阿波's Endeavour (中文，台語)

[Aozu]

I started with simplified, but started to work on traditional back when I could only get World of Warcraft to run the Taiwan version. So my reasons for learning the 'other' version were a little odd, but whatever. Anyway, I had finished both books of Remembering the Hanzi at about that time and so that put me at about the 3000 'known' mark, which seems about the same as what you said in your intro post.

Honestly - and my mother-in-law had said this to me when I asked her how hard it was to switch between them but I didn't believe her - switching between the two is not that bad. A lot of it is super simple - example, a side 訁 becomes a 讠, bam, done. There are about 500 or so characters I would classify as 'weird', insofar as they don't follow a simple pattern, and there was an Anki deck I downloaded to drill those. And in the end, I have to agree with my mother-in-law. Compared with the horrible task of memorizing the 3000 or 4000 or 5000 characters in the first place, this extra little bit is not much of a hassle.

I am 95% sure I got the Anki deck from this post: http://www.hackingchinese.com/simplifie ... l-chinese/ And looking at that post, he basically says a lot of the same stuff I just did, and that's probably where I picked a lot of it up there a couple of years ago, but at least I can say that I sort of followed his advice and I think it was correct and worked.

[Ezy Ryder]

Thanks, I'll finish reading the article today, and try to put it in practice.

Yesterday was the 28th consecutive day of studying. Haven't missed my daily quota a single time yet. Actually, a few days ago I haven't really done much throughout the day, but I thought I couldn't let the streak go to waste, and finished at night. I suppose that's (one of) the points of consistent study. Today I'll only write a sort of general update, and since tomorrow will be the 30th day, I'll make it the stats day.

So, the university started. So far, I'm lovin' it. It's been mostly great. I've had just one lecture in Polish, and the rest has been either mostly, or entirely in English (the “Chinese Listening Comprehension” lecturer is actually Chinese, so she doesn't even speak much Polish). Currently, the Chinese classes are a bit below my level, I'm afraid; but I've been told whom should I speak with about this, so I hope something can be done about it.
As of now, my typical day looks like this:
7:00-Wake up, and keep myself awake getting some Anki reviews out of the way.
An hour before the first lecture-Go to the trainstation, and continue doing Anki both while waiting for the train, and on the train (usually it's a 27 minute ride).
In between lectures-Finish Anki if the breaks are long enough, and spend the rest of the time reading 血字的研究 (“A Study in Scarlet,” the first book in the Sherlock Holmes series).
During lectures-Try taking (handwritten) notes in Chinese, whenever practical... enough.
After lectures-Send some voice messages in Chinese over LINE to my friends from Taiwan, on the way back.
Rest of the day-Not much in terms of productivity, maybe just some journaling in Chinese and stuff.

The number of daily reviews appears to have gotten past the 400 mark. Recently it's been almost exclusively in the ~440 range. Which I guess is a bit more work, but still largely manageable (I'm usually done within 50-60 minutes a day). It feels moderately nice being reminded some useful words I might've forgotten, and I certainly enjoy (re)learning “new” ones. Even making another card type (I'm referring to the passive and active sub-decks) seems to have had positive effect on tediousness, due to added variety. Which means controlling wanderlust is getting progressively more difficult. I'm seriously considering adding another language on the 31st day.

[Ezy Ryder]

I planned to write a bit about what happened in my life in general first, before getting into my language studies; but the “bit” turned out a tad bigger than expected, so I decided to go the other way around.
Due to the reasons described below, I kinda haven't finished my daily Anki quota once (I think). I completed all the reviews and (re)learnt 40 “new” words passively, but only 5 (leaving 20) actively. I decided neither to make up for it the next day, nor consider it a failure; since I did study that day, and did my best considering the unforeseen circumstances. It seems the number of daily reviews has actually went down thanks to that... slightly. It used to be around 470-480 a day (total), and now it's about 420-450. Spending a lot of time in bed, I tried doing some reading (now on page 42, I think I'm feeling fairly comfortable with the level of the book? There are some parts I understand no problemo, some requiring a bit of guesswork, and some that probably go right over my head. But I'm enjoying it, I'm currently at the moment when Holmes explains deduction to dr. Watson (using a 成語/成语: 心知肚明 I thought it'd mean something like “the mind knows, but the gut feels.” My dictionary defines it as “to be well aware,” so I better ask my friends for clarification).
Lastly, I finally begun studying Taiwanese (Hokkien), aka Southern Min, aka Min-nan. About time, considering it's been occupying a place amidst my Anki decks, and even in the title of this very log, for a while now... Again I'll be using two types of cards:
Receptive (passive): Front (Romanization & Audio) | Back (English definition)
Productive (active): Front (English definition) | Back (Romanization & Audio)
Currently set the daily quota to just 10 new words a day + all the reviews due. All the words (and audio) I'm currently “mining” from the textbook I got in Taiwan (學台語不分國籍/学台语不分国籍). Vocabulary lists end by page 49, and the remaining 300 begin to introduce recordings of whole sentences/dialogues(?) after the list of phrases to be used on that lesson. Which means, I may end up SRS'ing sentences (something I haven't been a fan of), but since all include seemingly native-speed audio (in two accents), I hope it will serve as a good way to build up my listening comprehension.

I was to write the weekly update due on the 16th, and I wanted to post some stats as well. But I got sick. Not of studying, thank God; just physically. Felt fine most of the day, but when I ran to catch my train (which waited literally less than 15 seconds after stopping, before closing the doors and going away... *sigh*), I suddenly felt really exhausted. I took a cab, and wasted 18.73$ just to get to the city my university is located in (for comparison, a monthly train ticket costed me only ~14$; I guess that's the way they make that money back, they go out of their way not to let you on it :) ). Anyway, the first lecture went all right (wrote a little test, it only tested on 11 characters: 〇(I also wrote down零)一二三四五六七八九十; and they say the first year is the toughest...). But right before the second lecture... I'll spare you the details, but let's just say I was in no state to be in a classroom. After waiting an hour on the cold trainstation, and taking a half an hour ride back (delayed by 12-13 minutes which they didn't even bother mentioning...) on a lukewarm train (I guess still an improvement over the trainstation); I managed to walk back home, and spent the following two days almost solely in bed, shivering, with a temperature ranging from 35.2-39.5°C (95.36-103.1°F for you imperialists out there ;) ). I'm beginning to feel better now, should get my results soon. My whole life, I loved sick-leave; but the lectures being so cool and all, I'd actually prefer to attend them (though recently some students asked one lecturer if she could speak Polish during the lesson, it was so frustrating... why the hell do you enrol on “English Philology with a Specialisation in Translation&Interpreting + Chinese,” where they actually expect you to know English right from the get go, if you'd prefer lectures in Polish, rather than English? *facepalm-muffled sigh*).

[Ezy Ryder]

Yesterday was the 6th consecutive week of study. I think I have yet to skip a day completely, and the only hiccup with the daily quota was due to the ailment (not counting Taiwanese, which for obvious reasons is not my main focus, yet), so... Anyway; sorry for not updating in nearly a fortnight.

So, my Mandarin deck is doin' alright. Recently the number of reviews due exceeded 500 for the first time; but it hasn't happened again since, and wasn't so bad then either, so it's fine. Mature cards are beginning to constitute to a larger proportion of my daily reviews, which despite giving me the unfortunate sensation of wasting my time on some of them (which I'm aware is in fact not a waste), they are certainly the quickest reviews, and the ones I seem to answer correctly the most often (and thus boost my morale). Lastly, I looked up possible allophones of all vowels, on the Wikipedia, and put them on (paper) flashcards. I hope to go through them soon, in order to improve my accent.

As for the Taiwanese deck, I recently ran out of new cards. Which means I now need to add a new batch. I should have some more time on my hands in the following days, so I plan to employ the Pomodoro technique in hopes of preparing enough cards to last me for at least a week or two. Oh, before I forget; I also noticed some improvements in distinguishing the tones. I mostly have problems distinguishing 1 from 7, and 4 from 8. But, considering currently all my “input” is just single words in isolation, whilst reviewing them; I'm quite optimistic on the matter.

And lastly, the university. Recently we had a guest lecturer from the University of Michigan – Dr John M. Swales, who gave an awesome lecture on American academic speech (as opposed to writing). A warm voice and a lovely accent, combined with a good sense of humour, made it a swell experience ;) There were also some frustrations, like getting the password to the online platform we were meant to do some of our homework on... four days past the deadline. Or, answers regarding what to do about the discrepancy between my level in Chinese, and that of my group... Or, on a lighter note, trying a kind of hand-brewed coffee, and the buffet tortillas; which left me reminiscing a certain well known Edgar A. Poe quote: “Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore'”.

[Ezy Ryder]

Just a quick post to mention I missed a day of studying (or rather, the daily quota). I did some (maybe all) passive reviews in Mandarin this Tuesday, but just kept procrastinating the rest of the day; and the winter depression seems to be coming back (homesick for Taiwan?), so let's just say I got a bit carried away reading a VN in Japanese... till 3 AM. After which I didn't feel like doing any studying at all. And thus, after more than six weeks with missing the daily quota only once, due to illness, I had a little hiccup. Well, it was to be expected, that I couldn't keep it up forever. 6+ weeks still doesn't sound too shabby, for me. And I got back into the full daily quota the very next day, so, hopefully not all's lost.

おかしい事に、日本語はまだ全く忘れなかったらしいね。平仮名や片仮名が手書きできる訳じゃないけど、ノベルゲームとか読んだりして(も?)楽しい程覚えるぞ

[Ezy Ryder]

I missed the quota like two more times, in a row. But! Today I came home motivated like I haven't been in quite a while.

I finished most of my passive reviews on the train to the university. Then, when waiting in front of the class, I noticed a few exchange students, whom I heard speaking Mandarin. To my surprise, once the class started, they came in as well. I sat next to them, and when one of them asked me (in English) if they also need to show the teacher they've brought the right materials for the class, I tried responding in Chinese. I didn't catch the immediate reaction, but I think during my second-third sentence, I saw her smile. Was my accent funny? Was she surprised I knew some Chinese? Either way, we mostly communicated in Chinese, with occasional help of English. I asked her 妳們要加入我們的班嗎 (Are you going to be joining our class?), and I think she replied yes. After the class, I asked her 妳們學波蘭語嗎 (Are you studying Polish?), to which she replied something like 我們讀波蘭語課 (We're taking Polish classes). Of course, I couldn't resist the opportunity to offer some language exchange. Later, I ran into one of our Chinese teachers (a Pole), and asked her (in Chinese), if I should attend her Chinese Conversation class. As it turned out, I got to get back home early :)
But there's more! When I got on the train, I noticed a couple East-Asian-looking guys, so let's just say, it wasn't difficult to choose where to seat. I heard them speaking Mandarin, so I asked them 對不起，您們來自中國嗎？ (I'm sorry, are you from China?), which they didn't seem to understand at first, but after repeating myself, they replied (in Chinese). And guess what? They were from... Taiwan! How awesome is that? It was great to hear the Taiwanese accent in real life again... We chatted a bit (mostly in Mandarin) for about 14 minutes. I also told them when we arrived at their destination ^^

[Ezy Ryder]

Hadn't posted any updates in a fortnight, sorry about that, but it was quite a hectic one. An overwhelming amount of homework (prescriptivist, inadequate to the level of most people in the class; and above all, going completely against the Monitor Hypothesis), failed a number of tests, and felt straight up awful (depression+stress+exhaustion)... I was seriously considering dropping out (as even one of the teachers has suggested), but because of my financial situation, it could be quite difficult. I thought I'd try harder... and I failed. Felt even worse, but thought “maybe if I try even harder...” And I failed. So I spent pretty much the whole Sunday doing the homework and preparing, for Monday (today), stayed up till 3:50 AM, got up at 6:50 AM, finished the rest on the train. I was hoping to stay up till I get the bloody thing done, but I started feeling extremely exhausted, it'd seem my pulse would go below 60 BPM every time I exhaled (I think usually it's above 70 BPM); and I barely managed to get to a seat in the train, when I begun feeling a stinging pain in my side.
All that for nothing. Well, almost. I apparently got the right homework done this time, but the test (English tenses... Geez...) said “put the verb in the brackets into the blanks; in the past simple, or present perfect tense”. And so I did (I think). Right after the test, the teacher said (or at least, I think she did), that she hopes we used the continuous tenses right... Feck. It would've been nice if she at least mentioned we could use them...
Well, tomorrow I am to write a test from the first 5 units of one of our Chinese textbooks, so there actually is something to look forward to (because of how basic the level is now, I don't mean that ironically).

Hopefully on a lighter note; the second month of studying with my current approach has passed about 9 days ago, I reckon. So, I guess I could post some of them tangible-and-yet-not-saying-much statistics that I seem to love so much:

Passive cards (Pinyin->EN Definition):
Total: 3637
Mature: 1860
Young+Learning: 1258
Suspended (i.e., known already): 519

Active cards (EN Definition->Pinyin+Hanzi):
Total: 2485
Mature: 1132
Young+Learning: 845
Suspended (i.e., known already): 508

I have yet to add any today, and due to the university, couldn't study yesterday at all (the irony...). Answering a decent percentage of cards correctly (particularly the mature passive cards).

[Ezy Ryder]

Come December 23rd, a 15 day long winter break shall commence. I'm hoping to use this as an opportunity to boost my Taiwanese. It's been mostly a secondary objective for me, far from compulsory. Thus, I still haven't gotten past even just 150 words. If I studied about 25 words a day throughout the break, I should be able to get to at least 500, by the end of it. Currently I have 154 words (both studied, and new) in my deck, which means I'll have to prepare at least ~15 a day. Not sure if I'll be able to accomplish that, but I guess I could just add the rest during the break itself...

[Ezy Ryder]

抽空
Slightly more optimistic this time around. I found a way to spend more time on Taiwanese – Gradint. It's a free piece of multi-platform software which can prepare audio-only lessons, scheduled in accordance with the Forgetting Curve, and either export them as a .wav file you can listen on your phone or whatever, or play it directly on your speakers/headphones.
I find it much quicker to input new words this way. You just save each word/phrase/sentence as a .wav or .mp3 file, with the filename referring to the word and language (E.g., Word13_mn.wav and Word13_zh.wav , or MyTailorIsRich_fr.mp3 and MyTailorIsRich_en.mp3 , etc.). You can also use your own prompts (I'm going to ask a friend to record them for me in Mandarin). Preparing 10 words, took me just about 10 minutes today (8.5 minutes to create 10 files with Min-nan and 10 with Mandarin translations, plus about ~1.5 minutes to prepare all the necessary audio). The program created the 19-minute long, 48.1 MB lesson within a minute or so, and I listened to it during my commute. When I'm on the train, I usually pick out my phone and do some Anki reviews; but I prefer to look where I'm walking, rather than at my phone, plus it's too cold to do so even when just waiting for my train to come. So, I thought, might as well put on some earbuds and make use of those 3 hours and 20 minutes a week.

[Ezy Ryder]

中文: Had a rather good day, today. First, I talked with two teachers in English for a while, then had an opportunity to listen to two lectures/presentations in English (one on learning Chinese characters... sadly quite similar to the Chineasy way; and the other presenting a recent study on the perception of Mandarin initial plosives by Poles, so a bit more interesting). But the best bit, was what came next.

Most of the students in our class (including me) were under the impression that all today's classes and lectures have been called off, due to the conference. However, when I was about to leave, I noticed our Chinese Chinese teacher waiting for something at the information. I tried talking with her a bit in Chinese, and she seemed surprised I was leaving already. Apparently she planned to use the lunch break to conduct the first 45 minutes of her Listening Comprehension class, that we usually have at this time. As it turned out, I was the only student who turned up.

Bref, I got to speak one on one (mostly) in Chinese, with a native speaker, for some 40-50 minutes. How cool is that?

台語: Got the prompts recorded in Mandarin by my friend yesterday. I listened to today's lesson during my by-foot-commute. Actually, managed to listen to it twice (and I probably needed to, as some of the phrases seemed kinda long-ish (at my current level), like “tsiann1 li1 gong1 kah4 bhan7 zit-diam a” (could you speak a little slower? // Probably will come in handy, way too often) or “tsiann1 li1 ga3 ghua1 gong1 bian3-so2 ti3 doo1 ui7” (Could you tell me where is the bathroom?)). I generally try to learn them first by ear, and only look the transcription up afterwards. I should probably work on my pronunciation, I was almost sure I've heard a lateral alveolar tap/flap at the onset of one syllable, but according to the transcription, it was just an unreleased alveolar stop at the coda of the preceding one. Also, when skimming through the Chinese Wikipedia article on Taiwanese Hokkien, I noticed that the voiced initial stops, are actually nasalised... Didn't expect that was possible. That'd at least explain why they seem to sorta "glide" into the following vowel, in contrast with other plosives at least.