Reading Input
Completed another two books. The first was in the Roald Dahl's collection, James and the Giant Peach. 38,000 characters at 40 CPM. Two things that made this a challenging book: 1) Less dialogue and more descriptive writing (setting scenes, describing characters appearances). 2) Non-native vocabulary/hanzi choices. I've talked about this issue in the past when starting the Mandarin Companion books. I sometimes get the sense that the language being used isn't "authentic". In this book, the descriptive vocabulary and amount of unique hanzi set off the same suspicions. This could be a translation effect which is a well noted phenomena in western-translated Chinese literature. But I'm also beginning to wonder if this is just a reaction to different writing styles combined with learning the language and getting a sense for how people use it. Anyway, as I said last time, my intuition for Mandarin still needs thousands of hours of input, so I don't really trust my ability to determine what's authentic language.
The second book was the last Rainbow Bridge advanced graded reader, an abridged version of "Journey to the West". 25,000 characters at 61 CPM. This book has been on my radar for many months now. The last time I tried reading it was a few months ago before starting children's books and it was too difficult. Well, I picked it up a few days ago and ripped through it, not because it was good but because it was easy. The story was fun in that it tied together some famous Chinese fables from the other graded readers, like Chang'e, Sun Wukong, Jade Rabbit, Xuanzang, etc. But it was a really poorly executed translation. All 37 chapters were broken up into lessons, where characters were introduced at the beginning with challenging extensively detailed descriptions (way beyond what was necessary to know for the core story).
For example 灵感大王, a
"goldfish raised in a lotus pond by Guanyin, he listens to the goddess reciting Buddhist scriptures every day. Over time, he transforms into a demon because of the power of the words spoken by Guanyin, Soon after, he makes his way to the Togtian River with a ninepetal copper hammer and seizes the old tortoise's residence. He poses as a deity and requires the villagers living nearby to sacrifice their young children to him in return for favorable weather for farming"
All this for a two-sentence cameo at the end of the chapter. I understand that the essence of the rich heritage is in these characters, but please, for an abridged version, spare us the details. These descriptions at the beginning of the chapter were taking longer to read than the chapter itself so I ended up just reading the English translations. I almost did not finish, but the completionist in me pushed through. So that's it for graded readers! A chapter in my Mandarin learning journey is over:
Rainbow Bridge Graded Readers: / 15 higher books; 25 May 2020 - 12 Dec 2021
Listening Input
I think I've watched every Peppa Pig episode available on the Mandarin youtube channel, which is confusing, because there are hundreds of videos, but every video I seem to watch repeats the same ~eighty episodes. I circled back to using subtitles. My comprehension is solidly at a Refold Level 4 sometimes Level 5. More and more, I understand long stretches. And my short term memory is better in that I can repeat whole sentences after hearing them.
I've started watching a slightly more advanced (and entertaining) show on netflix called "Octonauts". It's a group of animals that live in an underwater base, adventuring in aquatic environments and helping marine life they encounter. Each episode is 10 minutes. The dub is actually quite good and some of the voice actors are really fun, particularly the mainlander accents. It's also less shrill than Peppa Pig, there's only so much giggling and crying an adult language learner can take..
Still doing a decent amount of passive listening which is slowly becoming more comprehensible. A youtube channel geared for learners (大鹏说中文-Speak Chinese With Da Peng) has a good series in which he interviews other learners. Most episodes the interviewees are really good, they speak slowly and with correct tones. However, there are other episodes that need to be avoided (interviewees speaking too fast, incorrect tones, with filler language 那个,很多,所以,等等。). I've been listening to these over and over for a few months, each time picking up new things.
Finally, I've been watching casual traveling vlogs on youtube. There's a lot of such channels, a young guy traveling solo through the Chinese country side. 阿龙的旅行 A Long Life is one that I've been enjoying recently. He uses simple, clear speech that I can (mostly) follow.
Overall Outlook
Happy with progress, noticing real comprehension gains. However, I'm beginning to notice I have less patience with certain learning content, particularly children's shows, graded readers, etc. Will be important in the next half year to start transitioning to more advanced native material, which I'm already doing for books but have yet to do with my listening input.
Goals
Ongoing goals:
□ Roald Dahl Collection: / 9 books
□ Read: /10,000,000 汉字
□ Study: / 5000 hours
Completed goals:
✓ HelloChinese Maincourse [14 Oct 2020 - 29 Nov 2020]
✓ HelloChinese Immersions [1 Dec 2020 - 6 March 2021]
✓ Heisig's Remembering the Simplified Hanzi Vol I [31 Jan 2020 - 22 April 2021]
✓ Read Rainbow Bridge Graded Readers; 20 starter books [04 May 2021 - 24 May 2021]
✓ Read Mandarin Companion Readers; 17 books [July 6th 2021 - Oct 8th 2021]
✓ Read Rainbow Bridge Graded Readers; 15 higher books [25 May 2020 - 12 Dec 2021]
Suspended goals:
X Read 500 HSK1-5 TCB articles in pinyin [read ~250 HSK1-3 articles; 1 Dec 2020 - 25 March 2021]
X Anki Spoonfed Chinese [reached 886/8017 cards; 25 Mar 2021 - 13 Aug 2021]
X Heisig's Remembering the Simplified Hanzi Vol II [never began]