Nekomimi_mode

Recently I went through my old power points from high school and this year of college and compiled most of the Chinese sentence structures I learned into a mini book. It's only about 35 pages long but i'm selling it for 5$ if anyone is interested. I also have a ton of old power points and pdfs I'm trying to turn into one huge review, but I've been working on that for while with no end in sight. I'm on page 112 and it's not even halfway done. Sighs Link for it is here

1. English 2. Chinese(mandarin) 3. Arabic 4. Korean 5. Japanese

Watching movies with subtitles definitely help. Not only does it help you learn how the language should be spoken it also helps you learn new words. The only issue I have with this is sometimes the subtitles don’t give you the real translations. I especially realize those when I’m watching anime. A lot of times different sites will sub an anime before the official subs come out. They end up mistranslating things and adding extra words to smoothen things out. This is fine if you know what the translation should be, but for a person who is trying to learn new words it can be very confusing. Even the official translations do this sometimes. I don’t know if this happens for Chinese subbed movies because most times there is just one sub. If I am skeptical about the translation I will usually just look it up. Other than that subtitles are wonderful.

I’m so ready for the New Year! I plan on making more pen pals and improving my language. I need to study more Chinese and practice my Japanese. I also plan to formally start learning Korean by taking a class on my college campus. I starting compiling all of my Chinese notes a while back into a huge study guide but I stopped half-way through. I want to finish that out before I start taking more Chinese classes. I don’t think I’ll be taking anymore Japanese classes for now since I’ve been mixing my kanji and Chinese characters up as of late, but once I get my Chinese down I plan to take a Japanese class again. Honestly I also want to focus more harshly on learning characters. I have really been slacking in that regard and so I can speak way more Chinese than I can write. I want to switch over to writing traditional characters as well since I plan to visit Taiwan next year and I heard they don’t use simplified characters. It’ll be hard but I have a whole year to put my plan in action before I come up with another one.

I feel the complete opposite. I am more confident speaking the language than I am writing. I am learning Chinese and when it comes to writing characters I always cringe. If you asked me to write half the stuff I know how to say I would just be standing there. Seriously I have no idea how I’m supposed to remember all these characters. Not to mention there is a stroke order (the proper order for writing the character) that I always forget. There’s a rule about what direction to start in but there are so many discretions that I can’t really trust the rule. Then there’s traditional characters (screams) which I will never be able to write. I’m sorry but if I’m learning how to write a character and there’s more than 14 strokes in it I’m either going to quit, or re-evaluate my life. I love Chinese but it takes way more effort to write cat than it does to say it.

I would say listen to music. The more music you listen to the better your listening skills will improve. Also whenever you get a chance listen to conversations between native speakers. I also recommend listening to Chinese dramas. Don’t actually watch it with the substiles, just listen to it and try to figure out what they are saying. Audio books are also a plus. I love downloading Chinese audio books and listening to them when I’m not busy. Even when you are busy you can listen to them. Having the language of choice as background noise whenever you are doing something will help you process it subconsciously. Also I’m not sure if this works or not but I also listen to the music while I’m asleep. I figure if my subconscious is always processing things I might as well give it some Chinese to have fun with. If you had to choose one or two methods though I would definitely say listen to music and listen to audio books. Just make sure you don’t pick a song that goes too fast or is too heavily accented, and for audio books don’t choose a book that is way over your head.

I learn better when I’m immersed in it. The rules are a nice thing to learn but when people speak their native language ½ of it is going to be slang and shortened words anyway. There’s going to be nicknames for a ton of stuff and words that are insinuations for other stuff. I think one of the best ways to give away you’re a foreigner is to talk like a walking textbook. Immersion is definitely the best option.

I prefer handwriting. It makes things easier to remember and helps me learn how the character should be written. Even if it’s a long assignment like writing a letter to a friend I’ll write it first then type it. If I always type things out I will forget how the characters should be written. However, if I’m making flashcards or a table I will type it. In those cases its readability vs practice and I need my cards to be readable in order to practice. Most of the time I will handwrite it. My penmanship is already crappy and always typing will just make it worse.

It depends. If the person I’m talking to has already learned about three new languages and this is language number four I’d take it pretty seriously. If it’s the first new language they’re learning I wouldn’t pay much attention to it. Easy and hard are relative words. For someone who has only had easy work, work of medium level will be hard to them. To a person who has only had hard work, work of a medium level will be easy to them. As such, the more languages they have studied the more weight their opinion holds for me. Their opinion however, will not discourage me from learning a new language if I am interested in it.

I’m in America and they don’t teach it anymore either. They really should still teach it since a cursive signature is still required on many important documents. They updated the PSAT a couple of years back to add a clause that stated we wouldn’t try to cheat and we were required to sign it in cursive. Most of my class didn’t even know what the cursive letters looked like so my teacher had to draw them out on a whiteboard at the front of the class. I was homeschooled until third grade and I didn’t even know people had stopped writing in cursive until I hit public school in the eighth grade. Now whenever I go to start a new class I always ask my teacher if they can read cursive because I got into some trouble a while back when I wrote in cursive and my teacher couldn’t read it.

I think it’s really useful to write down the words of the song. They help me commit the words to memory faster. I only have a slight problem with this method, I’m taking Chinese. When someone is singing really fast or rapping in can be hard to catch all the words and even when I do catch them I have to figure out which tone they were using. There are five tones in mandarin Chinese and depending on which tone they used the word can mean completely different things. I’ve remedied this by simply looking up the lyrics but unlike Japanese songs, there isn’t a website dedicating to translating them to English. So I’ve had to use google translate which completely butchers the meaning. I’ll figure it out one day.

阿，这个主题太老了。可是，二月快到了。今年我觉得我应该买很多的巧克力和礼物。

我觉得这圣 诞 节 我会帮我的妈妈厨。我也会给我的朋友们一些礼物。

I'm studying Japanese and Chinese and honestly I find Chinese to be the most difficult. It would have been the same for me except for the fact that Chinese has tones. Once you get used to the tones learning it is a bit easier but if a native speaker comes up to you and starts speaking really fast I just blank out. I can handle Japanese a bit better since there isn't going to be four different meanings for a word depending on how they say it. Plus a lot of Chinese characters have the same meaning in Japanese kanji so it's a bit fun to come across those.Korean is an oddball for me. My friend tried teaching me a bit and I find it not to be as hard as Chinese.

Do you guys have any favorite Chinese songs? When I first started learning Chinese I would randomly download a bunch of songs and filter out the ones I didn't like. As a result I have a couple of songs that I love and keep on reply almost every day. I also got some nice Cantonese ones in the process too; I can't understand them though. I think one of the best things about listening to Chinese songs is the more words you learn the more of the song you understand. It's kind of like the song your listening to is a mystery, but a couple of months later after you learn some more Chinese you can understand it. It just feels so good to be listening to the song you've had for months and suddenly be like "I know what he's saying!". Do you guys have any favorite songs? I'll link some of mine. Post yours below!