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extrapenguinWhen I fall into something, I tend to fall into it wholeheartedly. That means that I have also, uh, taken up study of the Chinese language. (Hey, Hai Yan made a lot of people's names meaningful! It's totally worth it!) Career-etc wise it's not the worst move I've made, since China is a large place and also maybe perhaps will have funding for things.
Resources I'm using for attempting to learn things include the Wikipedia page on Pinyin for pronunciation (since it actually lists IPA values!), the Duolingo (currently past two checkpoints, at Time 4), and ChineseSkill apps for gamified learning, a BBC characters guide for learning how to write some basic simple characters, and this grammar reference. Duolingo is ... well, it's shit at teaching grammar, especially the app, and it is weirdly resistant to teaching what the words mean in isolation. ChineseSkill is significantly better at teaching what the words mean, and will occasionally teach you to write a character (with lots of hints, but hey, it still shows stroke order), and contains parts where one can speak into one's phone and the app gives automated feedback based on what it hears. Yabla also looks interesting as a listening comprehension thing, but I think I'll work my way up to it, plus I'm currently more interested in learning to read, because Chinese-fandom fics and fan comics.
For more translation-based resources, I look things up on MDBG if I can copypaste or want the Chinese for an English word, the Pleco app when I need to draw (it's got OCR but that's paid-only), and when I'm going all radical (heh) and wish to look for more subtle punny names/come up with more suitable titles, I go to HanziCraft.
Note that I learn languages best by writing words down. For Chinese, the characters are just enough on the novel side of the novel-expected curve that I can find writing them engrossing. It's also surprisingly meditative.
Resources I'm using for attempting to learn things include the Wikipedia page on Pinyin for pronunciation (since it actually lists IPA values!), the Duolingo (currently past two checkpoints, at Time 4), and ChineseSkill apps for gamified learning, a BBC characters guide for learning how to write some basic simple characters, and this grammar reference. Duolingo is ... well, it's shit at teaching grammar, especially the app, and it is weirdly resistant to teaching what the words mean in isolation. ChineseSkill is significantly better at teaching what the words mean, and will occasionally teach you to write a character (with lots of hints, but hey, it still shows stroke order), and contains parts where one can speak into one's phone and the app gives automated feedback based on what it hears. Yabla also looks interesting as a listening comprehension thing, but I think I'll work my way up to it, plus I'm currently more interested in learning to read, because Chinese-fandom fics and fan comics.
For more translation-based resources, I look things up on MDBG if I can copypaste or want the Chinese for an English word, the Pleco app when I need to draw (it's got OCR but that's paid-only), and when I'm going all radical (heh) and wish to look for more subtle punny names/come up with more suitable titles, I go to HanziCraft.
Note that I learn languages best by writing words down. For Chinese, the characters are just enough on the novel side of the novel-expected curve that I can find writing them engrossing. It's also surprisingly meditative.
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Date: 2018-01-31 18:37 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-01 12:20 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-31 21:08 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-01 08:23 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-01 04:29 (UTC)*except for when it was A TERRIBLE HORRIBLE THING
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Date: 2018-02-01 12:19 (UTC)