplified Characters for both 台語 and the Mandarin translation, Pinyin, 台語 romanization (for both the southern and northern accent) and a bit of English. It also includes 3 CDs with recordings of Mandarin, and both aforementioned accents of 台語. That also means I'm gonna come back to Poland with 9 more books than I came with :)
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阿波
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Re: Ezy Ryder's Endeavour

Postby jalhaesseo » Sun Sep 06, 2015 9:14 am

Ezy Ryder wrote:Lastly, a sample of my handwriting. Hope I have improved since the last time I uploaded one.https://www.dropbox.com/s/eq7hupflyve0bg6/HandwritingTaichung2015.jpg?dl=0

Wow, impressive!
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Ezy Ryder
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Re: Ezy Ryder's Endeavour

Postby Ezy Ryder » Sun Sep 06, 2015 3:32 pm

Thanks ^^ The feedback I get from Taiwanese seems consistently encouraging (although, I remember hearing, the Japanese will praise your Japanese no matter how low your level is; and it's only when they actually start pointing out your mistakes, that it's gotten good ;)). On the other hand, my old Chinese pen-pal said she thought it looked as if "a disabled person wrote with their left hand" :lol: (Which seems a bit insulting, considering lefties can have amazing handwriting as well, and I've even seen a video of an armless man doing more than decent 書法... (although admittedly, I might not be the best person to judge))

Decided to kinda ditch my precious Character writing deck. There was a number of problems with it:
1. At my peak, I could write at least 3,000 characters by hand. But in my actual handwriting, I probably didn't use even a half of that, since I didn't remember any words which used them. And learning to write the characters doesn't make you "remember them better" or anything, so it didn't necessarily translate perfectly into reading comprehension improvement.
2. Studying this way made my listening and speaking nearly incomparably worse. Whenever I have a longer conversation in Mandarin here, I just have to resort to writing some of the words I'm trying to use down, and asking the other party to do so, too.
Another kind of mistake I've been known to make, was to try and learn too quick, and get buried in my reviews.
So, I've fiddled around with my vocab deck and the card types, and here's what I came up with:
1. Two kinds of cards:
a)Listening (Pinyin on front, trying to recall the meaning; Hanzi and English definition on the back).
b)Production (English definition on front, trying to recall the pronunciation and writing the Hanzi (mostly for fun. I know it slows the process down, but hopefully it'll make it more enjoyable and satisfying); Pinyin and Hanzi on the back). // I remember the Supermemo guide saying you should make each card test you just on one bit of information (and even the AJATT site advocating against reviewing more than one character per card)... but hopefully a smaller number of cards to review will be so motivating, it'll make up for it.
2. Changed the order back to the order the cards were added (TOCFL levels from 1 to 5, and then some vocab I got from books (sorted by frequency)).
3. Related new cards, and reviews, are to be buried until the next day.
4. Not gonna write everything out by hand if I don't feel like it. Reviewing more card's writing just by imagining how to write them, should be better than reviewing a smaller number of cards "better." // I know some people's opinions are the polar opposite, but I think language learning isn't necessarily always the "quality over quantity" kinda deal. I'd much rather have just a basic understanding of 20k words, than native-level understanding and usage-capability capability of just 2-10k words.
5. Still to be decided:
a)Number of new cards a day.
b)Trying out the Hint function on Hanzi in Listening cards.
---
Not language learning related:
My landlord's family took me out for dinner, and to a night market tonight ^^
Prior to that, drunk a Starbucks coffee for the first time in my life. The cashier had to use some English; but later I managed to ask if a seat was taken, and where to put the empty cup, just in Chinese.
My landlord's family asked me how was my Taiwanese getting along, so I explained I hadn't learnt much yet, as I first had to find out which romanization the book used, which accent to learn, and memorize the tones (which is quite an interesting task for someone "interval deaf" :)).
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阿波
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Ezy Ryder
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Re: Ezy Ryder's Endeavour

Postby Ezy Ryder » Fri Sep 11, 2015 5:30 pm

Today's my last full day in Taiwan :( I'll have to be at the airport in around 29 hours from now...

I think my Chinese has improved, if only slightly. Prior to the trip, I'd pause nearly every word, trying to recall the next one. And even though I had practised less than I'd like, speaking with all these wonderful people here... it's both made me regain some hope in humanity, and get a bit more fluent with the little spoken Chinese I have now. I think even my listening comprehension might've gotten a tad better.

It's been a great and unforgettable experience. Many memories worth remembering (communicating face to face in Mandarin and Japanese for the first time, trying new cuisine; trying to find the way home, at night, without access to Google Maps; etc.).

As for my plans now, I think I'll give the Mandarin vocabulary deck I've described in my last post a try, I'll finish preparing my new deck for Taiwanese today, so that I can begin studying it on the plane (the deck goes both ways, with two fields: Romanization+Audio, and English definition (sadly, I decided against a Mandarin definition, to avoid hinting)). If I find any good Cantonese resources during my transit in Hong Kong, I may end up trying to make a similar deck for Cantonese as well. As for the number of new cards introduced daily, I think I'll start slow, and try to establish a habit, before picking the pace up too high.
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阿波
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Ezy Ryder
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Re: Ezy Ryder's Endeavour

Postby Ezy Ryder » Tue Sep 15, 2015 11:54 pm

I'm back in Poland. Had a safe flight. Even managed to speak some Mandarin, Japanese, and mostly-cognate-based Russian (and English, of course) on the planes and airports. I also spent nearly 4 hours (~15% of the journey) on my Mandarin vocabulary deck (and read a few pages of the Godfather in Mandarin as well). The day after coming back, I had roughly 400 reviews due. It didn't seem too difficult (about 72 minutes, including 50 “new” cards), although of course, I just began (re)studying the deck (this way). I hope to keep adding 50 new cards daily, if the number of reviews' rule of thumb is right, I should eventually reach ~500 reviews a day. If it'll prove too much, I'll slow down. But since I have two cards per word, it shouldn't be that bad. I think I'll wait with introducing new decks until I establish a strong enough habit with this one, to be sure I can manage.

I managed to ask in Mandarin, if they had any textbooks for Cantonese at the airport bookstore, while waiting to board the first plane. Sadly, they didn't. I was in a bit of a hurry in Hong Kong, so I couldn't really take a good look around the airport. And I didn't even bother at the Moscow and Warsaw ones. I hope shipping good Cantonese learning resources to Poland won't be too expensive... The language seems to be a bit more popular among learners, compared to Taiwanese, so there's probably gonna be more courses to choose from. But that isn't always a good thing...
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Re: Ezy Ryder's Endeavour

Postby Ezy Ryder » Sat Sep 19, 2015 10:15 am

Yesterday marked the first week of my new Mandarin studies/approach. Managed not to miss a single day, but of course, it was just the first week. I'm trying to begin leading a healthier lifestyle in general, and the first step was to start getting up earlier. I'm currently waking up around 8 AM, and I usually manage to finish my reviews within half an hour (still less than 400 reviews due a day). I find doing my reviews in bed, prior to getting up, helps ease into the new day.

I recently tweaked my deck just a bit. I got kinda tired of getting mostly production cards based on the notes I already studied; I wanted a somewhat more balanced progress pace in my productive and receptive skills (the latter being more important for me now). So, I created two subdecks: 了解 (holds all receptive cards, set to present me with 25 new ones a day) and 應用 (holds all productive cards, also set to 25 cards new cards a day).

I thought about introducing a new language next month. Perhaps I could get done with the Mandarin deck during my commute to and from the university (should be about an hour long round trip). If that were the case, maybe I could use some audio-only resource during my runs? The Taiwanese textbook I got came with CDs, they have two accents of Taiwanese, and the Mandarin translation. I could fiddle with them, and try making some drills using Gradint?
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Re: Ezy Ryder's Endeavour (中文,台語)

Postby Ezy Ryder » Fri Sep 25, 2015 8:19 pm

Today marks the 14th day of consecutive study. I equalled (and on a number of occasions, even surpassed) my daily quota, every day, for a whole fortnight. Feels quite nice. Though I've been experiencing some difficulties with getting up early.

I plan to write a bit more detailed summary of my progress, both perceived, and expressed with more tangible statistics, every 30th day. But for now I just wanted to add, I slightly changed my deck settings, again. Namely, I increased the number of “new” cards to be studied daily, in the receptive/passive deck, up to 35. That's a total of 60 “new” cards a day. Still seems quite manageable, I don't recall the number of reviews due on any single day to have been over 400. I'm still kinda reluctant to considerably increase the number of “new” cards, or begin studying a new language, though.
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阿波
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Ezy Ryder
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Re: Ezy Ryder's Endeavour (中文,台語)

Postby Ezy Ryder » Sat Oct 03, 2015 11:14 am

Yesterday marked the third week of my studies. Finished my daily quota (all reviews and “new” words (re)learnt) 21 days in a row. I think I'm on the right way to establishing an actual habit, for once. Oh, and I've further increased the number of "new" cards (re)learnt daily to 40 in the passive/listening comprehension subdeck (65 "new" cards a day in total). There's also some progress (not without occasional hiccups, though) with getting up earlier. Last 2-3 days I've set my alarm to go off at half past seven (half an hour earlier than before), and managed to actually not fall asleep again... except for today.

I've also got some university-related news. I've already been to the organizational meeting, and taking the train (which seems to be the cheapest option) will in fact give me at least an hour a day to study. Also, there's a ~20 minute walk from the trainstation to the university, which should provide some additional time for audio-based and/or listening activities. The tentative lecture schedule proposition has been up for about two days now, and in its current form, I'd have lectures pretty much five days a week (and at least one of the lecturers appears to bare a Chinese surname). The lectures are to start on the 7th.

Since we're going to be taught also reading and writing, I guess I should start looking into learning Simplified characters as well. I hope learning all those Traditional characters will come in handy. Anyone learning Simplified, coming from Traditional, willing to offer some advice/suggestions?
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