Essay Woes

I haven’t dropped off the face of the Earth. I’m just busy writing (and re-writing) an essay which I have to send off by Friday. Expect plenty of updates once I’ve finished piecing together my academic masterpiece.

Since I need to keep this short, I thought I’d forego a proper post and just share a few sites and articles that I bookmarked over the weekend.

• How I Learned Chinese in Only 2 Years – How one language learner was able to learn Mandarin in only two years. His tips for learning Mandarin can easily be applied to other languages so it’s worth a read, even if you have no plans to learn Mandarin.
• Sushi & Sumo - A language learner’s quest to learn Japanese by watching Japanese TV series.
• Laoshu505000’s Youtube Channel - This guy is simply amazing. He seems to have a real gift for languages and has a language learning collection which makes mine pale in comparison (and I thought I was the only person who collected random phrasebooks).

That’s all for now. Back to my essay…

Fun with FanFou

Sorry once again for the lack of posts. I’ve been a little unwell these past few days and we needed to take one of our cats to the vet this morning, so needless to say, I haven’t really had the time or enthusiasm to update the blog.

I’ve been trying my utmost best to improve my Chinese writing skills over the past few months as I haven’t written anything in Chinese since I graduated from university (which was almost 7 years ago…how time flies). I’m a little hesitant to write “normal” blog posts as my writing skills are rusty at best. Translating a Chinese text into English is one thing but writing a coherent piece of text in Chinese is a different kettle of fish. Remembering grammar rules and knowing how to use certain expressions and words is something that takes a certain amount of practice and, quite frankly, I think I need a LOT of practice before I decide I should embarrass myself with my shockingly poor Chinese writing skills (writing was always my weakest skill).

So I’ve set my sights low for the moment and have decided to start using FanFou.Com again. I created an account last September but I only used it a couple of times before getting bored with the lack of response. FanFou is a Chinese microblogging service which bears a striking resemblance to Twitter. One of the things I like about FanFou is the 随便看看 feature. This allows you to see the latest posts and is a fantastic way to improve your reading skills and learn some internet slang. I’m particularly fond of the 囧 character which appears regularly in people’s posts.  That one character expresses shock in a way that just can’t be described in words.

I’ve added a FanFou badge to the side menu as it seems like a good way of sharing my FanFou posts with anyone who’s interested. Read my pathetic Chinese and weep…

Links, Links, Links…

I’m still working on a post about the importance of learning Dutch so today I’m going to take the easy way out and share some links that I think are worth checking out.

• How Difficult is Chinese? -Liz has posted a great post about the challenges faced by people learning Chinese on her blog Pocket Cultures. Thoughts on learning Chinese were submitted by John Biesnecker, Ivy, a Singaporean blogger, and your’s truly.
• Mountain Songs - A fantastic website with hundreds of Chinese poems. The poems are mostly written in Classical Chinese and are accompanied by English translations and beautiful photos of the places they describe.
• Extreme Mandarin – A Chinese vocabulary blog with a difference. Yersi’s blog covers a wide range of topics, including Dungeons and Dragons, koala bears and cash.
• Chinese Sans 汉字 – John, author of Chinese Quest, has written a post about the limitations of learning Chinese (or Japanese) without learning the written language. I agree with what he has to say…I cannot make sense of anything written exclusively in pinyin.

That’s all for today. Stay tuned for some original content later this week.

有趣的汉字

It has been almost a week since my last proper update (not counting the two language learner interviews I posted on Saturday) so I thought it was time for me to prove that I’m still alive and well.

My partner has been away on business this week so I took the opportunity to catch up with some chores around the house and some reading. I just finished reading Khaled Hosseini’s book A Thousand Splendid Suns, a heartbreaking tale of two women growing up in Afghanistan. I really recommend it to anyone who hasn’t already read this wonderful book.

I’ve also been spending some time brushing up on my Mandarin as I rarely get the chance to use my skills these days (aside from the occasional translation). I discovered yet another video site, Ku6.Com, on Monday. It can be a little slow but you’ll be able to find hundreds of movies and TV series from all over the world. I watched a few episodes of a drama series called 中国家庭421, which comes complete with Chinese subtitles (perfect for anyone who wants to improve their listening skills). The expression “421″ refers to the composition of the modern Chinese family, where the average child is an only child with two parents and four grandparents, a social system which will put an enormous pressure on young Chinese to support a greying population (this also seems to be the case in many European countries). You can watch the first episode here.

I try to read at least one short text a day in order to keep my reading skills sharp. It’s amazing how I can still stumble upon unknown 汉字 despite years of study, especially in academic or literary works. What annoys me the most is that I have learnt some of these “unknown” characters in the past but have forgotten their meanings after months (years?) of not using them or coming across them in my reading. A Chinese teacher of mine always used to tell us that Chinese characters were our friends. If we didn’t spend time with them every day, they would slip away. An exaggeration, perhaps, but  a good point nonetheless. Mandarin is certainly a high-maintenance language…

Unknown characters that I stumbled upon this week include :

鸳 (yuān) – Mandarin duck (I’m pretty sure I came across this character once or twice during my time in China)

睿 (ruì) – astute, farsighted

嚣 (xiāo) – clamour

掬 (jú) – to scoop up with both hands

There are thousands upon thousands of Chinese characters, though many of these are rarely used in daily life. The exact number of characters needed for comfortable reading is a hotly debated topic. 3,000 is a good start but you’ll still come across unknown characters in the newspapers, especially in place names or anything that uses specialist jargon (e.g. articles on scientific issues). I like to liken the study of Chinese characters to Pokemon : you’ll spend years, perhaps decades, trying to catch them all.

Lost in Translation

I’m afraid there will be no new posts from me today (and possibly tomorrow) as I’m tied up with some translation work. I have one more language learner interview to post later this week and I hope to get back to regular posting within the next couple of days.

For now, I’d like to share a link to a random video archive that I stumbled upon during the weekend : CNC Max. It’s nowhere near as big as Tudou or Youku but it has plenty of interesting videos with Chinese subtitles. Perfect for anyone who finds it hard to follow spoken Mandarin.

Happy New Year, 新年快乐, 明けましておめでとうございます…

Happy New Year to all my readers! I hope 2009 has gotten off to a good start for everyone. 2008 was a rather bad year for my partner and I (we had several deaths in the family) so here’s hoping that 2009 is a much more pleasant and happy year. So far so good…

We had a great Christmas and New Year and really enjoyed our time off from work. My mother was here until early this morning and I’m glad I was able to take off so many days from work and do things with her (lots of shopping and sightseeing!). She’s now back in Gibraltar so I guess I can get back to blogging and looking forward to her next visit, whenever that may be.

Some news/update/thoughts :

• iKnow! has added some Mandarin courses to its ever-growing selection of language courses. The courses are aimed at intermediate/upper-intermediate students and seem to be only available in traditional Chinese. Nevertheless, they look pretty good and jam-packed with useful vocabulary and example sentences. A special thanks to unzum for bringing these new courses to my attention!
• I watched the film adaptation of The Kite Runner during the Christmas break and enjoyed listening to spoken Dari (which is closely related to Persian). I don’t have any immediate plans to learn the language but I did do a little research and came across this fantastic Dari resource : LearnDari.Net. You can find video lessons (with transcripts) here.
• I haven’t made any New Year’s resolutions yet though I have been giving some thought to my language learning objectives and wishes for 2009. I find it very hard to set myself concrete goals so I’ll probably settle for general goals, like my fellow language blogger Geoffrey Barto.
• I’ve added a few more language blogs to my blogroll, including Street-Smart Language Learning and John Biesnecker’s blog. If there are any language learning blogs you feel I’ve overlooked and should add to my blogroll, then feel free to leave a comment with links to them!
• A silly observation but I think the warning slips inside Kinder Surprise eggs are fantastic for language nerds such as myself. Not only do they give warnings about the small parts in every major European language, they also give warnings in Georgian, Armenian, Azeri, Chinese (traditional and simplified) and Arabic!

That’s all for now. It’s time for me to go and give some real thought to my language learning resolutions for 2009.