Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

[snowflake]

Am more tired than I realized. Today in my Mandarin speaking group people were asking about my Chinese name which I wrote in the air for them. Someone, in surprise, mentioned that my name is popular in Hong Kong. I meant to reply that my parents are Cantonese but what came out was that I’m a Hong Konger. I should avoid making decisions for a while.

This group goes around taking turns reading aloud. When it was my turn the person after me immediately started to read. Everyone else protested. I suspect my reading is painful to this persons' ears. Something else that happened was that at one point they were talking about how Taiwanese and Cantonese speakers sometimes treat them. This topic surprised me since the group leader is a Hong Konger who attended university in Taiwan and married a Taiwanese. This group is generally more diverse than my other group. My other group is all mainlanders. Maybe 3-5 times a year a Taiwanese person will attend. The leadership of today's group includes a Taiwanese couple and someone from the Philippines.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5CP8h4Hw2Y
www.dawen.us/downloads/

[snowflake]

Cannot find TV+2.0 in Google Play on my Android device though am downloading other apps for Chinese TV.

The friends that I typically visit in Taiwan will be here in the US next year. I’ve been vacillating back and forth about whether to go overseas in 2016 at all. At the moment I’m thinking of going to Taiwan for 2 weeks traveling around on my own. This makes me nervous since one of the things I’d like to do is travel up/down the east side of Taiwan.

The above two items has me thinking about the pseudo-immersion environment and adding more variability.

Generally I think right now the most important things to work on, for me, on are....
• Grammar; Traditional approaches to studying grammar tend to make my eyes glaze over.
• Word usage (word choice in a particular context)
• Vocabulary; I need to use/hear a word repetitively over time otherwise it’s quickly forgotten.
I bought “Common Chinese Patterns 330” and am thinking about how to use it in conjunction with a grammar workbook that I’ve had for a while.

[snowflake]

I've been on-and-off watching "Love Me If You Dare" on YouTube which is based on the book 他来了，请闭眼 by 丁墨. A search in YouTube on either the English title or the Chinese name of the book will bring up the episodes. This drama might have wider appeal since the male character is a criminal psychologist. It's basically a crime thriller/romance story.
http://lmfyd.blogspot.com/ fan English translation of the book
http://dramaforreal.com/ fan English recap of the TV drama episodes
To find the book online, google "他来了 请闭眼 txt". 丁墨 has other online books though I find her writing difficult to read. Often when I find an interesting enough book and discover that it's been made into a TV drama, I stop reading and instead watch the drama. I tend to dislike Chinese audio books due to how the readings are done. Anyhow, 丁墨 books are popular enough that there's another book of hers which will be made into a TV drama.

Next week is that conference held in Mandarin. Today I received an information email which is in traditional characters. Got out some recordings from prior conferences and got excited when I realized that the recordings have accurate subtitles. I have recordings for two different conferences (two different years). I also have one set of recordings without subtitles, basically that year's workshops. So it's three sets of records, 9-10 disks per set. For the subtitled recordings, one year uses traditional characters, the other simplified. So there are subtitles for the introductions, group songs, announcements, main speakers, etc. I plan to check what conference recordings are available for other years. The sponsoring organizations rotate so while there's a local conference each year, the content and presentation varies. I have to also assume that the recordings may widely vary.

It's also time to order more movies....

[snowflake]

"Love Me If You Dare" episodes got deleted from YouTube, oh well.

I bought 2 sets of DVDs at the conference this past week. These are lectures/seminars given by an English speaking (academic) lecturer whom I really like. One disk set has English audio with both traditional and simplified subtitles. The other disk set has English with Mandarin translation from a series of lectures given in Taiwan. Unfortunately that disk set has no subtitles. I purchased the MP3s of this weeks’ conference as there will be no DVDs nor MP4s. People from both my Mandarin speaking groups attended the conference so hopefully I can ask them questions about the audio. I’m on the mailing list for the organization that produced the DVDs mentioned in my prior post so will look at what they make available. Really felt like banging my head at the conference due to listening comprehension gaps, am a glutton for punishment. It is tough learning Mandarin and now I'm looking at specialized content?!

I signed up for the output challenge, audio only and am off to a nice start doing drills from beginning DLI material. I will probably also do readings from podcast dialogues....CLO, PopUp Chinese, etc. I was initially looking at recording the introduction from the Disney movie "Tangled" but the amount of prep seemed a bit much at the time.

[snowflake]

“Love Me If You Dare” episodes are back on YouTube, go figure.

Started watching a Mandarin dubbed Korean drama that was purchased back when I first started “studying” Mandarin…. Basically I purchased two Korean dramas way back when and those have been sitting in my collection all this time. I generally am lukewarm about mainland and Taiwanese dramas. Initially a series might seem very interesting but that is generally due to the novelty of being new. This blasé attitude is probably due to having American sentiments. Anyhow the appeal of this Korean drama was pleasantly surprising. Since it’s time to get more DVDs, I’m considering buying dubbed Korean dramas instead of my usual dubbed American movies, though will check out one website which supposedly has a decent number of Mandarin dubbed Korean dramas available to watch.

I’ve been chatting with my overseas Taiwanese language exchange partner for close to 6 full years now. His spoken English is better than my Mandarin as he spent two of those years in Australia. We talk a lot about weather. In part that’s due to the climate differences between Taiwan and the Midwest US. There are many issues that arise from weather such as flooding, damage from tornadoes, downed power lines, traffic accidents, etc. In our last conversation I was trying to explain what sleet is since locally we’ve had that on and off in the past two weeks. The closest reference point he has is hail storms. In the end I said that sleet is half ice and half snow.

I had been reading simplified characters for the majority of 2015 though in December was nudged to read traditional characters again. An online book site that I had been using was having a lot of problems and in looking for a substitute I ended up going to one with traditional characters. This was good since the conference after Christmas had most of their materials in traditional characters despite the majority of attendees being from the mainland. On that note, the conferences’ group songs used maybe 8-10 different fonts of which some were really hard for me to decipher.

For the output challenge I’ve been drilling;
…the exercises in “Speak Chinese” from the DLI site.
…a dialog from a contemporary short story. This particular story is written by a Taiwanese author.
…phrases from “美國家庭萬用親子英文” which was purchased in Taiwan. Of course I’m drilling the Chinese and not the English. This book is another “foot” in the world of traditional characters for me.
Anyhow my Taiwanese chat partner reminded me to pass my recorded audio to native speakers for corrections. The concern of course is fossilizing mistakes. It’s not feasible to pass every recording to a native speaker but I can forward what I think is pretty decent.

Changes...pulled out some text, am tired and thought those sentences really didn't add much.

[snowflake]

Mullings.....

I was at the local Asian supermarket yesterday. Really need to regularly go there every weekend as it's a good place to hear Mandarin. It’s super crowded Saturday mornings so more Mandarin can be heard at that time. That said, Sundays are less busy so it’s easier to interact with people. The women offering sample products tend to correct my Mandarin. They know I’m a non-native speaker by the time we get to what particular flavor am I interested in purchasing, pork and spinach, chicken, etc. And at this point I’m unsure how many different classifiers can be used to ask for several bags of whatever product. I remember hearing 个, 分, 袋, and maybe more. Even when I use a classifier that a prior sample offering person used, I often will get corrected. This sort of thing is common when talking with my friends as each person has their own habits. Example, several ways to say that you’re super busy...
忙死了
要的忙死
忙极了
下忙
Anyhow between the multiple sample tables and Mandarin speaking cashiers, I find it’s a nice relatively controlled way to interact with native speakers. Yesterday after getting home, I find that one product only had Chinese cooking instructions.

There’s also another place I should frequent regularly, a mall food court where 珍珠奶茶 (zhēnzhūnǎichá, bubble tea) can be purchased. I should check it out at different times to see how busy it is, etc.

I told my Sunday Mandarin speaking group how intimidating it is for me to read aloud in front of them. They’ve been extremely encouraging ever since then. The usual leader (H) of my Sunday group seems to feel that if I were to move overseas now, I'd be able to quickly make up any language gaps. When we were at the conference after Christmas, we saw V whom I haven't seen in years. Both H and V are Hong Kong born and raised and learned Mandarin in their university years. H learned while studying in Taiwan. V learned Mandarin while attending university in Hong Kong. Both of them have a Taiwanese spouse. I believe both of them function in Mandarin at probably C1/C2. Both of them personally felt that learning Mandarin was extremely difficult. Anyhow H was telling V what I can do in Mandarin now and they were overflowing in their praise for my progress. I usually feel like banging my head so am unused to people telling me how well I'm doing.

After seeing the "Exit AJATT" thread I checked to see if I can get into the Neutrino website, to my surprize I still can.

While I'm already behind in the output challenge in terms of recorded minutes, am finding this to be really helpful. I passed by some sentences to my overseas Taiwanese chat partner to check whether the Chinese sentences are used in regular conversation as opposed to usually written though rarely spoken. And of course sometimes the English equivalents are wrong, poor translation or maybe poor editing. This is reminding me of an exercise in SilverSpoon that I didn't recall seeing in Neutrino. The exercise was to record yourself doing some shadowing and forward the audio file to Khatz. Anyhow, I've been looking for a native Mandarin speaker locally who can periodically listen to some audio clips. While the first person here that I asked is unable to, the whole thing resulted in multiple emails back and forth, all written in simplified characters.

[snowflake]

Am looking at getting more media and discovered that I can get 5 books of an author whose writings I like, though can be on the tougher side to read, for about $25 USD from mainland Amazon. I’m considering buying those even though 3 of the 5 books are available online.

Phrases from “美國家庭萬用親子英文” that I’m having difficulties with;
• 我因为太兴奋而不睡着觉; It’s the 睡着觉 that I’m working through. Unfortunately using dictionaries adds to the confusion. I asked my Taiwanese overseas chat partner, thought I had it down, but then had to ask the people at my Fri night Mandarin speaking group. I believe that they’re saying shui4zhejue4. The mainlander, who helped me, elongated the jue4 compared to my Taiwanese friend. The Taiwanese friend said that the shorter way to say this is 睡不觉 (shui4bujiao2) which I’ve heard often enough. I’ll try 睡着觉 again with the people in my Sun group.
• 我们去吃些好吃的; the mainlander friend corrected my cadence to 我们去 吃些 好吃的. I was still having problems so he told me to use 我们去吃一些好吃的东西. I will work both sentences.
• 我会在周六跟周日哄你入睡; In listening to my recorded clip, the mainlander friend pretty much refused to look at the book and wanted to depend solely on what was heard. He ended up having to read this sentence and admitted that he didn’t expect sentences about caring for children (he has none). Anyhow the correction here was to prolong the 哄 (hong1) a bit. The definition for 哄 here is tuck as in tucking someone into bed. The dictionaries I checked did not have that definition. The closest thing was coax and here the tone does not match that definition.
Another thing my mainlander friend said, which someone on HTLAL said, that the pronunciation (relatively) doesn’t matter. What really matters are the tones. Get the tones right and people will understand me despite pronunciation hiccups. I’ve recently been working on the qu sound, curling my tongue, and nice R’s which showed in the recorded clip and probably in part triggered his comment.

I suspected this before though the exchanges yesterday brought it to mind again, I will probably end up speaking using mainland tones and usage despite using a decent amount of Taiwanese material. In terms of number of encounters and the distribution of those encounters over time, I speak to many more mainlanders.

I was talking to P about the difficulties of conversations especially in a group setting. P had difficulties understanding so I mentioned FSI lessons learned (http://sealang.net/archives/sla/gurt_1999_07.pdf) and talked about a setting that she is very familiar with where I understand the introductions but then get pretty lost when various people talk about their experiences. Her reply was that she thinks I should go to more group gatherings. I’m mentioning this because yesterday during snack time there was a lot of bantering back and forth about someone who wrote his wife a love letter, 情书. Snack time is at the very end of the meeting and I tend to leave relatively early. Now am thinking that I should stop doing that and stay. One challenge though is how to “be on” for an extended period as snack time can be 1 to 1 ½ hours. I guess one way to help manage it might be to constantly move around so that the switching itself becomes the mental rest. Another way of course would be to use English but have to be careful about that as once I start speaking in English with someone, switching back to Mandarin is harder for some reason.

Update; clarified the use of 哄.

[smallwhite]

我因为太兴奋而不睡着觉; It’s the 睡着觉 that I’m working through. Unfortunately using dictionaries adds to the confusion. I asked my Taiwanese overseas chat partner, thought I had it down, but then had to ask the people at my Fri night Mandarin speaking group. I believe that they’re saying shui4zhejue4. The mainlander, who helped me, elongated the jue4 compared to my Taiwanese friend. The Taiwanese friend said that the shorter way to say this is 睡不觉 (shui4bujiao2) which I’ve heard often enough. I’ll try 睡着觉 again with the people in my Sun group.

1. I think that should be "我因为太兴奋而睡不著觉", with "不" after the verb, and with "著". But it is totally possible that "着" and "著" get used differently across the Chinese-speaking world.

2. "睡不觉" should be "睡不著".
睡 = to sleep
睡著 = fallen asleep (you can't use it for "falling asleep")
睡不著 = can't fall asleep

我们去吃些好吃的; the mainlander friend corrected my cadence to 我们去 吃些 好吃的. I was still having problems so he told me to use 我们去吃一些好吃的东西. I will work both sentences.

Not sure what problem you had.
我们 ／ 去 ／ 吃 ／ 些 ／ 好吃的 = We ／ go ／ eat ／ something ／ yummy

哄你入睡

"哄" IS coax, but it doesn't have to be negative. A swindler can 哄 you into doing something for him. You can 哄 a street cat to come to you by saying, "Come here, kitty kitty. Want this fishy fishy, kitty kitty?". To 哄 children 入睡 is an attempt to get them to fall asleep （入睡 = enter sleep）. I imagine you sing lullabies, pat them, or say things like, "Close your eyes. If you close your eyes now, you can wake up earlier tomorrow and we can go to the park earlier tomorrow". I think you 哄 a baby 入睡 by rocking it in your arms and humming lullabies.

[snowflake]

Smallwhite, thanks for your comments they're really helpful

1. I think that should be "我因为太兴奋而睡不著觉", with "不" after the verb, and with "著". But it is totally possible that "着" and "著" get used differently across the Chinese-speaking world.

2. "睡不觉" should be "睡不著".
睡 = to sleep
睡著 = fallen asleep (you can't use it for "falling asleep")
睡不著 = can't fall asleep

This evening when recording, I realized that a sentence was incorrectly copied into my post. Hopefully I'll get it right this time.......
我因為太興奮而睡不著覺
is what the book has. Also when posting, I convert phrases into simplified since that is mostly what I use though interestingly enough there are times when it doesn't mentally register that I'm looking at traditional characters. Anyhow the follow up tomorrow may be interesting as my Sunday group is not composed solely of people from the mainland, unlike my Friday group. I'll ask about 睡不著/睡不着....believe I've been seeing 睡不觉/睡不覺 in my readings. This discussion about whether it's 著 or 觉 helps me in part to understand why this is more problematic for me. Also when googling, entries come up for both 睡不著 and 睡不觉.

"哄" IS coax, but it doesn't have to be negative. A swindler can 哄 you into doing something for him. You can 哄 a street cat to come to you by saying, "Come here, kitty kitty. Want this fishy fishy, kitty kitty?". To 哄 children 入睡 is an attempt to get them to fall asleep （入睡 = enter sleep）. I imagine you sing lullabies, pat them, or say things like, "Close your eyes. If you close your eyes now, you can wake up earlier tomorrow and we can go to the park earlier tomorrow". I think you 哄 a baby 入睡 by rocking it in your arms and humming lullabies.

The book translated 我会在周六跟周日哄你入睡 as I'll tuck you into bed on Saturday and Sunday. I see tucking a child into bed, singing lullabies, and the like as having positive connotations maybe because these relate to children. Interestingly, I don't view tucking a child into bed as necessarily coaxing them. I don't know if that is an American societal mindset or what. Another thing is that I do not view tucking someone into bed as necessarily just for children. For instance an adult can tuck their elderly parent into bed.

Onward and upward.....

[snowflake]

我因为太兴奋而睡不着觉; Due to a number of circumstances, the person who answered my questions on Sunday was a woman from LiaoNing which is in the mainland. She said that 睡 is sui4 and not shui4 which took me aback, and that the pinyin for 不着觉 is buzhao2jiao4. I got a recording of her saying the entire sentence. She agrees 睡不着 should be used, not 睡不觉. She thought I’d be better off saying 睡不著 instead of 睡不着觉. I already use 睡不著 in conversation though am still drilling 睡不着觉.

I’m liking using 美國家庭萬用親子英文 for drill phrases. There seems to be a nice amount of repetition and variation build in. For example;
我等不及要放暑假了
我等不及要去旅行了
我等不及礼拜六要开始了
我等不及要开始放假了
我等不及要过生日里
还剩下多少天呢？
奶奶快来了，我好开心喔 (BTW, I skip saying 喔 and the like)
我好高兴暑假开始了
我们到了吗？我等不及了
我对今天真的超兴奋的
等待让人好兴奋
你想收到什么礼物？
我想知道我会收到什么礼物
我因为太兴奋而睡不着觉
Any mistakes in these sentences are all mine.

It’s looking like I’ll be visiting Taiwan again in July this year. I am thinking of purchasing 全世界在用的英话旅遊會話8000. This book reportedly comes with a disk which has the sentences recorded in both Chinese and English.

Discovered that my singing voice is very weak so don't expect me to post any of these recordings for the audio challenge.