Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

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snowflake
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Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Thu Mar 07, 2019 2:09 am

It’s pretty common for me to have motivation issues “studying” Mandarin. There are various aspects of Chinese culture which I really dislike and encountering those can be very demotivating. There is a woman at my current group who embodies a decent number of those. I have to interact with her and the episodes are draining me, guess the term is energy vampire. I finished the 2nd set in the MOOC intermediate Chinese, started the 3rd and have no energy to continue. I also am enrolled in Outlier’s “Chinese Character Masterclass” and haven’t set up my account. It’s time to buy tickets to Taiwan and I’ve looked at the dates and cost but haven’t actually purchased the tickets. Unsure what else to say right now.
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Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Sat Mar 16, 2019 10:53 pm

So I booked the tickets to Taiwan and have started back with the MOOC course. There are times the course is a little boring but with the varying vocabulary, my grammar weaknesses being pointed out, and the gentle pace, it overall has been a good experience. It’s making me think about trying to again work through “David and Helen in China” but being less of a slave to the answer key which drove me nuts (difference exercise sequence and numbering system) and instead relying more on my friends. Then wondered since I’m focusing more on mainland usage, maybe use a textbook specifically oriented toward that? After this MOOC course, there’s a wrap up course for the series so working with a text book would probably be in the fall.

I still haven’t set up my account for the Outlier Chinese character course.

Talked with a Mandarin speaking friend about the energy vampire at my local Chinese group…The friend agreed that the woman’s behavior is typical enough and advised I avoid her as much as possible.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An exercise some Chinese learners might be interested in......how to say in Mandarin; "Social media has changed the way we see the world but nothing has changed the reality and physics of human error," he said. "So we can't let social media drive decisions about reality." The quote is from a news article about the recent plane crash in Ethiopia.

From a northeasterner; 社交媒体改变了我们看世界的方式,但事实和人为错误的现象是没法丝毫改变的。他说。所以我们不能让对于事实的结论被社交媒体左右。

From a couple where one is from Beijing, the other from Shanghai;
(1)社交媒体虽然改变了我们观察世界的方式但并不能改变人类错误实质,他说,因此我们不能让社交媒体来决定我们对(世界)实质的看法。
(2)社交媒体的普及改变了我们看世界的角度,但人们在现实世界中会犯错却是个社交媒体不能改变的基本事实。所以当我们面对真实的情况,要做现实的决策之际,不该被社交媒体的意见所左右。

From a Taiwanese person; 他說:社群媒體改變了我們看世界的方式,但無法改變人為疏失的事實。所以我們不能讓社群媒體駕馭關於事實的決定。
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Wurstmann
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Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby Wurstmann » Sun Mar 17, 2019 10:44 am

snowflake wrote:It’s pretty common for me to have motivation issues “studying” Mandarin. There are various aspects of Chinese culture which I really dislike and encountering those can be very demotivating. There is a woman at my current group who embodies a decent number of those. I have to interact with her and the episodes are draining me, guess the term is energy vampire. I finished the 2nd set in the MOOC intermediate Chinese, started the 3rd and have no energy to continue. I also am enrolled in Outlier’s “Chinese Character Masterclass” and haven’t set up my account. It’s time to buy tickets to Taiwan and I’ve looked at the dates and cost but haven’t actually purchased the tickets. Unsure what else to say right now.


I don't get why you still 'study' Chinese. For me that would be way too boring. Watching lots of TV, reading books and maybe doing some Anki should be enough at this point.
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Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Mon Mar 18, 2019 9:09 pm

I've started watching the Australian production of "The New Legends of Monkey" on Netflix.


ロータス wrote:I understand the one from Beijing more than the one from the north easterner. Thanks for posting exercise, makes me hopeful for when I start reading more than just children's stories.

My current group has a number of people who identify themselves as northeasterners. I was at a Chinese New Year dinner with some of them where they mentioned that southerners are quite different. Of course I don't understand what those distinctions may be. I only know that my prior group had a good number of people who identified themselves as southerners and that this current groups' usage seems quite different. I asked my overseas Taiwanese chat partner about some of the phrases people in this group have used. The ones I showed him were spoken venacular, not colloquialisms, and not slang, but venacular speech which isn't taught.


Wurstmann wrote:I don't get why you still 'study' Chinese. For me that would be way too boring. Watching lots of TV, reading books and maybe doing some Anki should be enough at this point.

The value for me in taking a class or using a standard textbook is predominantly in identifying gaps. Since there are CEFR, HSK, TOCFL levels, etc there's value in "going back" to see what I "should know". A corollary is getting a sense of what my level may be. Anyhow, some friends have suggested that I enroll in classes which are conducted in Mandarin. I’m hesitant to even try that until after making it through an advanced textbook or advanced curriculum.
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Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Tue Mar 19, 2019 9:37 pm

Hmmm, maybe I should study how the previously mentioned northeasterner talks. She's expecting a baby any day now so I texted asking how she's feeling. Her answer was 还好,继续挺着呢。你感冒好没呢? She's using 挺 here to mean endure, hold out.
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snowflake
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Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Sun Mar 24, 2019 3:06 am

A daughter recently visited so we went out to a local Chinese restaurant. In these situations, I use some Mandarin interacting with the restaurant staff but with my husband and daughter not knowing any, a lot of English is also used. At one point the woman who waited on our table came by and asked my daughter if she was born here. After an answer of yes, the woman went on to say that she could tell due to her spoken English. That and an incident at work where someone assumed I was from overseas made me wonder how much my English grammar has deteriorated. My daughter noted that it is worse, that the Mandarin has affected it.

As mentioned I plan to tackle a textbook book, probably “David and Helen in China”. One of my on-again-off-again Taiwanese chat partners in the US has started working with me again. She thinks being structured is important and expects to be correcting my textbook assignments. I had asked her to correct some of my MOOC writing assignments as the class doesn’t grade or give feedback on those. To my surprise, her explanations are very detailed and understandable. The age of “David and Helen in China” alarmed her. That sort of thing has rarely been a concern for me. Anyhow I’m still mulling about using a mainland oriented text. And with the mentioned chat partner in the US pushing me, I may start David and Helen in China now, finish out the MOOC class but not take the next course in the series. I am running into mainland/Taiwanese differences again. One of the MOOC class quizzes had
我________他的电话号码了。
Possible answers were
想不起来
想不出来
想不上来
想不到
I answered 想不出来 as that’s how I speak. It was marked wrong. The message given was “Only "想不起来" means cannot recall.” So I had a conversation with my overseas Taiwanese chat partner. He said 想不起来 and 想不出来mean the same thing. It reminded me of 跳下去 and 跳下来. A Taiwanese Mandarin professor said that you can say 跳下来only if you were physically present when that occurred. To mainlanders the two phrases are pretty much the same. The difference is more in the distance jumped, 跳下去 is a little further, 跳下来 is a little closer. Hence my mental back and forth about a mainlander vs Taiwanese textbook.

In looking at different textbooks, I came across free downloadable audios for A Course in Contemporary Chinese;
https://mtc.ntnu.edu.tw/eng/book/A_Cour ... inese.html
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snowflake
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Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Sun Apr 07, 2019 4:00 pm

The below is from one of the MOOC class tests. An annoyance about the class is not getting feedback. So in addition to having friends correct my written assignments, when suspecting I might get a test question wrong (almost all my problems have been grammar) the question is copied and then sent off to a friend if my answer is marked wrong. In the below 2 questions, I was to choose the correct sentence. The ok means my Taiwanese friend thought the sentence was fine.

他们是上个星期结婚。-> ok
他们是上个星期结婚了。
他们是上个星期结的婚。-> ok
他们上个星期结了婚。-> ok

这场婚礼是在一个豪华的酒店里举行。-> ok
这场婚礼是在一个豪华的酒店里举行的。-> ok
这场婚礼在一个豪华的酒店里举行的。-> ok
这场婚礼是在一个豪华的酒店里举行了。

Afterwards he commented that he felt they were trying to be overly correct, 矯枉過正. This could be a mainland/Taiwanese difference, probably should pass the sentences to a mainlander friend. In any case, it makes me even more want to use a mainland oriented textbook and go over the material with a Taiwanese person. So I finished the MOOC class with the exception of needing to give feedback on other students’ final assignment as there are no others available for review. In looking at textbooks I thought “Chinese In Motion” would be nice. It’s geared towards students who are physically in China so the approach centers around “interviews”…introduce vocabulary and grammar, prep to talk to a native speaker about the chapter topic, “interview” native speakers on the topic, write a journal about the “interview”, discuss the “interview”, formally report on the “interview”. After receiving the book, I felt it was too big of a jump from what I’ve been doing so have started working David and Helen in China.

As part of getting ready to go to Taiwan this summer, I’ve started chorusing/shadowing the old Glossika material.
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Inst
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Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby Inst » Tue Apr 30, 2019 6:01 am

Keep going! Also, iirc, the difference between 去 and 来 is the directionality relative to the speaker. You use 去 if the person is going away from you, you use 来 if they're headed toward you. Go / Come is a fairly useful heuristic.
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snowflake
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Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Tue Apr 30, 2019 11:09 pm

Inst wrote:Keep going! Also, iirc, the difference between 去 and 来 is the directionality relative to the speaker. You use 去 if the person is going away from you, you use 来 if they're headed toward you. Go / Come is a fairly useful heuristic.

Guess I should have given more context about 跳下去 and 跳下来. I was in a class where everyone else came from a Mandarin speaking family. We were going over an assignment about the Chinese zodiac so everyone was telling their rendition of the story. One person talked about the animals going to the main hall in heaven with the rat riding on the back of the ox. Just before they got to the hall, the rat jumped off the ox. The story teller used 跳下来. Taiwanese would not say 跳下来 as they were not physically present.

Thanks for the encouragement!
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Re: Snowflake's Mandarin Log - Continued

Postby snowflake » Sat Jun 08, 2019 12:49 am

Checking in, not a lot to say….work, health, and motivation issues have resulted in not doing much. That said I find myself in another Mandarin speaking group that, like the other one, challenges my language skills. One of them sent a text, 我们看看有多少活再说。It took pouring over a dictionary to realize that she was using 活 to mean work. I'm working with this group on a specific project. Due to various circumstances, the project will be executed in English so they're accommodating my poor Mandarin skills.
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