polaroidsredwine

I remember first stumbling across this site when it was just conceptualized and trying to appeal for interest. Though I'm a bit more advanced beyond what it teaches, it seems like it would be pretty helpful for beginners, and I'm fairly pleased with how well the concept has fleshed itself out.

Chineasy boasts about teaching the building blocks of the language, or the simple words and characters that can be found utilized in more complex characters and the like.  Each character is drawn into an image to help learners memorize the meaning.

If you'd like to check it out: http://chineasy.org/

It just makes sense for society to abandon a language over time in favor of a more significant one.

I agree. It's great to preserve languages that are dead (or in the process of dying) for historical purposes, to see how they played a part in the development of societies and how the language itself evolved and changed over time. These languages are dying for a reason, though, and that's because other languages are simply more practical in a world that is becoming increasingly globalized.

I tried convincing my mother to teach me Cantonese when I was a child, but that didn't stick. I started learning Spanish back when I was about fourteen years old as an elective class in school. I can not say I learned as much as I should have, since all the teachers I had over the years didn't really teach us much of anything. I constantly need to keep refreshing my knowledge of it, but I'm getting a lot more use out of it since moving to an area with a lot of Spanish speakers.

Why yes, I am new here.  Thanks for the welcome!

I think finding the work online should be fairly easy, especially since it shouldn't be under any copyright. Finding the original Chinese version may take a little more effort, though, but since it is fairly popular you may find it on sites more geared toward educational things.

I'm also pretty lazy when it comes to staying motivated. One of the best motivators is being able to track my progress over time, because it gives a sense of accomplishment that keeps pushing me forward. It's a bit of a catch though since I need to keep studying without losing motivation for it to happen ...

I try to stay motivated by thinking about how much my learning will benefit me and open up the world for me. In my case, learning Chinese will allow me to really connect with a part of my heritage I never really got to be a part of.

What's your favorite thing about learning a new language? This may sound kind of weird, but I adore seeing how languages connect to each other. I suppose it's more of a linguistic hook, seeing how words have come to evolve between languages or how they get exchanged and adapted into vocabulary. Just the other day I came to the stunning realization of the link of the word 'quixotic' and the infamous Don Quixote story.

Quotes are my weakness.

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions. - Augusten Burroughs

I'm not a big fan of Burroughs, but I like this quote a lot.  It's possibly one of my favorites ever.

Our Chinese teacher recently told us about a book of 莊子. It sounded like an amazing book/story. It was something about him and a butterfly...about dream and/or reality. Can't remember the name though

It seems less people know about this than I thought!  I'll need to apologize to my family for the silly look I shot them about not knowing of 莊子. The butterfly thing is often called 莊周夢蝶, which basically entails dreaming he was a butterfly, waking up, then wondering if there was any distinction between himself and the butterfly.

I just recently finished the light novel 1/2 王子 - had to order them from overseas even though there's an author-approved translation online because I like to have the source material.  It's a very light read and the prologue is something I'd rather ignore, but otherwise I enjoyed it a lot.  Strong female leads (even if they are pulling a gender-bender in a virtual reality game) are my weakness.

Anki is basically my favorite flashcard program.  More than just downloading decks, you can make your own or customize the ones you download for your needs, though this isn't often an issue if you go for specialized decks.  My favorite feature is that it does a fairly great job of tracking your memorization and will shuffle decks accordingly.

Honestly, I'd find it a lot easier to learn if it wasn't for the characters;.  Some of the grammar can be a bit tricky and there are the ever-fun measure words to learn added on to that.  I agree with leahcim132 on the point of learning it for a purpose, though.  It's fairly easy to get discouraged when learning, even more when you know you'll never use it.

Hello everyone!  I'm very bad at introductions so this is going to be just a little awkward.

My name is Steph!  I've always had a love of languages so, naturally, I want to learn a bunch.  I've taken a brief glance around before signing up and this seems like a very nice place to hang out.  I think my one downfall to studying any language is that I just never have any reason to practice, so maybe this will be a nice excuse.

I hope we all get along!