A bit of chinese and a novel draft in english

[AndyMeg]

I was right. This log is extremely interesting. Very well done!

Thanks!

You truly are understanding these Chinese lines.

This makes me so happy!

There are a couple of small notes/corrections that I can make, but I'll do them in the same color as the background so you can avoid reading them if you like.

I almost never watch historical dramas, so the notes I'm giving might be skewed toward more modern usage.

(the text below is hidden, highlight to reveal)

Thanks a lot for being so considerate!

I wasn't sure if I should read your notes or not because I took the snapshots in order to compare my progress. But in the end I decided that for me it is more important to increase my understanding, so I read your notes and I'm so glad I did! Thank you so much!!!! They have helped me to understand things a lot better!

And I can still use the snapshots to compare how well I can understand similar phrases/sentences in the future

[AndyMeg]

Happy New Year, everyone!!!

This is a summary of what I've been doing:


Chinese Dramas:

First a quick review about the way I'm watching/using them:

Ever Night (将夜)

I first skim-through the raw episodes, then, when the english subs are ready, I go back and fully watch the episodes with the english subs on. And I ocassionally pause the video to compare the english subs with the chinese subs.

Fights Break Sphere (斗破苍穹)

I had already seen half of this drama before I decided to re-start it. I'm currently on the beginning of episode one and I'm watching it with dual subs (english-chinese), pausing at each line, reading the chinese subs first, trying to guess the meaning and then comparing it to the english line before moving on. I'm not using any other tool (dictionaries, etc) for this, just the parallel bilingual subs (and I pay a lot of attention and try to connect the chinese words/grammar with their equivalents in english).

A Step into the Past -2018- (寻秦记)

This one doesn't have english subs, so I'm watching it with chinese subs only.

While I watch I pay attention to the subs and when I feel that I have enough familiarity with something I pause the video and pay a lot of attention to the line and try to guess its meaning. Sometimes I can understand full (usually short) lines, sometimes I understand fragments here and there and sometimes I only understand a few keywords. I'm not using external tools (like dictionaries) because it would interrupt the rhythm of the story and my enjoyment of it. The only special case in which I look for a word (or, more rarely, a grammar point) is when not knowing what it means starts to bug me and throws off my concentration/engagement with the story. But most of the time I'm fine with not understanding everything or anyting in a line. And the context from the drama (their non verbal language, the story's logic, etc) helps me to keep engaged and get the gist of what's going on most of the time.

Sometimes (or, actually, a lot of times) it happens to me that I know I've seen the word or hanzi in another place (maybe in the Memrise course, or in the Chinese Grammar Wiki, or in another drama) but I can't remember its meaning. What I usually do then is to tell my brain to pay more attention to this word/hanzi in the future so that I have more possibilities of remembering its meaning when I find them again "in the wild".

As the way I'm working with this drama is the most demanding activity from the ones I'm doing with dramas, I usually do it for about 20 minutes at most before needing a pause. I'm currently on episode 4 and highly enjoying the story so far.

Ever Night (将夜)

I think it has officially ended at episode 60 but I'm around episode 51. Luckly, it seems that there will be a season 2 but, sadly, it seems like the male lead won't be able to continue because he had already signed for another drama before the renewal for a second season, and now his current schedule doesn't allow him to film for both dramas

I've really enjoyed this drama so far and now I feel really curious about the novel it is based on. In the future I would like to read it, but I know I have a long way to go before I'm prepared for that challenge, so for now I'll just keep enjoying learning with/from TV/Web dramas.

Fights Break Sphere (斗破苍穹)

I finished episode one and started episode 2. I'm starting to remember (to recognize, at least) words that repeat a lot.

I think this is actually the hardest activity with dramas because I'm paying close attention to each and every line.

A Step into the Past -2018- (寻秦记)

I finished episode 4 and I'm past halfway through episode 5.

Memrise

So far I had been working with it in a mixed way: half the time I did the suggested activities and half the time I just did whatever I wanted to do. Then, around the 200 words mark I got tired of the slow pace and decided to stop doing the reviews and only see new words every time. I reached up to the first 300 words and then got tired of it as well.

Then I realized that what I was studying is based on the HSK levels and ordered by frequency with the list from subtitles, so some very frequent words from subs don't appear until later because they are from higher HSK levels. I think it was realizing this that made me finally quit and look for alternatives.

I'm no longer using Memrise and, instead, I made my own list (with definitions) based on the 1000 most frequent words from subtitles plus the 1000 most frequent words in general, plus a few other words. I'm still playing around with this list and trying to find a way to work with it in an enjoyable way.

Chinese Grammar Wiki

This is my progress so far:

: 61 / 95 Chinese Grammar Wiki - A2 level :

I bought the intermediate ebook too.

This is an example of how I work through the grammar points:

1) Read the general explanation of the grammar point.
2) Read the first example sentence in chinese. Try to figure out its meaning. Sometimes I use the Kindle's dictionary to look for an unkown word or to confirm if my guess of the meaning of the word was right.
3) Read the english translation/equivalent and compare it to my guess.
4) Move on to the next example sentence and repeat the process.

Hanzi with the "Japanese Kanji Study" app

For now I've stopped working the way a I was and now I'm just practicing the stroke order while looking at the meanings of the chinese characters from the 6500 most frequently used words in subtitles.

[AndyMeg]

I found some interesting videos on Youtube (in spanish):







And also a channel with movie summaries (with dual chinese-english subs). Here one video from that channel:

[AndyMeg]

Quick update:

My initial plan was to learn a bit of chinese until early February 2019 and then go back to fully focus on korean, but I feel so excited about this chinese learning adventure that I don't want to stop any time soon. So I decided to work on both languages this year. For the next few months I think I'll be dedicating about 70% of my "language learning time" to chinese (as this is currently my weakest language and, thus, the one that requires more attention) and the other 30% to korean.

I'll keep my chinese and my korean learning logs separate for now. For korean I'll just continue with my old 2018 log: My korean adventure: fun and enjoyment as a guide. And for chinese I'll continue here.

Now, back to chinese:

I finished watching Ever Night (将夜). I think they are currently filming the second season. Not sure when it will premiere (with chinese dramas it is sometimes hard to make an accurate guess). I would like to eventually start reading the novel the drama is based on, so I plan to keep working with the drama for a while to get more used to the story, the terms used, the characters, etc.

I've recently been watching a drama called "One and Another Him" (我和两个TA --> This actually means "I/Me and two of him", right?). It doesn't come with chinese subs, and the english translation is progressing very slowly. When I reached the last episode that currently has complete english subtitles I thought how nice it would be if besides learning how to read chinese subs, I could also understand some spoken mandarin.

So far, while working with chinese subs, I've started to spontaneously associate some written chinese with its mandarin spoken counterpart. It is funny how sometimes, while I watch bits of dramas without chinese subs, my mind connects the spoken mandarin with the hanzi and I can almost see fragments of "chinese subtitles" in the back of my mind. It happens with words/expressions like: 好, 我知道, 如果, 为什么, 谢谢你, 喜欢, 我喜欢你, 来了, 走, etc. And sometimes I even kind of "see" the 了 at the end of a sentence, even if I don't imagine/know the hanzi of the rest of the words used in that sentence.

I would like to experience those happenings more frequently as they help me to understand bits of spoken mandarin without subs, so I decided to rewatch Ever Night (将夜), but this time just trying to pay attention to the spoken part while looking at the chinese subs and trying to connect both. Here I'll go more for an extensive approach, so I probably won't be pausing the video that much, even if sometimes it is too fast for me to connect the hanzi with their spoken counterpart. Let's see how it goes!

[AndyMeg]

I ended up taking a (mostly unintended) break from chinese learning. By the end of January I was feeling tired of my chinese learning activities, and it was also hard trying to balance two languages (korean and mandarin chinese). Then, starting February, I got really busy and couldn't pay much attention to language learning and, as I was already feeling tired, I just went with the flow and stopped most of my language learning activities.

I continued watching chinese TV/Web dramas in my free time, but with english subs and without paying much attention to the chinese subs except for occasional glances at some words or expressions.

I think I needed that break, because now I feel motivated again to go back to learning a bit more (mandarin) chinese. But I'm still rather busy, so I probably won't be updating this log as frequently, so that I can focus most of my free time on actual learning.

Now that I'm back to (mandarin) chinese learning, I finished reading all the entries from the "Chinese Grammar Wiki - A2 level":

: 95 / 95 Chinese Grammar Wiki - A2 level :

I plan to start reading the "Chinese Grammar Wiki - B1 level" entries this week.

I think that's all for now.

I'll make a new update in a few weeks or so

[AndyMeg]

The break from Mandarin was way longer than expected. I stopped watching chinese dramas for a long while and started to focus more on improving my spoken english (pronunciation and flow) which took away the little time I had available for Mandarin.

I did start reading the "Chinese Grammar Wiki - B1 level" entries but only got to the 10th grammar point or so before stopping indefinitely.

Now that I'm not focusing on my spoken english I have more time available, but I'm using most of it for korean-related activities.

I've recently started to watch chinese dramas again and it has resurfaced my frustration at not finding english or spanish subtitles for some of the chinese dramas I want to watch. This frustration is a great motivator for language learning. Currently I don't have enough time available to dedicate to written Mandarin as I did before, but in a few months I want to do something similar to what I did last year while taking a break from korean. So, in order to prepare the terrain for that, I decided to do just one activity for now: practice the hanzi of the 1000 most frequent chinese words in subs (around 755 characters in total) using the "Kanji Study" app I've mentioned before.

As a little anecdote, some time ago I found a thai drama on Youtube with chinese subs. It was great to be able to understand some bits here and there thanks to the chinese subs. This experience also made me think that Mandarin chinese and thai may have some similarities in grammar because a part of the spoken thai seemed to fit nicely with the word order of the chinese subs.