xlzqwerty1

我有挺多的朋友用微博但是我自己没有用过。

I cannot stress enough how important it is to have either a professional linguistics person or a native speaker to comment on your pronunciation. Relying on the internet and recorded voice overs is not good enough. There's always the slightest shifts in the tone of our voices because we are all human, and relying on a single repeated recording on the internet is not good enough due to the fact that everyone's voices will sound different.

Really, once you get past the pronunciation barrier, everything else is not as hard as you think. Look towards the future and see yourself being able to speak fluently; that's how I always motivate myself when doing something that is either difficult or tedious to accomplish.

I believe that there was also another thread about Cantonese and Mandarin. You should have checked it out to see if it answered any of your questions before making this thread.

http://linguaholic.com/chinese-language-general-discussion-thread/cantonese-or-mandarin/

If you still have questions after reading the thread, feel free to reiterate them again .

I used to type like this when on the computer, however, I've gotten over it ever since 6th grade. Started using proper typing. Later on, it got annoying when I saw other people using shortcut words such as "u" instead of "you" and it really annoyed me. I believe the only time I use shortcuts is on the phone, when you are limited to 250 characters for an SMS.

Not really a famous quote, but a quote me and my friend made up, haha:

"He who is blind, can see equally well in the dark as in the light."

Kind of common sense stuff if you ask me, but it sure as heck does make sense if you think about it.

I realize that I use "lol" a lot when talking with my friends. Even when something isn't that funny, I still use it, basically describing whatever to be somewhat humorous but did not garner an actual laugh from me. There are times, however, where capitals are used: "LOL", and that is when I actually do laugh out loud because something is explicitly very funny.

C'est dommage que j'ai  arrete mes etudes en francais...

Je pense que le francais est un tres belle langue.

Pardonnez-moi pour ne pas utiliser les accents.

Si il y a les erreurs dans mon commentaire, corrige pour moi s'il vous plait!

For me, I wouldn't say dropped. It's so much as more of a "learn later, take break now" kind of thing, haha. I've dropped French for now, now that it's not a compulsory course in high school here in Canada, but I kind of wish I didn't drop it. It could have been very useful for me if I ever wanted to travel to Quebec again or to France. I've forgotten a lot of vocabulary since then and I kind of regret it

Do be noted that people in Taiwan often do not enunciate their tones as much as people in Mainland China. My brother went back to China after graduating university here in Canada and started to work in Beijing. After about a month, we were talking on the phone and I could clearly hear that he picked up a northern accent from living in Beijing, haha.

Miya,

从你的回复我看得出来你是用繁体字。哈哈，我不太会读繁体字。我是从广州来的；应该是在香港旁边，但是我只会用简体中文字。我不太会说广东话，只会听。我的中文水平也不是很好。

Hi, I am English and I teach English online. I think Americans use the past tense more than the Brits. For example, it is common for an AMerican to say 'Did you eat dinner yet'?, whilst the Brits tend to employ the presentperfect tense in these contexts by saying 'Have you eaten dinner yet'? So with 'yet' and when you are talking about an action which was recently completed, the Brits are much more likely to use the present perfect tense. Hope this helps.

That's quite interesting, Mark. Here in Canada, we also say it like our neighbouring US friends. On occasion, I do use "Have you eaten dinner yet?" but most of the time when talking informally with friends I would just ask "Did you eat dinner yet?" I guess you can say it's a faster way of asking the same question and receiving the same expected reply.

I have a few British friends here in Canada who have immigrated, and I haven't realized this until you pointed it out.

Learning Chinese from scratch can be hell at first. It's very hard to start up, however, once you get the hang of an organized schedule then learning it is much more smoother. As Miya said, however, it is strongly recommended that one should study for more than just two hours per week when learning Chinese. I regret not learning Chinese when I came to Canada and now my Chinese skills simply suck, aside from the fact that I know how to speak it properly. Learn from the experiences of others who've had the experience .

You might also want to watch Japanese movies / dramas when you have the time. And if you like, you can also watch animes.

This way, you'll be able to know how certain words are being used depending on the context.

Happy learning!

One thing I want to stress is that one should NOT learn Japanese from watching Anime or typical overrated movies and TV shows. A lot of the times, the voice actors talk in a way that is different from the way people usually talk in Japan, so your pronunciation may be very off from the norms if you try to only learn how to say words from anime and such. It's suggested to learn pronunciation from native speakers and expert polyglots; knowing how to pronounce the syllabary is enough for you to piece it together yourself.

It's not just an american thing. It's spread to their neighbours, us Canadians. I tend to refrain from using slang (don't know why, but I just like to talk properly). Aside from me, almost everyone else in school uses "YOLO" at one point during the day, I'm pretty sure.

You know what irks me? People who grew up in an English speaking environment with English as the primary language of their country still mess up "you're" and "your". I don't know what to say, but in almost every comment that I see on youtube, facebook, twitter, all sorts of social media websites, there's at least this one person who uses your in stead of you're, or uses you're instead of your. It really enrages me, considering how English is not my first language, and yet I can still differentiate between the two and understand when to use which one.

I apologize for my late reply, as I haven't noticed that someone had actually posted a reply in my introductory topic, but sure. I live in the province of Ontario, how about you?

You know, I consider myself a native English speaker due to the fact that I immigrated to an English speaking country at a young age. Nevertheless, I feel that it's always good to refresh and improve your knowledge on the skills you already have or know, regardless of how good you are at it currently. While English isn't my first language, I do speak like it is my mother tongue. So to answer the question, it would be a yes. I do use this section of the forum, however, mostly just browsing through. On occasion, there's an opportunity for me to voice my knowledge and opinion (take this post as an example ), so while I may not post frequently in this section, it doesn't mean I won't use it at all.

Chinese is arguably my main language, despite not being able to speak it well. I use it at home every single day to talk to my parents, and I use it for basically any friend of my parents, or any person who has immigrated from China recently. I really do wish I knew how to read and write it better, as you can say that my skills in that region is on par with an elementary student in China.

Regardless, it is entirely necessary and very important in my life and even in the location I currently reside in (Toronto) as there are a lot of Chinese immigrants here whom I can communicate with through Chinese.

Thank you very much for sharing this application. Occasionally I bring my android tablet around at school and this will be of great help for me when learning Japanese.

I've been using Kana (Hiragana & Katakana) by TenguLogi up until now, and a second app won't hurt

I don't know how this compares with the one you listed, but it was also great help for me. Here is a link if anyone else is interested in alternative apps that teach Japanese!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tengulogi.tengugo.jp_kana&hl=en

Moving to a bilingual country being Canada, I was forced to learn French at school since grade three. Not that I'm saying I don't like French though , I actually find it an interesting and helpful language to learn and understand and it was pretty easy for me too.

Since highschool started, I've dropped French and I have to say it was one of my worst decisions of my life. Just after two years of not having french I've forgotten a lot of it. I think I should go google up some lessons again; gotta be able to communicate fluently if I ever do go to France or Quebec again

• Naniga atta? - What's up? なにがあった？(it's naniga, not nanika)

Actually, なにかあった/何かあった？　is correct way to say What's up. It definitely is 'ka', I asked a japanese friend of mine once about how to say "What's up" and "Hello" in an informal way.

I would actually like to learn more Cantonese as well, being Chinese and all. I grew up in Guangzhou, which is a Mandarin + Cantonese environment where everyone living there can speak to each other in one of the two languages and reply in the other, with perfect comprehension. Since my family is originally a Mandarin speaking family, my Cantonese skills are not up to par with my Mandarin, which is why I would like to learn it and get better at it (my pronunciation in Cantonese is horrible )

Grammar and punctuation meant a lot to me, regardless of language. What's the point of learning a language and knowing the general layout but not knowing how to properly use it? Grammar is like building a do-it-yourself project using an instruction set. Use the instruction set wrong and you get the wrong result.

It may not be the perfect translator to use, but it is very handy at translating phrases bit by bit. I often use it for translating phrases, or each separate word in a phrase. Unfortunately, trying to translate a whole sentence or paragraph can have unwanted and unexpected results that are often incorrect. It's not easy to program a translator between so many different languages :/

Ever since I was small, I've watched anime and read manga in Chinese and now in English. I've taken a liking to Japanese as a result, and so I've started to try and learn it. Right now I only know my Hiragana and some Katakana (still in training ), but hopefully in the future I can read raw manga and watch anime without subtitles. That way, I can also translate them to English and Chinese for my friends.