The Language-Learning Thread

Not sure if I ever mentioned this site in here before, but I've been using lang8 for about a month now and it owns. I've been speaking with a few people through comments, but one guy in particular in messages quite a lot and he said when I go to Tokyo he'll show me around as well as show me nice places to live as I told him my intentions.

It's really cool to get friendly with people who are learning your language, while you're learning theirs. Basically you write journals and people comment/correct them and usually you'll go comment and correct theirs. It's a cool system.

www.lang-8.com

Parksey, dunno where you got that Chinese sentence from, but the bolded bit is grammatically incorrect. No wonder you had a hard time translating!

With the reading/writing/speaking revision, I'd say the weighting you give each is completely down to you as an individual and what you want to use the language for. I'm an all-rounder and am pretty confident in all aspects, but I have friends who preferred learning by going out and using the language, rather than doing reading and as such their spoken is very good, but their reading and writing is not so. Others prefer character learning and as such their knowledge is very very good, but their oral Chinese can sound a little archaic and inappropriate. Depends what you want to use it for mate.

I start my internship tomorrow.
Not entirely sure how I'm gonna go about learning all the technical terms for a car parts/steel treatment and manufacturing company.

Still, very excited though!

StayDead wrote:Not sure if I ever mentioned this site in here before, but I've been using lang8 for about a month now and it owns. I've been speaking with a few people through comments, but one guy in particular in messages quite a lot and he said when I go to Tokyo he'll show me around as well as show me nice places to live as I told him my intentions.

It's really cool to get friendly with people who are learning your language, while you're learning theirs. Basically you write journals and people comment/correct them and usually you'll go comment and correct theirs. It's a cool system.

http://www.lang-8.com

Just make sure he wont leave you dead in a bathtub full of sand.

Decided to do German as well. I'm remembering a lot more of it than I thought I would too, which is promising.

The Tell Me More software seems pretty good, coupled with a decent textbook, which should hopefully lead to fairly good retention and motivation. The ipod has loads of flash card apps too, so that should be useful. Then I should get a lot more practice at my evening classes from September, so I should improve a lot then, too.

Fluenz is really good, but it's hard to find a good copy of it, which is a shame.

My German and Mandarin textbooks turned up this morning \o/

Got a lot of free time on my hands at the moment, so I'm making some good progress. Currently doing a Fluenz lesson in Mandarin and Spanish every day, and then some vocab in Spanish, German and French. With the latter, I'm making a big spreadsheet, with different tabs for different topics, and putting translations for all of the different languages in there. The idea being, when I go back to add Pinyin and chinese characters, I'll revise the other languages at the same time. And it's colour coded. Slightly odd thing to do, but I find it very helpful.

Spanish is coming along a treat. I did a beginner's evening class last year, but didn't enjoy it as the pace of learning was really slow, but I feel like I'm getting much more out of it now I'm teaching myself, so will go back to do a more advanced class in Uni to get some speaking practice in particular. There is one problem I'm having with it though:

Poncho wrote:Oh God I can't roll my Rs.

Can't do it for the life of me, so I'm practising now and hopefully I'll get the hang of it this week. I'm fine with the the one from the back of the throat, but can only do this one after certain letters, and very inconsistently. How is your Spanish coming along btw?

Mandarin seems alright so far, and I'm enjoying it. Sticking to pinyin atm, and getting to grips with the tones etc, but everything seems fairly logical. Now I've got my textbook though, I might start doing some words I've already learned with simplified characters, but carry on learning new stuff in Pinyin at the same time. Trying to get myself up to a decent standard this summer so I can join a more advanced evening course when I go back to Uni next month, as I don't want to get stuck doing basics like Spanish last year.

Haven't looked at German since I finished my GCSEs (over four years now ), so, unsurprisingly, I've forgotten a lot of it. It has started to come back to me though, and a lot of words are very familiar, so hopefully I can get back to where I was relatively easily, and then work on improving from there. Again, an evening class at uni should help here.

French is the one that I ignore the most, as it's the one I'm best at, but I'm going to use the other languages as revision, just to make sure that I keep working on it. I'll take an advanced class at Uni as well, just to get some good speaking practice, which is where I'd struggle the most, in.

I need to learn some Mandarin.

final-fx wrote:Mandarin seems alright so far, and I'm enjoying it. Sticking to pinyin atm, and getting to grips with the tones etc, but everything seems fairly logical. Now I've got my textbook though, I might start doing some words I've already learned with simplified characters, but carry on learning new stuff in Pinyin at the same time.

Which Mandarin textbooks did you order?

Also, I'm not sure how the more advanced learners like Kinetic and John Galt were taught, but I was told not to just learn pinyin on its own (in the same way it is advised not to learn romajii on its own). It is alright for learning the tones, but I find it a lot hard to read a sentence in pinyin and then "imagine" the characters than just reading a sentence purely with characters.

Likewise, when it comes to writing, I usually just think of the characters rather than complicating the process by thinking in pinyin and then "translating" that into characters.

It may be tempting to learn loads of pinyin, as this will increase your speaking vocabulary quite quickly, but I reckon it may make things awkward when it comes to reading and writing. Also, pinyin is a bit muddled as something like "shi" can have different meanings, even if they are the same tone.

It's why I find reading and writing much, much easier than speaking and listening.

Also, you seem to be doing about four languages at a time. Good luck with that, as I found it really difficult to separate Mandarin and Japanese. I also kept speaking in French as well.

Is pinyin like romaji in it's written in the latin alphabet?

My spanish is getting much better again. I learned Spanish in American Highschool but forgot most of it. Started going on youtube/google and now it is much better. A friend of mine on Xbox even regurlarly speaks Spanish now to me.

StayDead wrote:Is pinyin like romaji in it's written in the latin alphabet?

Yeah, though it's a bit different in that I think it was sanctioned by the Communist Government in the 1950s, when they also simplified the characters.

So there is a chance you might see a street sign or something in pinyin or you could write something down in pinyin and have it understood by a native Chinese person over there. Whereas, I think, romaji is not even used by the Japanese right? It's purely something English-speakers use? I remember everyone here telling me not to use it as a crutch, whereas pinyin isn't quite like that.

Pinyin also contains the tone to use for that word as well, so I still find it useful when writing a sentence to be read aloud to write out the characters first and then do the pinyin underneath.

Parksey wrote:

final-fx wrote:Mandarin seems alright so far, and I'm enjoying it. Sticking to pinyin atm, and getting to grips with the tones etc, but everything seems fairly logical. Now I've got my textbook though, I might start doing some words I've already learned with simplified characters, but carry on learning new stuff in Pinyin at the same time.

Which Mandarin textbooks did you order?

Also, I'm not sure how the more advanced learners like Kinetic and John Galt were taught, but I was told not to just learn pinyin on its own (in the same way it is advised not to learn romajii on its own). It is alright for learning the tones, but I find it a lot hard to read a sentence in pinyin and then "imagine" the characters than just reading a sentence purely with characters.

Likewise, when it comes to writing, I usually just think of the characters rather than complicating the process by thinking in pinyin and then "translating" that into characters.

It may be tempting to learn loads of pinyin, as this will increase your speaking vocabulary quite quickly, but I reckon it may make things awkward when it comes to reading and writing. Also, pinyin is a bit muddled as something like "shi" can have different meanings, even if they are the same tone.

It's why I find reading and writing much, much easier than speaking and listening.

Also, you seem to be doing about four languages at a time. Good luck with that, as I found it really difficult to separate Mandarin and Japanese. I also kept speaking in French as well.

I bought this one first, as it seems very simple, uses both pinyin and characters, comes with a CD and was cheap. It's got great reviews on amazon, too:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Easy-Peasy-Chinese-Mandarin-Beginners/dp/1405318635/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312475175&sr=8-1

It's not the most substantial book, it's a solid introduction for beginners, but I imagine you've gone past the point where it would be particularly helpful. How are you progressing by the way?

We were also told to buy the newer version of this for the class:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chinese-Steps-v-George-Zhang/dp/1845700023/ref=pd_sim_b_1

I've also bought this, but it hasn't arrived yet:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Mandarin-Chinese-Grammar-Grammars/dp/0415700108/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312476467&sr=1-1

I mainly use Fluenz and other software at the moment though, which, currently at least, only uses Pinyin. I understand where you're coming from regarding pinyin, but I'm trying to get myself to a certain level by October-ish so I don't have to do a beginner's class, as I would move a lot faster than the class, and it would frustrate me. The classes tend to focus on speaking, reading and listening, so I'd rather get myself up to a more advanced standard, and then go back and teach myself characters and writing in my own time. I will try and do some character work now I've got the book, though, so hopefully I can get the hang of it.

Are you still doing both Mandarin and Japanese? I'm hoping that I don't get mixed up between them too much. I didn't really mix up German and French at GCSE, but I can see myself mixing Spanish with the latter, as they're more similar. I'm also hoping that Chinese is sufficiently different to distinguish itself from the others in my head. I've also tried separating what I use them for (for example, I'll read news in french but then read about football in spanish), which should help out a little. I'm half-expecting to come back to this thread in a month or so in a horrible and confused mess.

I also saw that you recommended Mi Vida Loca on the bbc website earlier, which looks brilliant, so I'll start that soon. Out of curiosity, what level were you at in French and Spanish, and can you still speak them now?

One thing I will say that's awesome when you're learning, is when you learn a word/kanji I guess if you're doing Chinese or Japanese, you seem to see the word everywhere. Like it'll be in places normally but where you didn't know it before you didn't notice in speech as much. Kind of cool when that happens.

Parksey, how's your chinese going?

Parksey wrote:

final-fx wrote:Mandarin seems alright so far, and I'm enjoying it. Sticking to pinyin atm, and getting to grips with the tones etc, but everything seems fairly logical. Now I've got my textbook though, I might start doing some words I've already learned with simplified characters, but carry on learning new stuff in Pinyin at the same time.

Also, I'm not sure how the more advanced learners like Kinetic and John Galt were taught, but I was told not to just learn pinyin on its own (in the same way it is advised not to learn romajii on its own). It is alright for learning the tones, but I find it a lot hard to read a sentence in pinyin and then "imagine" the characters than just reading a sentence purely with characters.

Likewise, when it comes to writing, I usually just think of the characters rather than complicating the process by thinking in pinyin and then "translating" that into characters.

It may be tempting to learn loads of pinyin, as this will increase your speaking vocabulary quite quickly, but I reckon it may make things awkward when it comes to reading and writing. Also, pinyin is a bit muddled as something like "shi" can have different meanings, even if they are the same tone.

It's why I find reading and writing much, much easier than speaking and listening.

Also, you seem to be doing about four languages at a time. Good luck with that, as I found it really difficult to separate Mandarin and Japanese. I also kept speaking in French as well.

I think it would be impossible to start learning Chinese without first learning pinyin. It gets you sorted on the tones and sounds and you can read any pinyinised words almost instantly since it's just a slightly adapted version of the Roman alphabet. Unfortunately reading characters can be extremely laborious at first since Chinese dictionaries aren't the easiest things to use and you find yourself reading at about a word per minute.

It's best to move away from pinyin as quickly as you can though. Most learning materials which are written in characters will have both character and pinyin text; what I'll do is read the characters first and then use the pinyin to fill in any gaps. I posted this a while back in the thread: it's a list of the most common Chinese characters. Once you've gotten fairly comfortable with basic Chinese I would start looking at this and make an effort to individually study the top few hundred characters to a level where you recognise them instantly. With this you'll be able to read a decent proportion of text and can use either a dictionary or pinyin (if available) to read words you don't understand.

Parksey wrote:

StayDead wrote:Is pinyin like romaji in it's written in the latin alphabet?

Yeah, though it's a bit different in that I think it was sanctioned by the Communist Government in the 1950s, when they also simplified the characters.

So there is a chance you might see a street sign or something in pinyin or you could write something down in pinyin and have it understood by a native Chinese person over there.

From my experience, Chinese people have next to no understanding of pinyin - especially the older generation. You do see romanised Chinese on road and street signs throughout a lot of the country but, if I remember rightly, it's without tones.

Strangely though - despite Chinese people not being great with pinyin - they do use it for computer/text input, which I find a bit odd.

final-fx wrote:Decided to do German as well. I'm remembering a lot more of it than I thought I would too, which is promising.

The Tell Me More software seems pretty good, coupled with a decent textbook, which should hopefully lead to fairly good retention and motivation. The ipod has loads of flash card apps too, so that should be useful. Then I should get a lot more practice at my evening classes from September, so I should improve a lot then, too.

Fluenz is really good, but it's hard to find a good copy of it, which is a shame.

German Grammar Drills

This book is pretty good for learning German as it has pretty much all the grammar you'll need in it. Doing the drills is dull as gooseberry fool though

I want to... 'find' Fluenz Mandarin. I'm having trouble though

Check your inbox in a minute.

Decided to stop German, as I'm not enjoying it. Progressing very nicely with the others in the moment, and I'm currently learning some basic simplified characters.

final-fx wrote:I bought this one first, as it seems very simple, uses both pinyin and characters, comes with a CD and was cheap. It's got great reviews on amazon, too:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Easy-Peasy-Chinese-Mandarin-Beginners/dp/1405318635/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312475175&sr=8-1

It's not the most substantial book, it's a solid introduction for beginners, but I imagine you've gone past the point where it would be particularly helpful. How are you progressing by the way?

We were also told to buy the newer version of this for the class:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chinese-Steps-v-George-Zhang/dp/1845700023/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Yeah, I have both of those. Easy Peasy Chinese was one that had good reviews on Amazon and looked very "light" in tone and, to be honest, it's alright. It's quite basic, but if you're studying a topic in one book, it's good to go and have a look at it in this to pick up on some more vocab and sentence patterns. And having another CD is good too.

I have the Chinese by Steps Vol 1 (and Vol 2), which was what we used in my class last year. I've gotten into a routine of using it and have a set work pattern for each new topic - I learn the characters by their stroke order first and practice on a bit of paper writing them out repeatedly with their pinyin next to them. Then I repeatedly listen to them read out in a list whilst doing a bit of writing and then I'll do the handwriting bit at the back. Then, I write down all the "sentence patterns" and "dialogues" by hand as I find it's easier to remember them if I do this rather than just reading. Then I'll listen to them both on the CD. Finally, I will then do the activities.

I'm not actually as far through as you think I am. I've done a year of classes, but that just took us through Book 1 (some people in my class were awful at it, and either not as good with languages as I was or just not putting the effort in between classes) so progress was slow there and I was always a lesson or two ahead.

I am currently only halfway through Book 2 at the moment. Not quite a Beginner, I suppose, as I probably know about 500 characters, but maybe not quite an Intermediate either. And, of course, by doing it all on my own now (Classes finished in May), my speaking and listening aren't as good as my reading and writing.

final-fx wrote:I've also bought this, but it hasn't arrived yet:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Mandarin-Chinese-Grammar-Grammars/dp/0415700108/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312476467&sr=1-1

That looks a bit heavy for a beginner. Let me know how you find it, as I could do with a more serious grammar book rather than just learning from sentences in the other textbooks.

I know with Japanese I bought a few books like that straightaway and found them useless, as I didn't have the prior knowledge of the language to base anything else on. It looks like a more of an Intermediate book.

final-fx wrote:I mainly use Fluenz and other software at the moment though, which, currently at least, only uses Pinyin. I understand where you're coming from regarding pinyin, but I'm trying to get myself to a certain level by October-ish so I don't have to do a beginner's class, as I would move a lot faster than the class, and it would frustrate me. The classes tend to focus on speaking, reading and listening, so I'd rather get myself up to a more advanced standard, and then go back and teach myself characters and writing in my own time. I will try and do some character work now I've got the book, though, so hopefully I can get the hang of it.

As I was always ahead of the others, what I used the classes for was basically revision (as you can never really do too much, and going back over a topic helps reinforce it) and speaking and listening. Sounds like you'll do the same. I find it is much easier, especially when it comes to reading and writing characters, if you put a bit of work in before the topic comes up. If your teacher is anything like mine, he won't go much into the writing of the characters particularly, and instead introduce them and go straight into speaking conversational sentences.

final-fx wrote:Are you still doing both Mandarin and Japanese? I'm hoping that I don't get mixed up between them too much. I didn't really mix up German and French at GCSE, but I can see myself mixing Spanish with the latter, as they're more similar. I'm also hoping that Chinese is sufficiently different to distinguish itself from the others in my head. I've also tried separating what I use them for (for example, I'll read news in french but then read about football in spanish), which should help out a little. I'm half-expecting to come back to this thread in a month or so in a horrible and confused mess.

I don't really dedicate as much time to Japanese as I should do. My spare time isn't quite what it was last summer and, as a result, Chinese gets the preference at the moment. I did end up getting confused, as I was often doing similar topics in both and sometimes it was a nightmare - when I first was doing numbers in Chinese I was also doing them in Japanese, and in class I would often start starting going "ichi... ni.. san" and it would get to the point where I would see the Chinese character, think of the number in Japanese (the characters seem to be the all the same for numbers, or at least 1-10 are) and then translate that into English. A bit unworkable.

So, what my plan is now is to get to a comfortable level in Chinese - maybe to the end of Volume 2 of Chinese in Steps - and then go back to Japanese. So I will, effectively be on two different levels with the language and hopefully far ahead enough in Chinese to not get muddled.

Also, bear in mind that people reckon Mandarin and Japanese take about 4500 hours of work to become fluent (the US graded these in the highest category for English speakers, along with Russian, Arabic and Korean), and it can be hard to keep that workload ticking over when you have two.

What I found was that it is very easy to make speedy progress in both initially, and you're vocab with increase rapidly and you'll fly through some of your book. However, you'll hit a wall in one or both and then it becomes a struggle to cope with having two very similar languages on the go (similar in some respects anyway, as I doubt anyone would get spoken Chinese and spoken Japanese mixed up).

That wall will likely come in your Japanese learning, if you're anything like me. Japanese grammar is, quite frankly, a nightmare and is nowhere near as simple as Chinese and this, coupled with your move into Kanji and its onyomi and kunyomi means progress can be frustrating and swiftly stalled. It's here I wish I'd had a night class in Japanese or a tutor or someone to keep me ticking over. It is possible though - StayDead got through it unscathed.

For me, the learning curves of Chinese and Japanese are quite different. Japanese you make a lot of progress very quickly and you can become quite a comfortable speaker after only a month or two (on certain, limited topics obviously). You'll probably pick up hiragan and katakana fairly rapidly too, and it is quite a confidence boost when you get those nailed down in your memory and suddenly Japanese text is "unlocked" and becomes readable.

Then you get the grammar and the kanji.

Chinese you really have to start off on a blank footing and just wade in to some simple conversation and characters. You've got the tones as well, which are difficult to get your head round if you don't speak it regularly.

Personally, I always find Japanese much easier to speak and listen to and Chinese is way, way, way easier to read and write. I'm hoping that if I can nail those 2000 common characters John Galt posted, then they may help with some basic Kanji readings later.

final-fx wrote:I also saw that you recommended Mi Vida Loca on the bbc website earlier, which looks brilliant, so I'll start that soon. Out of curiosity, what level were you at in French and Spanish, and can you still speak them now?

My French was at A-level standard and my Spanish at GCSE. The latter was self-taught though.

As to what standard I am at now, I am not so sure, as I don't often use them (I haven't been to France or Spain for a while). I was reading some French for whatever reason a few weeks back and I'm still okay. I was speaking to a Spanish guy last week when he roomed with us in a dorm in Dublin and it was a bit of a stretch at times (he was barely able to speak a word of English). I could communicate with him, but conversation was definitely limited and my sentences stunted by what I could say.

Having not done them for a while, it's a lot harder to say sentences off the top of my head and in general use, but I can generally read *most* everyday stuff and gather a meaning from it, if not go through it word for word.

Listening, I struggle with the speed of speech a little bit.

If you're learning a few characters in Chinese by Steps, I'll have a very basic Chinese conversation with you if you want? And see if we can answer each other without looking at a book.

I found a useful Chinese writing tool on the web as well, and I'll try and grab a link.

Also, an... ahem... link to this Fluenz would be tasty.

How do you find the Chinese by Steps books? I was really put off them by the amazon reviews, as the class I want to attend uses volume 2, which apparently has a good few errors in it. I'll probably skip the first volume, as I imagine the more basic stuff can be found easily enough on the internet, and any glaring issues I have should be picked up in the class.

I'm hoping the grammar book that I've bought it sufficient anyway, and I'll let you know what it's like when it arrives in the week.

Are you going to attend another class this year, or are you just doing self-learning from now on?

I'll start properly learning some characters tomorrow, I think. For the next month or two, I imagine I'll just pick the easy characters and get the vocab increase relatively quickly, and then switch to a 5-a-day plan when I get back to Uni, which I'd imagine is sustainable. Any help would be much appreciated, thanks.

Do you have any plans to return to French or Spanish at any point, or are you solely concentrating on Chinese and then Japanese now?

Fluenz (so far anyway) only uses Pinyin, but it's really helpful, and I'll send you the links now.

I mainly focused on Spanish last week, which is coming along very nicely. Mi Vida Loca, which I finished yesterday, was brilliant, and I would recommend it very highly to anyone looking to start Spanish. Actually, the BBC website as a whole has some brilliant content on there, Ma France is superb, and they have some lovely videos and introductions for a lot of languages.

This week I'm really going to focus on Mandarin, and should achieve some rapid progress there. The BBC character stroke order seems a great introduction it them, so that, iChinese and my Chinesepod free trial should provide some solid learning. I've only done some very basic strokes so far, but the progress is solid enough. Fluenz is coming along very nicely, too.

Parksey wrote:
I am currently only halfway through Book 2 at the moment. Not quite a Beginner, I suppose, as I probably know about 500 characters, but maybe not quite an Intermediate either. And, of course, by doing it all on my own now (Classes finished in May), my speaking and listening aren't as good as my reading and writing.

final-fx wrote:I've also bought this, but it hasn't arrived yet:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Mandarin-Chinese-Grammar-Grammars/dp/0415700108/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312476467&sr=1-1

That looks a bit heavy for a beginner. Let me know how you find it, as I could do with a more serious grammar book rather than just learning from sentences in the other textbooks.

I know with Japanese I bought a few books like that straightaway and found them useless, as I didn't have the prior knowledge of the language to base anything else on. It looks like a more of an Intermediate book.

The information in the book isn't set out in a brilliant order, so it's better to go back and check anything that you're unsure of/reinforce rather than learning solely from it. However, it's crammed with pretty most of the information you'll need, and all of the sentences are provided in traditional and simplified characters, in addition to pinyin and English.

It's probably not a book for beginners, but it's still helpful. I would have liked it to have displayed some characters stroke by stroke for example, but there's only a page or so explaining the rules of how to draw them. However, if you can know 500-odd characters, you've probably got the hang of that by now. There aren't any worked exercises either, so if that's your style, there could be better books available.