Finally! I've finally made it past the first volume of Chinese with Ease! This is the first 49 lessons out 105 in total. So, what can I do with what I've learnt? Well, probably not a lot. I can understand some of what I hear and have very small fragments of conversation. My experience with the German with Ease course was that at the end of the whole course (100 lessons) plus having lived in Germany for 6 months (without making much of an effort, to be honest) and done some extra material here and there, I was probably around B1 on the CEFRL, so, if Assimil has been my main source so far and I'm only halfway through, I shouldn't expect too much yet because I've hardly put in an effort like Baron Jon :-) Anyway, I'm happy enough so far. The material I'm going through seems to be getting absorbed which is a good start!
I am trying to have little conversations here and there, but I don't know much. I seem to be at the stage of just picking up random, but highly useful, sentences, like this:
我没有睡够觉。
Which means "I didn't have enough sleep". The word gou4 够 can be replaced by nothing (="I didn't sleep") or hao3 好 (="I didn't sleep well"). The structure of this sentence surprised me compared to what I've learnt so far which didn't happen with German. I feel like by about halfway through the course the sentence structures themselves were not totally surprising anymore, but then again, I was not really looking at anything more than my Assimil course at that stage.
Just a quick wrapup again:
Mandarin: Up to lesson 50.
Latin: Up to lesson 47. I'll try to bring this up to the same as Mandarin before I proceed with that again. I'm trying to focus on the lessons a bit more and go over them to make sure I understand them well before I move on. This is important for the Assimil method to work I feel, but sometimes I've let my understanding be vague when I move on because my French isn't too top notch. I've decided to start adding the French translations along with then English in my Anki lists to perhaps improve my vocab there as well. Speaking of French, I replied to my Chinese friend in French the other day when I wasn't sure what to say. Funny.
German: Up to page 229 in Das Todeskreuz. Apart from that, I've just been trying to catch up on correspondence with my German speaking friends.
I have actually kept up reasonably well with Anki lately which hasn't really happened ever since Anki became completely gay on my phone's browser (with the latest version). I can't study Chinese because my phone's browser doesn't support the required fonts, but I can do the others at least.
Bis später!
在见！
Valeo!
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Update: 09/04/2013
Been a bit short on time lately, trying to work on some home projects, some of which may also have a linguistic bent, so I'll just jump in with my updates for now:
Mandarin: Just finished lesson 47 today. I also write a few phrases to a Chinese friend I used to work with.
Latin: Working on lesson 45.
German: Up to page 218 in Das Todeskreuz. Same old story - I spent more time on this recently and my Mandarin and Latin stalled as a result. My Stammtisch at work has been called off for 2 weeks, but I'll try to make up for this by using the time to write to my friends and keep up to date with them better.
And for anyone who's interested in the aboriginal language I mentioned earlier, the Bininj Gunwok website has a new post - a transcription exercise. Enjoy!
That's all for today: short and sweet. Keep up the hard work everyone!
Mandarin: Just finished lesson 47 today. I also write a few phrases to a Chinese friend I used to work with.
Latin: Working on lesson 45.
German: Up to page 218 in Das Todeskreuz. Same old story - I spent more time on this recently and my Mandarin and Latin stalled as a result. My Stammtisch at work has been called off for 2 weeks, but I'll try to make up for this by using the time to write to my friends and keep up to date with them better.
And for anyone who's interested in the aboriginal language I mentioned earlier, the Bininj Gunwok website has a new post - a transcription exercise. Enjoy!
That's all for today: short and sweet. Keep up the hard work everyone!
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
zunehmen, abnehmen und... annehmen?
Man, oh man... I believe it was only last week that I posted an update about how relaxed, confident and comfortable I had felt in my regular weekly Stammtisch. I also predicted that that could easily be completely different next week. And it was. I felt quite awkward in my Stammtisch yesterday. I straight away couldn't think of the words I wanted to use, nor an alternative way of expressing myself, and it knocked my confidence right at the start. I never really recovered. Sometimes you're up, and sometimes you're down. What had changed? I'm not sure, but when I think back I realise that I haven't listened to German much in the last week, especially not to my two current snippets of German movies that I know fairly well (click these links to find my parallel translations and a link to the videos for short scenes from Der Untergang and Mädchen Mädchen 2), but I also haven't written much in German in the past week, whereas I had corresponded with a few of my German-speaking friends in the week before. A whole week with no other practice is just too long. I'm guessing that at a very high, advanced level of ability those sorts of gaps won't make too much noticeable difference because a small loss from a very high level is still very high. With my extended period of minimal focus on German, and being only an intermediate level, the cracks start to appear very quickly. I've been a naughty boy!
There are a bunch of reasons, probably primarily that I'm trying to learn two new languages to a basic fluency level this year! I've been thinking that I need to make sure I speak German more often each week, but to be honest it'll probably be good enough to just make sure I keep up my correspondence with my German-speaking friends. This probably fits in with my available time the best, because although I'd like to find more chances to actually speak German, I definitely need to find time to practice speaking Chinese.
All this brings me in a roundabout way to the title of this post: zunehmen, abnehmen und... annehmen. I have in the past often find myself stumbling over the various meanings of these sorts of similar sounding words. There was a time when I never seemed to be able to choose the correct word out of "anmelden" (register) and "abmelden" (cancel a registration), although I think I mostly get it right now. One day, a few months back, I ran into my Austrian friend at work who had been exercising more and eating better and had therefore lost a fair bit of weight. I wanted to let her know that her efforts were working and I said that she looked really different because "du hast so viel angenommen!" which I intended to mean "you've lost so much weight!". However, rather than seeming pleased she looked at me askance. I immediately thought that maybe she felt it was inappropriate to make such a comment, but that's just how I am. I make the same sorts of comments to my male friends as well, so I was just treating her equally. I decided to just move on and not to dwell on it and we had a little chat, but as I walked away and then for several days afterwards I couldn't stop thinking about it because I decided that, on the model of "anmelden" vs "abmelden" I had, in fact, told her that she had put on a lot of weight! MY GOD! I don't normally say that to anyone, but especially not a woman! I felt terrible and wasn't sure if I should apologise or just hope that she would assume I meant to say the opposite.
It took me about two weeks of mulling this over in my mind before I realised that what I had said to her didn't really mean much at all, because the opposite of "abnehmen" isn't "annehmen" it's "zunehmen".
What an idiot I am!
I said, pretty much out of the blue (no supporting context): "You have assumed so much!" or perhaps "you've taken so much". Nice work!
Oh well... Hopefully it will all stick in my head better now that I've mulled it over so much :-)
So here are our contrasting pairs for the day:
abnehmen vs zunehmen
abmelden vs anmelden.
Don't say I never tell you anything useful!
To end up, here's my progress update:
Mandarin: Currently shadowing lesson 45 which I do until I can follow the whole main dialogue at full speed without tripping up to within my own reasonable approximation of correct pronunciation. I also watched part of an episode of "Real Chinese" on TV. Being in Australia I can't watch the full episodes online. Although there's a lot of speaking in English on these shows, I think they're actually quite good for a beginner stage just to give some phrases and pronunciation practice, with an understanding of Chinese culture. Also, they have longer, unsubtitled monologues for more advanced speakers. The episode I was was, unfortunately, the last one, so I won't end up seeing them all until they get repeated. 真糟糕!
Latin: Currently still working on lesson 44.
German: I'm up to page 207 in "Das Todeskreuz". I really don't spend much time at all reading this, as you can tell. I should though because it's a good read.
There are a bunch of reasons, probably primarily that I'm trying to learn two new languages to a basic fluency level this year! I've been thinking that I need to make sure I speak German more often each week, but to be honest it'll probably be good enough to just make sure I keep up my correspondence with my German-speaking friends. This probably fits in with my available time the best, because although I'd like to find more chances to actually speak German, I definitely need to find time to practice speaking Chinese.
All this brings me in a roundabout way to the title of this post: zunehmen, abnehmen und... annehmen. I have in the past often find myself stumbling over the various meanings of these sorts of similar sounding words. There was a time when I never seemed to be able to choose the correct word out of "anmelden" (register) and "abmelden" (cancel a registration), although I think I mostly get it right now. One day, a few months back, I ran into my Austrian friend at work who had been exercising more and eating better and had therefore lost a fair bit of weight. I wanted to let her know that her efforts were working and I said that she looked really different because "du hast so viel angenommen!" which I intended to mean "you've lost so much weight!". However, rather than seeming pleased she looked at me askance. I immediately thought that maybe she felt it was inappropriate to make such a comment, but that's just how I am. I make the same sorts of comments to my male friends as well, so I was just treating her equally. I decided to just move on and not to dwell on it and we had a little chat, but as I walked away and then for several days afterwards I couldn't stop thinking about it because I decided that, on the model of "anmelden" vs "abmelden" I had, in fact, told her that she had put on a lot of weight! MY GOD! I don't normally say that to anyone, but especially not a woman! I felt terrible and wasn't sure if I should apologise or just hope that she would assume I meant to say the opposite.
It took me about two weeks of mulling this over in my mind before I realised that what I had said to her didn't really mean much at all, because the opposite of "abnehmen" isn't "annehmen" it's "zunehmen".
What an idiot I am!
I said, pretty much out of the blue (no supporting context): "You have assumed so much!" or perhaps "you've taken so much". Nice work!
Oh well... Hopefully it will all stick in my head better now that I've mulled it over so much :-)
So here are our contrasting pairs for the day:
abnehmen vs zunehmen
abmelden vs anmelden.
Don't say I never tell you anything useful!
To end up, here's my progress update:
Mandarin: Currently shadowing lesson 45 which I do until I can follow the whole main dialogue at full speed without tripping up to within my own reasonable approximation of correct pronunciation. I also watched part of an episode of "Real Chinese" on TV. Being in Australia I can't watch the full episodes online. Although there's a lot of speaking in English on these shows, I think they're actually quite good for a beginner stage just to give some phrases and pronunciation practice, with an understanding of Chinese culture. Also, they have longer, unsubtitled monologues for more advanced speakers. The episode I was was, unfortunately, the last one, so I won't end up seeing them all until they get repeated. 真糟糕!
Latin: Currently still working on lesson 44.
German: I'm up to page 207 in "Das Todeskreuz". I really don't spend much time at all reading this, as you can tell. I should though because it's a good read.
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