I wrote this last month, but I forget to hit "publish"!
- jp: finish RTK (1, 2, & 3) - thinking of it in terms of 3007 kanji is intimidating, but it breaks down to 9 kanji a day, or 63 kanji a week, which doesn't seem too bad. Actually, this has already changed. I'm thinking I don't like RTK so much anymore. Sticking *English* keywords on kanji is really getting to me. Also, learning them totally out of frequency order just isn't making sense for me now either. I'm going to learn the more common kanji first, and then maybe go back and do the rest in primitive-relatedness order. Maybe just focus on DeFrancis for now, too.
- jp: finish Assimil (currently halfway through active phase)
- ch: finish DeFrancis readers (beginning, intermediate, & advanced)
- ch: read HP 1 and 2
Is that really all I'm going to do? Of course not! But, those are goals I can track and realistically think I can complete within the year.
My further focuses in each of the four language areas will be:
Reading:
- jp - partially covered above, but also will try to catch up to the current fanta-jikan story podcasts
- ch - covered
Writing:
- jp - will continue with lang-8 posts
- ch - hopefully write my first Chinese lang-8 post
Listening:
- jp - fanta-jikan, drama, anime, jpod101
- ch - cpod, maybe start watching drama again, bbc news podcasts
Speaking:
- jp - no plans right now. I need to figure out how I'm going to approach this.
- ch - meetups, but I probably need more maintenance than that
... just my current thoughts on what I intend to accomplish in regards to language study this year.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
"home"
Visiting back 'home' usually comes with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I'm super-excited to get to see my brothers (and semi-excited to see my parents). On the other hand, I get to, once again, be entrenched in the quiet war zone of my parents' marriage. And, I know there's a decent chance I'll get into at least one argument with my mom.
'Home' is in quotes because it really felt different this time. My first couple of days back was an adjustment period. It felt more like I was on travel/visiting than being back in the comfort of home. The feeling of 'not being home' was a big shock, actually. Maybe it's because I haven't visited in over two years >_<
Arguments with mom, yes. Two this time. Except unlike the past, I wasn't alone in my plight. It was the three of us -- me, being reminded of just how important it is to keep my Chinese from deteriorating, D, trying to assert himself as a fully-aware adult with his own thoughts and opinions, and R, always analyzing and being quietly observant. I'm not sure we actually got any of our perspectives across, but I always hope that we really are making some minuscule progress, even if it's not immediately evident =/
The upsides include, of course, seeing family. And it felt sooo good. Visiting grandma and grandpa and seeing CL, JL, JX, and aunt and uncle. The last time I saw JJ/JM was probably more than eight years ago! Why so looong?? I always thought of myself as being independent and doing whatever I wanted, but in retrospect, maybe sometimes I was too afraid. I think it was hard for me to resolve my own mental block from all that drama during high school. I just wanted to escape, maybe.
We went out with my dad one morning to see his daily swimming routine. His diligence is absolutely amazing. Warm-up was jump rope. He didn't quite make 900 jumps like he'd hoped, but the 800+ jumps certainly made us tired just watching him. Then, he stood on the ice (the whole pool was frozen over) and re-made his little hole from the previous morning so that he'd have a place to dive in. And there he went, in and under. Wow.
Mom made a lot of good food. Unfortunately, my system wasn't ready for seafood meals every day T_T She also had some homemade wine to share, a really strong one from green grapes and a much sweeter, lighter one from red grapes. The latter one was really good ^-^
D, R, and I spent a lot of time together, watching stuff and just chatting. That was the one thing that really finally gave me a feeling of 'home'. D&R ^o^
'Home' is in quotes because it really felt different this time. My first couple of days back was an adjustment period. It felt more like I was on travel/visiting than being back in the comfort of home. The feeling of 'not being home' was a big shock, actually. Maybe it's because I haven't visited in over two years >_<
Arguments with mom, yes. Two this time. Except unlike the past, I wasn't alone in my plight. It was the three of us -- me, being reminded of just how important it is to keep my Chinese from deteriorating, D, trying to assert himself as a fully-aware adult with his own thoughts and opinions, and R, always analyzing and being quietly observant. I'm not sure we actually got any of our perspectives across, but I always hope that we really are making some minuscule progress, even if it's not immediately evident =/
The upsides include, of course, seeing family. And it felt sooo good. Visiting grandma and grandpa and seeing CL, JL, JX, and aunt and uncle. The last time I saw JJ/JM was probably more than eight years ago! Why so looong?? I always thought of myself as being independent and doing whatever I wanted, but in retrospect, maybe sometimes I was too afraid. I think it was hard for me to resolve my own mental block from all that drama during high school. I just wanted to escape, maybe.
We went out with my dad one morning to see his daily swimming routine. His diligence is absolutely amazing. Warm-up was jump rope. He didn't quite make 900 jumps like he'd hoped, but the 800+ jumps certainly made us tired just watching him. Then, he stood on the ice (the whole pool was frozen over) and re-made his little hole from the previous morning so that he'd have a place to dive in. And there he went, in and under. Wow.
Mom made a lot of good food. Unfortunately, my system wasn't ready for seafood meals every day T_T She also had some homemade wine to share, a really strong one from green grapes and a much sweeter, lighter one from red grapes. The latter one was really good ^-^
D, R, and I spent a lot of time together, watching stuff and just chatting. That was the one thing that really finally gave me a feeling of 'home'. D&R ^o^
Friday, December 4, 2009
december already?
One of my goals for before the end of the year -- done:
I finally got through putting up all our travel journal entries from this year (and a few post-travel entries that stayed in draft state until now) ^o^
I also picked out and customized a new look for the travel-only blog since the last one was so hurriedly put together. I really like the result, so much so, that I wanted to change my look here to it as well. But, it's probably better to keep the two looking different T_T
I can't believe I've been journaling here since '05! It wasn't consistent, but yay anyways! Since it's been awhile, I thought maybe I should run Xenu Link Sleuth just in case, and I'm glad I did... a bunch of the links in those old posts were broken >_<
Another goal for before the end of the year:
Put up all our travel photos from this year and *finally* look at those R-Y and V-S wedding pics from last year ^-^;;
I finally got through putting up all our travel journal entries from this year (and a few post-travel entries that stayed in draft state until now) ^o^
I also picked out and customized a new look for the travel-only blog since the last one was so hurriedly put together. I really like the result, so much so, that I wanted to change my look here to it as well. But, it's probably better to keep the two looking different T_T
I can't believe I've been journaling here since '05! It wasn't consistent, but yay anyways! Since it's been awhile, I thought maybe I should run Xenu Link Sleuth just in case, and I'm glad I did... a bunch of the links in those old posts were broken >_<
Another goal for before the end of the year:
Put up all our travel photos from this year and *finally* look at those R-Y and V-S wedding pics from last year ^-^;;
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Are you a banana-person?
I attended my second meeting for one of the Chinese conversation groups today. It was an Intermediate+ meeting and had more than three people -- yay! ^o^ Six people, actually: the organizer, me, a British guy and his wife from Shenzhen, a Caucasian guy who started learning Mandarin in the 70's (!), and a Thai-American guy in his 20's who just came back from nine months in Nanjing.
I think random conversation will help in filling in my active vocabulary gaps. I can study new vocabulary all I want but that doesn't directly translate into being able to actually use those words when I need/should/want. I already experienced the conversation today reviving words that used to be part of my active vocabulary but fell into passive state from non-use... words like 水平 (shui3ping2, when talking about my level of Chinese) and 税 (shui4, when we were talking about higher taxes in countries like Norway being a trade-off for extended social programs). Of course, I also learn new words... like 粵語 (yuèyǔ, Cantonese) and 國際關係 (guójìguānxì, international relations).
My word of the day has to be 香蕉人 (xiāngjiāorén). Huh? 香蕉? Banana?
The Shenzhen person asked Alex, the Thai-American guy, if he was a 香蕉人 (banana-person) when they first started chatting. Both Alex and I were quite confused until she explained it. It's used to describe someone whose appearance indicates they're from one culture but who internally is really of another culture. For example, many American-born Chinese fall under this category.
香蕉人 -- I like! ^o^
I think random conversation will help in filling in my active vocabulary gaps. I can study new vocabulary all I want but that doesn't directly translate into being able to actually use those words when I need/should/want. I already experienced the conversation today reviving words that used to be part of my active vocabulary but fell into passive state from non-use... words like 水平 (shui3ping2, when talking about my level of Chinese) and 税 (shui4, when we were talking about higher taxes in countries like Norway being a trade-off for extended social programs). Of course, I also learn new words... like 粵語 (yuèyǔ, Cantonese) and 國際關係 (guójìguānxì, international relations).
My word of the day has to be 香蕉人 (xiāngjiāorén). Huh? 香蕉? Banana?
The Shenzhen person asked Alex, the Thai-American guy, if he was a 香蕉人 (banana-person) when they first started chatting. Both Alex and I were quite confused until she explained it. It's used to describe someone whose appearance indicates they're from one culture but who internally is really of another culture. For example, many American-born Chinese fall under this category.
香蕉人 -- I like! ^o^
Thursday, October 15, 2009
language learning revisited: Chinese + Kanji/Hanzi
Chinese... is in a sad state. I can feel it deteriorating more and more as time goes on >_< I think getting to a more native level with my Chinese is desirable simply because I *am* Chinese and I'm far from starting from scratch. I don't know if that's enough motivation to keep it going in the long run, but we'll see.
I started listening to my old stash of cpod's Upper Intermediate and Advanced lessons again. Unfortunately, cpod is now entirely subscription-based and for my casual learning style, I don't think it's worth the $$. I also started reviving my Chinese vocab anki deck. It's hard to really feel motivated when there's hundreds and hundreds of cards due, but I'm trying to chip at it bit by bit. I never did continue reading the HPs like I had planned to, so I'll make that one of my goals for 2010.
In my search for a Japanese conversation group, I realized maybe I should also look for a Mandarin conversation group. I found two local ones, both a 20-minute drive away but in opposite directions. Both meet once every other week. For one, the meetings alternate between Beginner and Intermediate+ for each meeting. For the other, the meetings alternate between Beginner and Advanced.
The whole meeting-new-people-and-practicing-language thing really stresses the introvert side of me out, but I did attend one meeting of each group so far. What's funny is that it seems I scared everyone else away! Both times it was only three people total -- organizer, me, and one other person for one, and organizer, asst organizer, and me for the other! The other rsvped-Yes's didn't show >_< I have yet to find a Japanese conversation group.
I'm finally maybe getting 'serious' about learning Kanji/Hanzi, the initial reason being that I felt stunted not being able to read Japanese well.
Main resources:
- Heisig's RTK to learn the jouyou Kanji in a semi-sensible order according to shared components
- DeFrancis' Hanzi readers which teaches 1200 traditional characters by character frequency.
Despite many of the reading passages being very outdated (1977!), I think DeFrancis is a pretty good approach to increasing literacy. It's strange no one's published more updated readers using the same good approach. I guess it takes too much work.
The passages being outdated means I learn some, um, *really* useful vocabulary in the process, like 原子 (yuan2zi3, atom) and 原子能 (yuan2zi3neng2, atomic energy) in the current lesson!
I started listening to my old stash of cpod's Upper Intermediate and Advanced lessons again. Unfortunately, cpod is now entirely subscription-based and for my casual learning style, I don't think it's worth the $$. I also started reviving my Chinese vocab anki deck. It's hard to really feel motivated when there's hundreds and hundreds of cards due, but I'm trying to chip at it bit by bit. I never did continue reading the HPs like I had planned to, so I'll make that one of my goals for 2010.
In my search for a Japanese conversation group, I realized maybe I should also look for a Mandarin conversation group. I found two local ones, both a 20-minute drive away but in opposite directions. Both meet once every other week. For one, the meetings alternate between Beginner and Intermediate+ for each meeting. For the other, the meetings alternate between Beginner and Advanced.
The whole meeting-new-people-and-practicing-language thing really stresses the introvert side of me out, but I did attend one meeting of each group so far. What's funny is that it seems I scared everyone else away! Both times it was only three people total -- organizer, me, and one other person for one, and organizer, asst organizer, and me for the other! The other rsvped-Yes's didn't show >_< I have yet to find a Japanese conversation group.
I'm finally maybe getting 'serious' about learning Kanji/Hanzi, the initial reason being that I felt stunted not being able to read Japanese well.
Main resources:
- Heisig's RTK to learn the jouyou Kanji in a semi-sensible order according to shared components
- DeFrancis' Hanzi readers which teaches 1200 traditional characters by character frequency.
Despite many of the reading passages being very outdated (1977!), I think DeFrancis is a pretty good approach to increasing literacy. It's strange no one's published more updated readers using the same good approach. I guess it takes too much work.
The passages being outdated means I learn some, um, *really* useful vocabulary in the process, like 原子 (yuan2zi3, atom) and 原子能 (yuan2zi3neng2, atomic energy) in the current lesson!
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
language learning revisted: Japanese
Last month, I decided to get 'serious' about my language learning again. It must be one of those 'up' times in the rollercoaster phases I tend to go through with each of my interests. But when I compare my 'serious' study with those who are actual serious language learners on the HTLAL forums, it simply doesn't compare. I think however I go about it, I'll always be a casual language learner. Maybe it's just my style.
Japanese... has been on and off since April last year, but I do consider it my overall main language focus long-term (for now). The graphs from my anki deck give a rough feel for when I was more focused: Apr-08 to June-ish, maybe the beginning of Sep-08, late Nov into maybe Feb-09, and last month until now, a total of approximately seven or eight months maybe (though the total number of hours would be more interesting for me to know). I finally finished the passive phase of Assimil, which started off my Japanese studies last year, and am well into the active phase now ^o^
I think my original goal for Japanese was being able to fully understand anime and dramas without subs (Having a 'goal' is probably the reason I didn't stop after we came back from our KJ trip). That implies an entirely passive understanding of Japanese, which I no longer think is the full extent of where I eventually want to be with it. I can now understand a small percentage of anime without subs when I'm focused and it's not too complicated and the vocabulary isn't too specialized (specialized means parts of Yakitate (food processes), FMP (military or weapons-specific), etc.). At this point, I don't have a good idea of what my goal *is*, which is probably not a good thing >_<
Passively, I'm still listening to jpod101. I've caught up to their current podcasts, but I think I'll go back and do more work with the old lessons, too. That, anime, and I've recently discovered Drama CDs. Drama CDs are right along the same lines as those "Mission Europe radio adventures" I was so psyched about, but these are actually in a language I'm studying! I found drama CDs for HnG and FMA so far ^o^ I also came across a really cool podcast in which they read children's stories in Japanese, *and* each story has an associated transcript ^o^
Aside from Assimil's active phase, I just started posting on lang-8 to help with the active portion. I made my first post last month and will probably make my second this weekend. In reality, I think I need a *lot* more writing and speaking practice if I want to move forward. Ideally, I'd like to post once a week on lang-8, but I'm not sure if I'm disciplined enough to keep at it consistently >_<
I think I should probably also open a grammar book soon (the horror!) and follow some sort of structured approach to learning grammar, or something.
Japanese... has been on and off since April last year, but I do consider it my overall main language focus long-term (for now). The graphs from my anki deck give a rough feel for when I was more focused: Apr-08 to June-ish, maybe the beginning of Sep-08, late Nov into maybe Feb-09, and last month until now, a total of approximately seven or eight months maybe (though the total number of hours would be more interesting for me to know). I finally finished the passive phase of Assimil, which started off my Japanese studies last year, and am well into the active phase now ^o^
I think my original goal for Japanese was being able to fully understand anime and dramas without subs (Having a 'goal' is probably the reason I didn't stop after we came back from our KJ trip). That implies an entirely passive understanding of Japanese, which I no longer think is the full extent of where I eventually want to be with it. I can now understand a small percentage of anime without subs when I'm focused and it's not too complicated and the vocabulary isn't too specialized (specialized means parts of Yakitate (food processes), FMP (military or weapons-specific), etc.). At this point, I don't have a good idea of what my goal *is*, which is probably not a good thing >_<
Passively, I'm still listening to jpod101. I've caught up to their current podcasts, but I think I'll go back and do more work with the old lessons, too. That, anime, and I've recently discovered Drama CDs. Drama CDs are right along the same lines as those "Mission Europe radio adventures" I was so psyched about, but these are actually in a language I'm studying! I found drama CDs for HnG and FMA so far ^o^ I also came across a really cool podcast in which they read children's stories in Japanese, *and* each story has an associated transcript ^o^
Aside from Assimil's active phase, I just started posting on lang-8 to help with the active portion. I made my first post last month and will probably make my second this weekend. In reality, I think I need a *lot* more writing and speaking practice if I want to move forward. Ideally, I'd like to post once a week on lang-8, but I'm not sure if I'm disciplined enough to keep at it consistently >_<
I think I should probably also open a grammar book soon (the horror!) and follow some sort of structured approach to learning grammar, or something.
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