Mostly Mandarin

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Dani
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1457
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Mostly Mandarin

Postby Dani » Sun Oct 18, 2015 12:14 pm

Hey there!
I couldn't find a dedicated thread for introductions, so I'm doing this here. Hi, I'm Dani, in my twenties and I'm a language enthusiast. My mother tongue is German and, as you might have guessed, this log will mainly be about learning Mandarin. I'd say I'm currently intermediate and looking to improve in basically all areas. I also learned French in school, but I retained only little. I plan to work on it at some point, but at this moment Mandarin is more important to me.

There will be a tiny bit of Japanese, as I might be going to Japan in about a month and want to be able to say a couple of sentences. So far, I've taught myself the kana. The focus will be on Mandarin, though. Currently, I'm reading a short story collection that has been translated from Japanese called ZOO. The author is Otsu Ichi. They are mostly rather bloody, but I seem to enjoy reading crime fiction in Chinese. In German or English I prefer non-fiction.

I hope to update this log about once a week with whatever I've done, because doing it daily would be incredibly boring. I've set some goals for myself for the rest of the month and if I manage to achieve those, I might set more publicly. So far, I haven't been very good with monthly goals. But we'll see.

It's nice to meet you all! :D
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Adam
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Languages: English (N)
Mandarin Chinese (have been trying to learn for a long time)
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Other languages - learning the scripts of Arabic, Hebrew, Tamil, Burmese, Korean, Hindi; have dabbled in Spanish, Russian, and Ancient Greek.
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1449
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Re: Mostly Mandarin

Postby Adam » Sun Oct 18, 2015 9:56 pm

Hi 大霓!
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Re: Mostly Mandarin

Postby rdearman » Sun Oct 18, 2015 10:08 pm

你好。looking forward to reading you log.
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Dani
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Re: Mostly Mandarin

Postby Dani » Mon Oct 19, 2015 9:20 am

Thank you! I hope it"ll be a little interesting, whether you are learning Mandarin or not.

As for studying; I'm not feeling too hot at the moment, so I'll be taking it slow today. So far I have listened to the first episode of 棄業偵探 and like it so far. I might write a short review for lang8 when I have listened a little further. Apart from that I did my Anki reviews and am now reading 單身不在心慌慌 by 森下惠美子, a comic translated from Japanese. It‘s an easy read and very enjoyable. I realized she has done others, so I'll probably get more.
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Dani
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Re: Mostly Mandarin

Postby Dani » Sat Oct 24, 2015 1:45 pm

The last few days I tried to (unsuccessfully) watch Chinese Let's Play videos on youku. Unfortunately they stop and load every few minutes or stop doing anything at all. It's frustrating, because I love watching these kinds of videos and finding things like this in Chinese will make watching more so much more achievable..

Anyway. I read three volumes of Comic Essays by Morishita Emiko in Chinese and the newest of them, 單身不再心慌慌 was the one I liked most. Maybe it's because I identify with a lot of what she describes, but I'm really looking forward to reading more of her works. She also used a ton of words that I learned just before reading these books, which is always a great reinforcement.

I wrote a little something on lang8, because I have decided that I need to step up my output. Here is the corrected version. Or one of them, I chose those corrections that left most of the original text intact. I apparently forgot about the existence of 其他..

你有空的時候喜歡看什麽樣的書?

一般來説衹要我覺得很有意思,就看看。我一陣喜歡看這類的書,然後一陣喜歡看其他的種類。可是別的書類再有趣,也不會不看科普類的書。科普之類真的是我最愛的文體。

如果你不太清楚‘科普’是什麽樣的文體,我來給你介紹一下,科普書是作家給老百姓説明各種各類的科學題目的書。因爲受衆不是科學家而是普通人,科普書的風比較容易看得懂。

雖然我不是科學家,也不是在大學念科學的學生,可是我對科學非常感興趣。 動物世界,自然環境還理學,化學 ......我什麽都想知道。我最看完的是關於古埃及歷史的一本書,沒想到它的歷史這麽苦,其實以前我以爲古埃及的國王都是公平又對人民有好意。他們當然不是這樣好,好像我有點兒天真。

你喜歡看紀錄片嗎?科普就像紀錄片一樣可看。看科普書讓我大開眼界又增加知識。


There's far too much red for such a short text..
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Dani
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Re: Mostly Mandarin

Postby Dani » Sat Oct 31, 2015 2:57 pm

The last few days I mostly read Comics, so there wasn't much actual studying. I did however find a couple of Chinese TV series, that I'm interested in so I'll hopefully spend some time on those in November.
I also registered for the 6WC with Japanese. (I'm so used to type 'Chinese' so I accidentally registered with that first. I hope the undo worked.) I made a twitter account just for this, because I normally don't use it at all, but I might follow some people who tweet in Japanese to get some Kana practice. My account is @rawr_bo.
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Dani
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Re: Mostly Mandarin

Postby Dani » Mon Nov 02, 2015 3:27 pm

We're two days into the Six Week Challenge and I have done no Japanese at all. I also track my Chinese, which means I at least see some of the stuff I do, but I really need to do some Japanese. These two days have shown me that if I don't do any Japanese in the mornings, chances are I'm not dong any at all. So, from now on I'll try to fit some time in before my classes.
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Dani
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Re: Mostly Mandarin

Postby Dani » Thu Nov 05, 2015 2:48 pm

I didn't so too much for Japanese, I'm afraid.. I spend a lot more time on Chinese.

I just started watching 步步驚心 (first episode on yt), which so far is something I can watch. Let's wait until the intrigues and love triangles start, I usually have a rather low tolerance for those. I was surprised that understanding it was so easy, but I guess watching it without the Chinese subtitles would result in a significant drop in comprehension.
If I can keep watching all the way through I plan on reading the novel as well. I'll probably read it slowly while looking up everything I don't know, which will take me a while.
In order to finish my current read, I plan on reading one short story a day, one is usually about thirty pages, so it should go quickly. I have another short story collection by the same author, so I might read that one next.
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Dani
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Re: Mostly Mandarin

Postby Dani » Tue Nov 17, 2015 12:31 pm

I'm busy preparing for some exams, so I get even less done than usual. I have thought about a study plan which I'll try out after I'm back from Japan; maybe that'll do it, because it's not like I have nothing to read or watch.
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lukbe
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Re: Mostly Mandarin

Postby lukbe » Tue Nov 17, 2015 12:52 pm

It seems you've read or have been reading works translated from Japanese into Chinese. I have previously read a few volumes of Manga translated from Japanese; 進擊的巨人 mostly as I bought both the Chinese and the original Japanese versions. However, I am unlikely to do this in the future. I get the feeling that the translators too often tend to leave Kanji words as they are, even when there is probably a better word to translate it in Chinese. Overall, a lot of the language used in translated manga feels somewhat off to me. That's why I don't like these very much. I wonder if this happens with translations of other kind of works too.

But it might be just me, though. I wonder if you have had the same impression?
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