Daily Sentences-reading or making: Ger-Eng

[Zhong]

When Mr. and Mrs. Dursley woke up on the dull, gray Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Mr. Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work, and Mrs. Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair.
None of them noticed a large, tawny owl flutter past the window.
-away: continuously or repeatedly, or in a busy way
▸I was still writing away when the exam finished.
▸Chris has been working away in the garden all day.

Als Mr und Mrs Dursley an dem trüben und grauen Dienstag, an dem unsere Geschichte beginnt, die Augen aufschlugen, war an dem wolkenverhangenen Himmel draußen kein Vorzeichen der merkwürdigen und geheimnisvollen Dinge zu erkennen, die bald überall im Land geschehen sollten.
trüb(e): dull/ grau: gray / draußen: outside
etw.A aufschlagen: to knock sth open
die Wolke / verhangen: dull
das Vorzeichen: sign / das Ding
etw.A erkennen: to see
Mr Dursley summte vor sich hin und suchte sich für die Arbeit seine langweiligste Krawatte aus, und Mrs Dursley schwatzte munter vor sich hin, während sie mit dem schreienden Dudley rangelte und ihn in seinen Hochstuhl zwängte.
die Krawatte: tie / der Stuhl; Stühle
langweilig: boring / munter: brisk
summen: to hum / aussuchen: to select / schwatzen: to gossip
zwängen: to force / schreien: to yell, scream | schrie, geschrien |
rangeln: to wrestle, bicker (to argue about things that are not important)
Keiner von ihnen sah den riesigen Waldkauz am Fenster vorbeifliegen.
der Waldkauz:[forest owl] brown owl; -käuze / der Wald; Wälder
an etw.D vorbeifliegen: to fly past | flog vorbei, vorbeigeflogen |

[Zhong]

It was customary for the men in the family to remain on Simon’s homestead, Finch’s Landing, and make their living from cotton. The place was self-sufficient: modest in comparison with the empires around it, the Landing nevertheless produced everything required to sustain life except ice, wheat flour, and articles of clothing, supplied by river-boats from Mobile.

Simon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the North
and the South, as it left his descendants stripped of everything but their land, yet
the tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the twentieth
century, when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his
younger brother went to Boston to study medicine. Their sister Alexandra was the
Finch who remained at the Landing: she married a taciturn man who spent most
of his time lying in a hammock by the river wondering if his trot-lines were full.
When my father was admitted to the bar, he returned to Maycomb and began his
practice. Maycomb, some twenty miles east of Finch’s Landing, was the county
seat of Maycomb County. Atticus’s office in the courthouse contained little more
than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama. His
first two clients were the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail.
Atticus had urged them to accept the state’s generosity in allowing them to plead
Guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were
Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. The
Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb’s leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding
arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to
do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-itcoming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody. They persisted in
pleading Not Guilty to first-degree murder, so there was nothing much Atticus
could do for his clients except be present at their departure, an occasion that was
probably the beginning of my father’s profound distaste for the practice of
criminal law.
During his first five years in Maycomb, Atticus practiced economy more than
anything; for several years thereafter he invested his earnings in his brother’s
education. John Hale Finch was ten years younger than my father, and chose to
study medicine at a time when cotton was not worth growing; but after getting
Uncle Jack started, Atticus derived a reasonable income from the law. He liked
Maycomb, he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people, they
knew him, and because of Simon Finch’s industry, Atticus was related by blood
or marriage to nearly every family in the town.
Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In
rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the
courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog
suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in
the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by
nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps,
and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of
the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four
hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go,
nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries
of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people:
Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.
We lived on the main residential street in town— Atticus, Jem and I, plus
Calpurnia our cook. Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us,
read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment.
Calpurnia was something else again. She was all angles and bones; she was
nearsighted; she squinted; her hand was wide as a bed slat and twice as hard. She
was always ordering me out of the kitchen, asking me why I couldn’t behave as
well as Jem when she knew he was older, and calling me home when I wasn’t
ready to come. Our battles were epic and one-sided. Calpurnia always won,
mainly because Atticus always took her side. She had been with us ever since Jem
was born, and I had felt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember.
Our mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence. She was a Graham
from Montgomery; Atticus met her when he was first elected to the state
legislature. He was middle-aged then, she was fifteen years his junior. Jem was
the product of their first year of marriage; four years later I was born, and two
years later our mother died from a sudden heart attack. They said it ran in her
family. I did not miss her, but I think Jem did. He remembered her clearly, and
sometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go off and play
by himself behind the car-house. When he was like that, I knew better than to
bother him.
When I was almost six and Jem was nearly ten, our summertime boundaries
(within calling distance of Calpurnia) were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house
two doors to the north of us, and the Radley Place three doors to the south. We
were never tempted to break them. The Radley Place was inhabited by an
unknown entity the mere description of whom was enough to make us behave for
days on end; Mrs. Dubose was plain hell.
That was the summer Dill came to us.
Early one morning as we were beginning our day’s play in the back yard, Jem and
I heard something next door in Miss Rachel Haverford’s collard patch. We went
to the wire fence to see if there was a puppy— Miss Rachel’s rat terrier was
expecting— instead we found someone sitting looking at us. Sitting down, he
wasn’t much higher than the collards. We stared at him until he spoke:
“Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” said Jem pleasantly.
“I’m Charles Baker Harris,” he said. “I can read.”
“So what?” I said.
“I just thought you’d like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin‘ I
can do it…”
“How old are you,” asked Jem, “four-and-a-half?”
“Goin‘ on seven.”
“Shoot no wonder, then,” said Jem, jerking his thumb at me. “Scout yonder’s
been readin‘ ever since she was born, and she ain’t even started to school yet. You
look right puny for goin’ on seven.”
“I’m little but I’m old,” he said.
Jem brushed his hair back to get a better look. “Why don’t you come over,
Charles Baker Harris?” he said. “Lord, what a name.”
“‘s not any funnier’n yours. Aunt Rachel says your name’s Jeremy Atticus Finch.”
Jem scowled. “I’m big enough to fit mine,” he said. “Your name’s longer’n you
are. Bet it’s a foot longer.”
“Folks call me Dill,” said Dill, struggling under the fence.
“Do better if you go over it instead of under it,” I said. “Where’d you come from?”
Dill was from Meridian, Mississippi, was spending the summer with his aunt,
Miss Rachel, and would be spending every summer in Maycomb from now on.
His family was from Maycomb County originally, his mother worked for a
photographer in Meridian, had entered his picture in a Beautiful Child contest and
won five dollars. She gave the money to Dill, who went to the picture show
twenty times on it.
“Don’t have any picture shows here, except Jesus ones in the courthouse
sometimes,” said Jem. “Ever see anything good?”
Dill had seen Dracula, a revelation that moved Jem to eye him with the beginning
of respect. “Tell it to us,” he said.
Dill was a curiosity. He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to his shirt, his hair
was snow white and stuck to his head like duckfluff; he was a year my senior but
I towered over him. As he told us the old tale his blue eyes would lighten and
darken; his laugh was sudden and happy; he habitually pulled at a cowlick in the
center of his forehead.
When Dill reduced Dracula to dust, and Jem said the show sounded better than
the book, I asked Dill where his father was: “You ain’t said anything about him.”
“I haven’t got one.”
“Is he dead?”
“No…”
“Then if he’s not dead you’ve got one, haven’t you?”
Dill blushed and Jem told me to hush, a sure sign that Dill had been studied and
found acceptable. Thereafter the summer passed in routine contentment. Routine
contentment was: improving our treehouse that rested between giant twin
chinaberry trees in the back yard, fussing, running through our list of dramas
based on the works of Oliver Optic, Victor Appleton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
In this matter we were lucky to have Dill. He played the character parts formerly
thrust upon me— the ape in Tarzan, Mr. Crabtree in The Rover Boys, Mr. Damon
in Tom Swift. Thus we came to know Dill as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed
with eccentric plans, strange longings, and quaint fancies.
But by the end of August our repertoire was vapid from countless reproductions,
and it was then that Dill gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.
The Radley Place fascinated Dill. In spite of our warnings and explanations it
drew him as the moon draws water, but drew him no nearer than the light-pole on
the corner, a safe distance from the Radley gate. There he would stand, his arm
around the fat pole, staring and wondering.
The Radley Place jutted into a sharp curve beyond our house. Walking south, one
faced its porch; the sidewalk turned and ran beside the lot. The house was low,
was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago
darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles
drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away. The remains
of a picket drunkenly guarded the front yard— a “swept” yard that was never
swept— where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance.
Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom. People said he existed, but Jem and
I had never seen him. People said he went out at night when the moon was down,
and peeped in windows. When people’s azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was
because he had breathed on them. Any stealthy small crimes committed in
Maycomb were his work. Once the town was terrorized by a series of morbid
nocturnal events: people’s chickens and household pets were found mutilated;
although the culprit was Crazy Addie, who eventually drowned himself in
Barker’s Eddy, people still looked at the Radley Place, unwilling to discard their
initial suspicions. A Negro would not pass the Radley Place at night, he would cut
across to the sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked. The Maycomb school
grounds adjoined the back of the Radley lot; from the Radley chickenyard tall
pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts lay untouched by the
children: Radley pecans would kill you. A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a
lost ball and no questions asked.
The misery of that house began many years before Jem and I were born. The
Radleys, welcome anywhere in town, kept to themselves, a predilection
unforgivable in Maycomb. They did not go to church, Maycomb’s principal
recreation, but worshiped at home; Mrs. Radley seldom if ever crossed the street
for a mid-morning coffee break with her neighbors, and certainly never joined a
missionary circle. Mr. Radley walked to town at eleven-thirty every morning and
came back promptly at twelve, sometimes carrying a brown paper bag that the
neighborhood assumed contained the family groceries. I never knew how old Mr.
Radley made his living— Jem said he “bought cotton,” a polite term for doing
nothing—but Mr. Radley and his wife had lived there with their two sons as long
as anybody could remember.
The shutters and doors of the Radley house were closed on Sundays, another
thing alien to Maycomb’s ways: closed doors meant illness and cold weather
only. Of all days Sunday was the day for formal afternoon visiting: ladies wore
corsets, men wore coats, children wore shoes. But to climb the Radley front steps
and call, “He-y,” of a Sunday afternoon was something their neighbors never did.
The Radley house had no screen doors. I once asked Atticus if it ever had any;
Atticus said yes, but before I was born.
According to neighborhood legend, when the younger Radley boy was in his
teens he became acquainted with some of the Cunninghams from Old Sarum, an
enormous and confusing tribe domiciled in the northern part of the county, and
they formed the nearest thing to a gang ever seen in Maycomb. They did little, but
enough to be discussed by the town and publicly warned from three pulpits: they
hung around the barbershop; they rode the bus to Abbottsville on Sundays and
went to the picture show; they attended dances at the county’s riverside gambling
hell, the Dew-Drop Inn & Fishing Camp; they experimented with stumphole
whiskey. Nobody in Maycomb had nerve enough to tell Mr. Radley that his boy
was in with the wrong crowd.
One night, in an excessive spurt of high spirits, the boys backed around the square
in a borrowed flivver, resisted arrest by Maycomb’s ancient beadle, Mr. Conner,
and locked him in the courthouse outhouse. The town decided something had to
be done; Mr. Conner said he knew who each and every one of them was, and he
was bound and determined they wouldn’t get away with it, so the boys came
before the probate judge on charges of disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace,
assault and battery, and using abusive and profane language in the presence and
hearing of a female. The judge asked Mr. Conner why he included the last charge;
Mr. Conner said they cussed so loud he was sure every lady in Maycomb heard
them. The judge decided to send the boys to the state industrial school, where
boys were sometimes sent for no other reason than to provide them with food and
decent shelter: it was no prison and it was no disgrace. Mr. Radley thought it was.
If the judge released Arthur, Mr. Radley would see to it that Arthur gave no
further trouble. Knowing that Mr. Radley’s word was his bond, the judge was
glad to do so.
The other boys attended the industrial school and received the best secondary
education to be had in the state; one of them eventually worked his way through
engineering school at Auburn. The doors of the Radley house were closed on
weekdays as well as Sundays, and Mr. Radley’s boy was not seen again for
fifteen years.
But there came a day, barely within Jem’s memory, when Boo Radley was heard
from and was seen by several people, but not by Jem. He said Atticus never talked
much about the Radleys: when Jem would question him Atticus’s only answer
was for him to mind his own business and let the Radleys mind theirs, they had a
right to; but when it happened Jem said Atticus shook his head and said, “Mm,
mm, mm.”
So Jem received most of his information from Miss Stephanie Crawford, a
neighborhood scold, who said she knew the whole thing. According to Miss
Stephanie, Boo was sitting in the livingroom cutting some items from The
Maycomb Tribune to paste in his scrapbook. His father entered the room. As Mr.
Radley passed by, Boo drove the scissors into his parent’s leg, pulled them out,
wiped them on his pants, and resumed his activities.
Mrs. Radley ran screaming into the street that Arthur was killing them all, but
when the sheriff arrived he found Boo still sitting in the livingroom, cutting up the
Tribune. He was thirty-three years old then.
Miss Stephanie said old Mr. Radley said no Radley was going to any asylum,
when it was suggested that a season in Tuscaloosa might be helpful to Boo. Boo
wasn’t crazy, he was high-strung at times. It was all right to shut him up, Mr.
Radley conceded, but insisted that Boo not be charged with anything: he was not
a criminal. The sheriff hadn’t the heart to put him in jail alongside Negroes, so
Boo was locked in the courthouse basement.
Boo’s transition from the basement to back home was nebulous in Jem’s memory.
Miss Stephanie Crawford said some of the town council told Mr. Radley that if he
didn’t take Boo back, Boo would die of mold from the damp. Besides, Boo could
not live forever on the bounty of the county.
Nobody knew what form of intimidation Mr. Radley employed to keep Boo out of
sight, but Jem figured that Mr. Radley kept him chained to the bed most of the
time. Atticus said no, it wasn’t that sort of thing, that there were other ways of
making people into ghosts.
My memory came alive to see Mrs. Radley occasionally open the front door, walk
to the edge of the porch, and pour water on her cannas. But every day Jem and I
would see Mr. Radley walking to and from town. He was a thin leathery man with
colorless eyes, so colorless they did not reflect light. His cheekbones were sharp
and his mouth was wide, with a thin upper lip and a full lower lip. Miss Stephanie
Crawford said he was so upright he took the word of God as his only law, and we
believed her, because Mr. Radley’s posture was ramrod straight.
He never spoke to us. When he passed we would look at the ground and say,
“Good morning, sir,” and he would cough in reply. Mr. Radley’s elder son lived
in Pensacola; he came home at Christmas, and he was one of the few persons we
ever saw enter or leave the place. From the day Mr. Radley took Arthur home,
people said the house died.
But there came a day when Atticus told us he’d wear us out if we made any noise
in the yard and commissioned Calpurnia to serve in his absence if she heard a
sound out of us. Mr. Radley was dying.
He took his time about it. Wooden sawhorses blocked the road at each end of the
Radley lot, straw was put down on the sidewalk, traffic was diverted to the back
street. Dr. Reynolds parked his car in front of our house and walked to the
Radley’s every time he called. Jem and I crept around the yard for days. At last
the sawhorses were taken away, and we stood watching from the front porch
when Mr. Radley made his final journey past our house.
“There goes the meanest man ever God blew breath into,” murmured Calpurnia,
and she spat meditatively into the yard. We looked at her in surprise, for
Calpurnia rarely commented on the ways of white people.
The neighborhood thought when Mr. Radley went under Boo would come out,
but it had another think coming: Boo’s elder brother returned from Pensacola and
took Mr. Radley’s place. The only difference between him and his father was
their ages. Jem said Mr. Nathan Radley “bought cotton,” too. Mr. Nathan would
speak to us, however, when we said good morning, and sometimes we saw him
coming from town with a magazine in his hand.
The more we told Dill about the Radleys, the more he wanted to know, the longer
he would stand hugging the light-pole on the corner, the more he would wonder.
“Wonder what he does in there,” he would murmur. “Looks like he’d just stick
his head out the door.”
Jem said, “He goes out, all right, when it’s pitch dark. Miss Stephanie Crawford
said she woke up in the middle of the night one time and saw him looking straight
through the window at her… said his head was like a skull lookin‘ at her. Ain’t
you ever waked up at night and heard him, Dill? He walks like this-” Jem slid his
feet through the gravel. “Why do you think Miss Rachel locks up so tight at
night? I’ve seen his tracks in our back yard many a mornin’, and one night I heard
him scratching on the back screen, but he was gone time Atticus got there.”
“Wonder what he looks like?” said Dill.
Jem gave a reasonable description of Boo: Boo was about six-and-a-half feet tall,
judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch,
that’s why his hands were bloodstained—if you ate an animal raw, you could
never wash the blood off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face;
what teeth he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most
of the time.
“Let’s try to make him come out,” said Dill. “I’d like to see what he looks like.”
Jem said if Dill wanted to get himself killed, all he had to do was go up and knock
on the front door.
Our first raid came to pass only because Dill bet Jem The Gray Ghost against two
Tom Swifts that Jem wouldn’t get any farther than the Radley gate. In all his life,
Jem had never declined a dare.
Jem thought about it for three days. I suppose he loved honor more than his head,
for Dill wore him down easily: “You’re scared,” Dill said, the first day. “Ain’t
scared, just respectful,” Jem said. The next day Dill said, “You’re too scared even
to put your big toe in the front yard.” Jem said he reckoned he wasn’t, he’d passed
the Radley Place every school day of his life.
“Always runnin‘,” I said.
But Dill got him the third day, when he told Jem that folks in Meridian certainly
weren’t as afraid as the folks in Maycomb, that he’d never seen such scary folks
as the ones in Maycomb.
This was enough to make Jem march to the corner, where he stopped and leaned
against the light-pole, watching the gate hanging crazily on its homemade hinge.
“I hope you’ve got it through your head that he’ll kill us each and every one, Dill
Harris,” said Jem, when we joined him. “Don’t blame me when he gouges your
eyes out. You started it, remember.”
“You’re still scared,” murmured Dill patiently.
Jem wanted Dill to know once and for all that he wasn’t scared of anything: “It’s
just that I can’t think of a way to make him come out without him gettin‘ us.”
Besides, Jem had his little sister to think of.
When he said that, I knew he was afraid. Jem had his little sister to think of the
time I dared him to jump off the top of the house: “If I got killed, what’d become
of you?” he asked. Then he jumped, landed unhurt, and his sense of responsibility
left him until confronted by the Radley Place.
“You gonna run out on a dare?” asked Dill. “If you are, then-”
“Dill, you have to think about these things,” Jem said. “Lemme think a minute…
it’s sort of like making a turtle come out…”
“How’s that?” asked Dill.
“Strike a match under him.”
I told Jem if he set fire to the Radley house I was going to tell Atticus on him.
Dill said striking a match under a turtle was hateful.
“Ain’t hateful, just persuades him—‘s not like you’d chunk him in the fire,” Jem
growled.
“How do you know a match don’t hurt him?”
“Turtles can’t feel, stupid,” said Jem.
“Were you ever a turtle, huh?”
“My stars, Dill! Now lemme think… reckon we can rock him…”
Jem stood in thought so long that Dill made a mild concession: “I won’t say you
ran out on a dare an‘ I’ll swap you The Gray Ghost if you just go up and touch the
house.”
Jem brightened. “Touch the house, that all?”
Dill nodded.
“Sure that’s all, now? I don’t want you hollerin‘ something different the minute I
get back.”
“Yeah, that’s all,” said Dill. “He’ll probably come out after you when he sees you
in the yard, then Scout’n‘ me’ll jump on him and hold him down till we can tell
him we ain’t gonna hurt him.”
We left the corner, crossed the side street that ran in front of the Radley house,
and stopped at the gate.
“Well go on,” said Dill, “Scout and me’s right behind you.”
“I’m going,” said Jem, “don’t hurry me.”
He walked to the corner of the lot, then back again, studying the simple terrain as
if deciding how best to effect an entry, frowning and scratching his head.
Then I sneered at him.
Jem threw open the gate and sped to the side of the house, slapped it with his
palm and ran back past us, not waiting to see if his foray was successful. Dill and
I followed on his heels. Safely on our porch, panting and out of breath, we looked
back.
The old house was the same, droopy and sick, but as we stared down the street we
thought we saw an inside shutter move. Flick. A tiny, almost invisible movement,
and the house was still.

[Zhong]

(A writing practice in English.)

Stanley had been spading up the vegetable garden in the backyard for quite a while when, out of the corners of his eyes, glancing at a flash of lightning fell at a distance.
眼角瞥見遠處有閃電落下時，Stanley 已經在後院的菜園翻土翻了好一陣子。

He stopped the shovel and started counting silently, looking up while wiping the sweat from his face. The clouds in the gray sky were thick.
他停下鏟，開始默數，拭去臉上汗水時抬頭瞧。灰色的天空烏雲密佈。

The thunder sounded before he counted twenty.
數不到二十雷聲就響起了。

[księżycowy]

(A writing practice in English.)

Stanley had been spading up the vegetable garden in the backyard for quite a while when, out of the corners of his eyes, glancing at a flash of lightning fell at a distance.

My suggestions:
Stanley had been spading up the vegetable garden in the backyard for quite a while when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of lightning fall in the distance.

Others might have other suggestions.

The other two sentences seem fine to me.

EDIT: Fixed the verb "fall" after rereading what I had suggested.

[Zhong]

My suggestions: ...

(Thank you with a casual chat:)
Hi, quite a long time since our last chat. How long have you been active again here? I suppose you are studying hard somewhere in British Kingdom for your PhD degree on a Bible-related theme. I hope everything goes fine with you during the past years, especially when COVID-19 fired the whole world. Do you now still have time to learn Taiwanese or Chinese?

I've halted all my regular language learning and almost left Internet for more than one year until this post you corrected. I am very glad to receive your comment, or I should say surprised for I had expected none. I have to admit I've actually forgotten I still have an acquaintance here. What's your name, please? Shy and sorry to ask but honestly I've even forgotten it.

Thank you again, Ks.

[księżycowy]

(Thank you with a casual chat:)

No thanks necessary. I just happened to see you post again, and felt the urge to give help where I could. (I did fix my correction slightly, by the way.)

How long have you been active again here?

It's in fits and starts lately, as I have a bunch of things on my mind recently. I'm mostly lurking at the moment.

I suppose you are studying hard somewhere in British Kingdom for your PhD degree on a Bible-related theme.

I'm back in the States, but otherwise that's the current plan yes.

Do you now still have time to learn Taiwanese or Chinese?

As it happens I'm (albeit slowly) learning to pronounce Taiwanese and Chinese with some pawing at a textbook for Taiwanese. It's more of a side project, as I have other pressing things to study, but progress is being made regardless. My main goal is just to get used to how to speak a tonal language (in the sense of learning the tones, consonants, and vowels, not words or grammar yet). I can sense that the tone sandhi in Taiwanese will mess with my mind already. I intend to continue beyond just pronunciation, just not exactly sure when unfortunately.

I've halted all my regular language learning and almost left Internet for more than one year until this post you corrected.

I will not pry, but I was curious what had happened once I realized that it had been so long.

What's your name, please? Shy and sorry to ask but honestly I've even forgotten it.

I'm not sure if I told you my actual name, but regardless that's not something I'll post on the public part of the forum.

It's nice to hear from you again as well.

[Zhong]

My main goal is just to get used to how to speak a tonal language (in the sense of learning the tones, consonants, and vowels, not words or grammar yet). I can sense that the tone sandhi in Taiwanese will mess with my mind already. I intend to continue beyond just pronunciation, just not exactly sure when unfortunately.

Last year I found in YouTube a video very helpful for memorizing the tone sandhi (but I've forgotten it now.) It's basically a clockwise one-position shift along a circle of four tones.
I quickly searched in YouTube just now but failed to find the video I mentioned, although there are some others. I wrote down a note, however; I can pass it to you through my LINE or an email.

If you need help for your pronunciation in either Chinese or Taiwanese, we can also do that thru LINE or some other apps.

I was curious what had happened once I realized that it had been so long.

I can't remember precisely what the reasons were, either. I decided to leave the forum where we met each other because I was banned. I thought it was an unfair treatment for me but I decided not to spend time arguing. Later l found and joined a forum, focused on artificial languages regardless, where Lgboy was one of the moderator and went on learning both English and German there. I met many friendly helpers there. At the same time I also joined some other forums, this one included. I did have some unpleasant experiences in one of them, sad to say. To sum up, maybe I just felt tired at last and needed some rest.
One of my learning problems, however, is that I can't manage to memorize the precious comments and corrections I receive, and it makes me feel guilty to waste time of you all. I thought I might need to improve my study strategy. (But I didn't work on it afterwards; instead, I turned to learn volleyball and physical training for around a semester. That was a big try at my age, adding that I was never good at sports. It's another fun time of learning but I think I hurt my aged shoulder by practicing serving the ball too often. XD)

[Zhong]

(A writing practice in English.)

Very soon the rain came down, when Stanley was taking a shower.
雨來得很快，當時Stanley在沖澡。

It came fiercely from the very beginning; raindrops banged violently on the roof as if baskets after baskets of pebbles were pouring down.
一開始雨就來得猛烈；
雨滴砰砰撞擊屋頂，彷彿小石子一籃一籃地往下倒。

And the rain got even heavier and heavier.
接著雨還愈下愈粗。

Such a big rain, he thought, associating with the story of flood and ark in the Bible as he stepped out of the bathroom.
好大的雨，他想起了聖經裡的故事，洪水和方舟。

[księżycowy]

Last year I found in YouTube a video very helpful for memorizing the tone sandhi (but I've forgotten it now.) It's basically a clockwise one-position shift along a circle of four tones.
I quickly searched in YouTube just now but failed to find the video I mentioned, although there are some others. I wrote down a note, however; I can pass it to you through my LINE or an email.

If you need help for your pronunciation in either Chinese or Taiwanese, we can also do that thru LINE or some other apps.

Thank you! I'll certainly be in touch if I need the extra help.

[LinBruce]

Shortly after, the rain began to fall just as Stanley was taking a shower.

Right from the start, the rain came down fiercely, with raindrops pounding on the roof as if countless baskets of pebbles were being poured out with great force.

And the rain grew heavier with each passing moment.

"Such heavy rain," he thought. His mind immediately drawing a connection to the Biblical tale of the flood and the ark, as he stepped out of the bathroom.

These are my revise for you. I hope it helps. Feel free to contact me if you need further assistance.