阿波's Endeavour (中文，台語)

[Ezy Ryder]

今天才安裝了AwesomeTTS那個附加元件。好像真不錯啊。我造要是想要避免失望，應該控制期待；但是一點興奮也有好處呢
再開覆習我的詞彙牌組，看到有5千多個詞等待覆習，我要崩潰啦ㄒㄒ

[Ezy Ryder]

A quick thought: considering drastically lowering the leech threshold (it's set to like 16 now). Some words seem easier to remember after some time, as if their "turn" has come for you to suddenly "notice" them, or something.

[Ezy Ryder]

Language exchange is just so much fun.

[Ezy Ryder]

Been trying to think of some new year's resolutions recently. I don't know how demanding will the university be (I heard the first year is to be the toughest, that's why it's called "the sieve"). So I don't want to set any goals that could lead to me burning out (for history likes to repeat itself):

中文：I've been (re)learning 25 words a day (plus however many words have become leeches on that day) since the 7th.
What I like about it: having put the TTS tag on both the front and the back of the card, not only should I be increasing the probability of retrieval when prompted aurally, but I can actually do my reviews literally with my eyes closed. It's also been very manageable so far (have yet to miss a day).
What I don't like about it: 25 words a day feels sooo slow. I'm used to getting through a 1,000 new words in less than a fortnight, whereas now it's gonna be more like 40 days. Oh well, "slow and steady wins the race" (or at least "finishes"), right?

漢字：I had more than 800 characters (over)due for review this Wednesday. Conquered said backlog by 8PM the following day. Which means, I should kinda be able to write some 2,000 Traditional Chinese characters by hand again. I remember the figure of 5,000 characters being considered a guideline for literacy by some. So, an average of just ~8.22 new characters a day should do the trick.
The thing is, the 2,000 characters I should be able to write are kinda motivating and all (and make for a smashing wallpaper ); but it doesn't mean I could actually use all of them in my note-taking or anything. If I don't know/remember productively any words that use a character, I can only write it during my reviews... And just because I can write a character, it doesn't necessarily guarantee I can read it (no matter how legible it be).

I absolutely love character-based handwriting, but otherwise, the whole ordeal feels a bit like "studying for the sake of studying"... A secondary objective, then?

臺語：I guess I could prepare some recordings of minimal pairs I still find problematic; try to work on my phonological memory; and review some vocab receptively, with just audio on the front of a flashcard, etc. But... so far I have mere ~300 words prepared to study. That's not much. It's just so difficult to find out what words to study >.< I have the 學台語不分國籍 textbook/phrasebook thing, but I'm not sure how much I could really get out of it. Finding written contemporary Hokkien isn't exactly easy, and especially the song lyrics on YouTube seem to use 漢字 in a not entirely standardised manner (e.g., you can see "phah-piànn" written both as 拍拚 and 打拼 (tánn-phing); “hōo” being written as 予, 互 (hōo) or 乎 (--honnh); "m̄" written both as 毋 and 不 (put); "oo" written both as 烏 and 黑 (hik); "beh" written both as 欲 and 要 (iàu); and "tī tó-uī" written as 佇佗位, 佇叼位 and even 在哪裡 (tsāi ná-lí)...). Finding native speakers who have the time to translate some example sentences and subsequently record themselves pronouncing them, has proven problematic too.

[Ezy Ryder]

Some time ago I mentioned how having learnt an English word through reading, provided I managed to guess the pronunciation, I could thereafter understand the word in listening as well. Well, I was reading 獵魔士 about 10 or so hours ago, and I relearnt the word 威脅. I was trying to listen to a podcast just now, when I heard ㄨㄟㄒㄧㄝ (wei xie). I managed to make the association ^^

PS I wanted to add "although the context probably helped", but I guess understanding enough to figure out at least some of the context isn't exactly a bad thing either.
PSS During the last History of Britain lecture, I forgot how to write 件 (just 6 strokes), but when the Bayeux Tapestry was mentioned, I had little difficulty remembering 繡 (18 strokes) productively. And I haven't even got to the latter in my current character-writing deck xD

[Ezy Ryder]

It's almost like bilingual texts in Hokkien and Mandarin. Except, rather than two texts, one in each language; the text is in Mandarin, and Hokkien is in audio form (makes sense, I guess). Cool for listening practice, though: https://youtu.be/ja2xHH4ybzI?t=10s
My attempt at transcribing it (with the help of the 臺灣教育部臺灣閩南語常用詞辭典, of course):

-小明啊
-是按怎你拄才上課的時陣會盹龜咧？
-老師，因為我的目睭皮破病了
-是啥物病欸？
-是……是自閉症啦

Oddly enough, I managed to hear the difference between /b/ and /b̥/ on my own, but not /b̥/ and /pʰ/ 0.o

[Ezy Ryder]

How about a year-end summary? I'll also try to think of some new year's resolutions while I'm at it.

Actually, I'm quite encouraged by what I managed to achieve this year. My main focus was, of course, listening. I wasn't sure how to go about it, and I didn't even have the confidence in myself to be able improve (I wasn't aware of any reasons why I shouldn't be, but feelings ≠ logic). And yet, now I feel I have gotten noticeably better at it. It's still far from perfect, satisfactory, or even enough; but now when I listen to a podcast, I'll understand more than just “it's about politics/economy/history/etc.”. Even though I still couldn't transcribe one with a decent degree of accuracy, I'll at least be able to make some sense out of each topic brought up (although a lot still undeniably goes right over my head).
My speaking has gotten more comprehensible, I think. I tend to speak very quickly in English and Polish, but for obvious reasons, ending up doing so in Mandarin can be a bit more difficult at the moment. So, usually if I try to speak somewhat clearly (i.e., not at 谷阿莫 speeds or something xD), I think I often manage to be understood while still preserving most of the phonetic processes I had acquired so far. Making a playlist of my Mandarin-speaking videos on YouTube is a neat way of making a side-by-side comparison of my level now and a year ago ^^
Reading... Frankly, didn't do much of it, this year. I'm still a slow reader (<150 CPM). I pretty much just do some chatting and texting with friends, occasionally read a book on the train or between classes, and of course I had to read an article on the 川蔡對話 嘻嘻
I picked up handwriting again shortly before the classes began (as I need to be able to take legible notes). I should be able to write roughly 2,160 characters as of writing this post (974 mature, 499 young+learn, and 687 suspended (for being too easy, etc.)). All the note-taking seems to have made me write a bit quicker – I used to write at about 4.72s/character (in September), and now I think it's a bit closer to 4.06s/character. Also, trying to make my 楷書 handwriting a bit prettier.
Not much to say about typing. Still not very fast, below 60 CPM when typing using a Pinyin-based IME on my laptop, and even slower using Bopomofo on my phone (but I'd put it to the fact it's a 4'' screen and not a proper keyboard. Actually, I'm even slower using Pinyin on it ^^).
I'm also learning to develop a study routine. I used to try to learn new stuff very quickly, and often burn out within a few weeks or months. But now especially with the university, I kinda needed to make it a bit more manageable. And I think I've been doing alright, the last month or two. I try to (re)learn just 25 words (plus however many became leeches on that day), and 10 characters.

New Year's Resolutions:
1. Complete the 10k SRS challenge with single-word listening cards (currently I'm at 413 mature+584 young&learn=997. As far as suspended cards go, 79 leeches+1,357 too easy ones=1,436). I intend to unsuspend all the leeches once I get through all the cards currently in the deck. (BTW, is 7.34% leeches much, at a leech threshold set to 5 lapses?)
2. Get through all the 4,808 Hanzi in the 常用國字標準字體表 in my handwriting deck (I'm not entirely sure about this one. Being able to write a character doesn't mean I can read it; not remembering any words that use some of the characters I can write, really feels like it defeats the purpose of learning them in the first place (南轅北轍?); and knowing a word and the characters, doesn't mean I'll remember which one to use (e.g., recently during a history lecture, I almost wrote “feudalism” as 封件 instead of 封建), but having just vocabulary handwriting cards would be a lot more complicated – so I think I'll try employing a Heisig-like approach, coming up with a unique keyword for each and every character, and then just memorise how to write words by memorising the keywords and their order)
3. Work on my accent (I'll basically asses it just by trying to make a decent-quality recording of myself speaking, at the beginning and end of the year, and trying to use Praat to compare it against the recording of a Taiwanese person speaking)

No resolutions for Hokkien, I'm afraid.

[crush]

Wow, you're study routine is pretty intense, it sounds painful to me! Like you i started learning how to write characters as well (with Skritter, have you looked into Skritter yet?) but i gave it up after a year or so since it was far more efficient to just work on recognition of characters. You forget how to write characters so quickly, recognition sticks around much longer.

I ended up taking the slower route, i did about 15-20 new characters a day once i reached the 2,000 mark more or less up until i finished the HSK 6 deck from Pleco (altogether around 5,000 words, not sure how many different characters there are). It took me about a year, but at least i was able to keep it up. I'd gotten burned out several times before going too quickly. Now my daily reviews are around 80 with no new cards. Eventually i'll get back to learning more vocabulary, but my focus is on other languages now (like Cantonese) and other hobbies, and it's hard to find time for more. It's kinda funny that we've got the opposite problem, for me speaking and listening generally aren't an issue, reading and writing are definitely my weakest skills. I still have to use a lot of circumlocutions in speech though and could really use some more focused studying.

I can't really comment on your accent, it just sounds Taiwanese to me (similar to the way Mike Campbell of Glossika speaks). The girl in the other video has a clear mainland accent.

Typing is a pain in Chinese languages, i type relatively quickly in English/Spanish (comfortably ~90 WPM) so i can type alright in Mandarin, it's just a pain. With nice Chinese IMEs (like Sogou's) you can type much faster, but those are so bloated with ads and crapware that i wouldn't dare install them on anything other than a virtual machine. On the phone, i just use the 9-key layout which is much easier when you're walking around or on the bus, since swiping doesn't work very well for Chinese.

[Ezy Ryder]

新年快樂2017.jpg

Wow, you're study routine is pretty intense, it sounds painful to me! Like you i started learning how to write characters as well (with Skritter, have you looked into Skritter yet?) but i gave it up after a year or so since it was far more efficient to just work on recognition of characters. You forget how to write characters so quickly, recognition sticks around much longer.

I ended up taking the slower route, i did about 15-20 new characters a day once i reached the 2,000 mark more or less up until i finished the HSK 6 deck from Pleco (altogether around 5,000 words, not sure how many different characters there are). It took me about a year, but at least i was able to keep it up. I'd gotten burned out several times before going too quickly. Now my daily reviews are around 80 with no new cards. Eventually i'll get back to learning more vocabulary, but my focus is on other languages now (like Cantonese) and other hobbies, and it's hard to find time for more. It's kinda funny that we've got the opposite problem, for me speaking and listening generally aren't an issue, reading and writing are definitely my weakest skills. I still have to use a lot of circumlocutions in speech though and could really use some more focused studying.

I can't really comment on your accent, it just sounds Taiwanese to me (similar to the way Mike Campbell of Glossika speaks). The girl in the other video has a clear mainland accent.

Typing is a pain in Chinese languages, i type relatively quickly in English/Spanish (comfortably ~90 WPM) so i can type alright in Mandarin, it's just a pain. With nice Chinese IMEs (like Sogou's) you can type much faster, but those are so bloated with ads and crapware that i wouldn't dare install them on anything other than a virtual machine. On the phone, i just use the 9-key layout which is much easier when you're walking around or on the bus, since swiping doesn't work very well for Chinese.

Thanks, Crush! I haven't tried Skritter myself, but I've seen some reviews of it. 如我所見, it seems to be a decent piece of software; but it doesn't appear to offer anything I could really benefit from, that I couldn't get myself for free. Nevertheless, I think it might even be the preferable option to some people, I also recommended it to my classmates.
Yes, the oppositeness of our problems is most amusing. Certainly makes reading your log more interesting, it's almost like an alternate time-line story or something
Speaking of which; can't wait to read more about your experiences learning Cantonese!
My accent "sounding Taiwanese" is probably a good thing ^^

PS Hit a "furlongstone" yesterday —— 2,250 characters in my handwriting deck.

[crush]

If you've got a wacom tablet or whatever they're called, it's great. I haven't used it in a long whlie (2-3 years, probably), but the SRS is nice, adding new words is really easy and convenient, and you can customize definitions and everything in a course how you'd like without it affecting others' courses. It also teaches you the stroke order rather intuitively as it won't accept incorrect stroke orders. I would love to learn how to write Chinese characters again, it's just not on my priority list now (mostly filling out my vocabulary and speeding up my reading). But when i do get around to it, i plan on using Skritter for it.

恭喜你，阿波！你去年的进步已经很不错，我相信今年会有更大的进步！加油