Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
snowflake
Orange Belt
Posts: 197
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2015 11:21 pm
Location: Midwest USA
Languages: English (N), Mandarin (intermediate)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1292
x 237

Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Sat Sep 12, 2020 7:18 pm

I’m trying to figure out how to structure the chats with the grandmother from Shenyang. The usual topic list inevitability leads to talking about personal experiences which I wish to avoid. The gist is that the cultural group identity sees sharing personal details of other people’s lives as accepted and normal. I stopped going to various meetings in part because I really do not need to know that K had whatever number of miscarriages and that C is going to the doctor this coming Thursday which was originally Wednesday due to a shift in the test results availability due to a specific mix-up. I really don’t like it when I mention xyz to H and then several weeks later C asks me about it and expects to hear minute details. So for chat topics I initially thought about a virtual tour of Shenyang and then was overwhelmed to realize that the history of the area goes back to 3-200 BC, that it was the capital of the Qing dynasty, etc. I was thinking of doing the equivalent for Taiwan with some Taiwanese but that is less intimidating for me. Other conversation ideas have included
• discussing a book which would not work unless we read the same thing,
• me going through a textbook and talking to her about it. I generally don’t take well to textbooks.
• me memorizing text and reciting to her. How much time does that really take out of say a ½ hour?
The grandmother has said that she’s will to talk to be several times a day, for short periods (15 minutes to a half hour). From a language learners’ perspective, this is a golden opportunity. In any case, I am going to revisit my textbooks for ideas.

: 95 / 104 : 0 / 104 : 0 / 104 Glossika Fluency 123
: 19053 / 90000 Chorusing Using Glossika – Goal is 90,000 Repetitions (start July 2020)
4 x

User avatar
Dr Mack Rettosy
Orange Belt
Posts: 134
Joined: Thu Oct 15, 2020 5:53 pm
Location: USA, The Great Lakes
Languages: English (N), Mandarin
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16180
x 729

Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby Dr Mack Rettosy » Sun Nov 01, 2020 6:57 pm

Hi there, just dropping in to introduce myself. I'm new to language learning and Mandarin will be my L2, so these sort of long-running language logs are incredibly valuable to me. The fact that you have stayed committed to Mandarin and maintained this log for 12+ years is inspirational! Cheers!
0 x
Mandarin goals:
Read: 2146000 / 10000000 /10,000,000 汉字
Study: 2006 / 5000 / 5000 hours

User avatar
snowflake
Orange Belt
Posts: 197
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2015 11:21 pm
Location: Midwest USA
Languages: English (N), Mandarin (intermediate)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1292
x 237

Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:12 pm

Dr Mack Rettosy wrote:Hi there, just dropping in to introduce myself. I'm new to language learning and Mandarin will be my L2, so these sort of long-running language logs are incredibly valuable to me. The fact that you have stayed committed to Mandarin and maintained this log for 12+ years is inspirational! Cheers!


Thank for the sentiment!
0 x

User avatar
snowflake
Orange Belt
Posts: 197
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2015 11:21 pm
Location: Midwest USA
Languages: English (N), Mandarin (intermediate)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1292
x 237

Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Sat Nov 21, 2020 4:24 pm

I've taken a break from chorusing Glossika and am thinking should probably restart from the beginning though given the holidays and other things, probably will not do anything until the new year. My local group has become more encouraging regarding me reading Chinese aloud, though the speaking part still leaves a lot to be desired. As a reminder, several people were very insistent that I speak to them in English. This group is very small so things generally are amplified when 3 or more people insist on the same thing. That combined with some other things happening within the group at that time really put me off. The next closest Mandarin speaking group is at least a hours drive away. The chat with the grandmother from Shenyang is in the same category... need to rethink things and try again in January.



: 104 / 104 : 5 / 104 : 0 / 104 Glossika Fluency 123
: 21420 / 90000 Chorusing Using Glossika – Goal is 90,000 Repetitions (start July 2020)
1 x

User avatar
snowflake
Orange Belt
Posts: 197
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2015 11:21 pm
Location: Midwest USA
Languages: English (N), Mandarin (intermediate)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1292
x 237

Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Sun Feb 07, 2021 5:59 pm

Checking in...

Like many other people, the past year has been stressful. In my case it’s been a combination of factors with the tipping point being a new position at my job along with the changed circumstances due to Covid-19. Thankfully I haven’t been ill and hopefully that will continue.

I pretty much felt brain-dead for the past month due to tiredness from working overtime and now am starting to come out of that. Explaining brain-dead to my overseas Taiwanese language exchange partner (S) was interesting as he pointed out they would never say that figuratively due to the technical definition. Generally when my motivation to “study” is totally lacking, I watch Chinese dramas, listen to songs and movie audio, etc to try to sustain as much as possible. A habit I fell into a long time ago was to read online novels. Generally I’d find an English translation (https://www.novelupdates.com/) and when running out of already translated chapters then I’d continue to read in Chinese. But for the past year due to tiredness I mostly read using Google translate instead of switching to Chinese. Recently I found a novel interesting enough to continue in Chinese, 重生之女将星 by 千山茶客. Initially I quickly read (semi-skimmed) through the entire novel using Google translate and then went back. This 2nd time I am continuing to read using Google translate but am stopping to check various passages in Chinese. For instance, I asked both S and the grandmother from Shenyang whether this is modern usage, 这个家族没有温情只有利益. I asked both due to the differences between mainland and Taiwanese usage. S (Taiwanese) said the verbiage is modern while the grandmother (mainland) said that it is not.

Now I am looking at this paragraph, 人的绝望,并不是一朝一夕累积的。那些平日生活中的小事,蚕食鲸吞人的热情,热情一点点被消耗殆尽,失望和沉重一层层压上来,最后一根稻草轻飘飘落下,哗啦一声,希望沉入水底。 Since my reading skills have deteriorated, was wondering what to do and this circumstance happened to present itself.

Well am getting a headache now and will logoff, should not push myself too much.
2 x

User avatar
snowflake
Orange Belt
Posts: 197
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2015 11:21 pm
Location: Midwest USA
Languages: English (N), Mandarin (intermediate)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1292
x 237

Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Sat Aug 07, 2021 9:09 pm

It’s been ages since I checked in….

Things continue to be stressful for me due to the job, an illness in the family, and the pandemic situation. I got away from working on listening comprehension with the local Mandarin speaking group and am starting to ease back into that. I plan to again start chorusing the old Glossika material probably towards the end of September.

My overseas Taiwanese chat partner mentioned the YouTuber “莫彩曦Hailey” which I’m checking out.

In starting to think again about working on my Mandarin, I am reminded about the differences between Taiwanese and mainland usage (running into it). Right now it’s irritating, given my current frame of mind. My Taiwanese chat partner and some American friends living in Taiwan have been encouraging me to overlook it since probably 80% is the same. That probably sounds odd to most people though with my local group having mostly northerners and my ties to Taiwan, that’s being practical. My language skills aren’t necessarily good enough to switch back and forth from one usage to another as needed. There have been times when talking, I was stuck trying to remember the mainland equivalent and to be expedient used my Taiwanese default. Given my circumstances, my Mandarin is a mix of Taiwanese and mainland usage.
4 x

User avatar
snowflake
Orange Belt
Posts: 197
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2015 11:21 pm
Location: Midwest USA
Languages: English (N), Mandarin (intermediate)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1292
x 237

Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Tue May 31, 2022 6:53 pm

Early this year I finally acknowledged that my motivation to work on Mandarin was totally gone. And with the frustration of being in the local Mandarin speaking group, which was a primary factor in squashing motivation, I mostly backed away from the group. About 1-1/2 months afterwards I found that my motivation started to slowly return! About the same time, very supportive friends from a prior Mandarin speaking group (about a 1-1/2 hour drive away) invited me to join their group online. The gist is that I’m now chorusing the old Glossika GSR material and am slowly going back to doing my prior activities. I will continue to not really participate in the local Mandarin speaking group. About 4 years of being with them totally killed my motivation so I really have no desire to be in that environment. In all this my listening comprehension has changed. While my vocabulary has drastically dropped due to disuse, it seems that word boundaries are clearer than before. Reading-wise it feels like I’m back to the days when I was using “Remember The Hanzi “.

With Taiwan’s handling of Covid currently changing, I am hoping to be able to visit there again next year.

For people unfamiliar with me, I am an older ethnic Chinese woman who was born in the U.S. and grew up here. My parents were Toishanese and spoke no Mandarin. So my experiences with native Mandarin speakers generally do not conform with others working on Mandarin.
7 x

User avatar
snowflake
Orange Belt
Posts: 197
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2015 11:21 pm
Location: Midwest USA
Languages: English (N), Mandarin (intermediate)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1292
x 237

Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Wed Jun 22, 2022 4:04 am

I am looking for the flash drive which has all my Glossika material, have the bad feeling that it may have been lost on a trip earlier this month. I thought that everything was backed up, burned to a dvd, but as we moved again this spring I can’t find a lot of things. And the last time I saw that dvd was 2 house moves ago.
:>(

In addition to the previous mentioned Friday evening online Mandarin meeting, I joined another on Saturday evening. I thought the Friday one was a subset of the Saturday meeting which was larger. But it seems that this group which had about 30 people meeting on Saturdays when I moved away about 4 years ago, split into smaller groups. Both the Friday and Saturday groups have some people who I know fairly well. Their enthusiasm and encouragement are a wonderful change.

Something sent to me last week…本周都好嗎?City name連續高溫這么熱,你那兒呢?如果出門你一定注意防暑。The writer is from Shanghai, unsure when she switched to using traditional characters.
1 x

User avatar
snowflake
Orange Belt
Posts: 197
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2015 11:21 pm
Location: Midwest USA
Languages: English (N), Mandarin (intermediate)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1292
x 237

Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Tue Jun 28, 2022 6:31 pm

Someone kindly gave me their Glossika material. This is a triangulation of English, Taiwanese Mandarin, and Hokkien. My Glossika Fluency 123 material was the mainland version. I planned to start where I left off on the mainland version and realized
1… the Taiwanese Mandarin translation is different enough from the mainland version that since I’m using the material for drilling, I have to restart from the beginning
2… Some of the Hokkien words sound very similar to Toishanese so am wondering whether that might mentally mess me up.

I haven’t made any inroads in the new material yet due to being tired from working a decent amount of overtime.

In searching for my Glossika material, a decent amount of material was unearthed…..found a CD with the F2 GSR audio so that I can reconstruct F1 clips 1 to 62 and all of F2. But again since I’m doing drilling, that wont help enough. I was wondering about signing up for a 1 month trial of the current Glossika material though really do not be fumbling around trying to figure out how to set things up to do audio drills. I also was thinking that if I could find my paper copies of the Glossika books, maybe a friend could be persuaded to record the sentences for me.
2 x

User avatar
snowflake
Orange Belt
Posts: 197
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2015 11:21 pm
Location: Midwest USA
Languages: English (N), Mandarin (intermediate)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1292
x 237

Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Tue Aug 02, 2022 9:43 pm

Checking in….

I found my Glossika Fluency mainland audios but given how far in I was with the Taiwanese Mandarin version, I continued with that….currently have about 18k reps and am at F1 clip 77.

I was asking my overseas Taiwanese chat partner about this usage which comes from a mainland online novel……
…白侧妃笑了下:“你还真会逞强啊,都到这个时候了,还装作没事人似的。”; When he got to 人似的 he didn’t know what it meant. My mainlander friends said that this is like saying that you’re xyz, but not really meaning it. It’s not used in spoken speech
.…萧兮兮见她不信,没办法,只能叹了口气。; He was fine with this.
…“如果你觉得这样想会让自己好受一些的话,那你就当我是在逞强吧。”; My overseas chat partner felt this was too long and instead came up with 如果你覺得會好受一點的話, 那你就當我在逞强吧

The person who gave me the Glossika English, Taiwanese Mandarin, and Hokkien triangulation also send MS Azure created audio for the 4th Harry Potter book. He also arranged to have my audio for the 2nd volume of Sayable Chinese cleaned up. That’s a translation of Alice Through The Looking Glass done by 趙元任 and read by him. I haven’t gotten around to listening to either of these audio readings in any depth yet. The Sayable Chinese audio still has some rough spots as the original audio quality has some extremely bad sections. We talked about finding people to read and record volumes 1 and 3 which a friend got for me via inter library loan. At first some of my local mainland friends were willing to do that until they looked at my copy of volume 2. The book uses traditional characters and is older so the characters are hand written. They found characters which were totally unfamiliar…and one of these persons is a university professor. Then another person found what she thought was Japanese which someone who is in his late 70s said is 老师拼音. They also had difficulties with the usage. The phrases one person pointed out to me as being odd were things I had heard from Taiwanese. The professor later mentioned that she thought the language was elegant. Anyhow my local mainland friends ended up suggesting that I find someone from Taiwan to do the readings. The fellow who gave me the Glossika audio asked his mother about this as she is from Taiwan. She did not recognize a good number of the characters on the page which I sent.

The above and the Glossika Taiwanese Mandarin material is making me think again about the differences between mainland and Taiwanese Mandarin. A long while back I met someone from Taiwan who is certified to teach Mandarin there. She talked about attending a class for what sounded like continuing education credits. The Mandarin teachers were all up in arms complaining, asking why there was a ton material out there that is outright wrong. I’m mentioning this due to how the Glossika Taiwanese material is making me think about the usage of 了and 要. Please don’t ask me to verbalize what I’m seeing/hearing. I’ve gotten used to there being differences and native speakers on both sides getting very taken aback.

I got a pdf of the first Harry Potter book which reportedly is required reading for elementary school children in mainland China. I’ve started fishing around looking for someone to read and record it.
4 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: garyb and 2 guests