{"id":51,"date":"2007-06-14T00:38:12","date_gmt":"2007-06-13T22:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/wordpress\/?p=51"},"modified":"2007-06-14T00:38:12","modified_gmt":"2007-06-13T22:38:12","slug":"learning-mandarin-chinese-and-some-insight-into-my-brains-inner-workings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/?p=51","title":{"rendered":"Learning Mandarin Chinese, and some insight into my brain’s inner workings"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m learning Mandarin Chinese in preparation for my trip to Taiwan in August, where I’ll be attending the Wikimania<\/a> conference before spending a month or so wandering around the island.<\/p>\n

That’s assuming my passport comes through the strike in time of course.<\/p>\n

I’m enjoying learning a new language again after a long period of atrophy for that part of my brain. Watching myself learn is fascinating. Mandarin is particularly challenging, because it has little connection with any of the other languages I know. It also challenges my listening ability, as it’s tonal, a concept that can be strange for English speakers. There are four tones; level, rising, falling, and falling\/rising. A word can also have a neutral tone. The same word spoken with a different tone can mean different things, and as an English speaker I struggle to hear the differences. The sound ma<\/em>, with a neutral tone is the question particle. Ma can also mean mother, or horse, with other tones, so I can see myself getting into trouble if I don’t get it right.<\/p>\n

The grammar so far seems very easy, and much more consistent that any other language I know.<\/p>\n

That’s just the spoken language – I’ve decided to leave the written language on hold for now, as I only have a month and a half!<\/p>\n

It’s interesting to see how I learn a language. Rote learning is a disaster. Trying to learn lists of words achieves very little. Rather, seeing the word repeatedly used in a particular context allows me to understand a concept, even if the individual words may elude me.<\/p>\n

The importance of sleep also cannot be underestimated. I can battle away at a module, going over it again and again, with little improvement. But after a sleep, I can return to the module, and suddenly it all fits into place. So for me, my learning sees me pushing to a level beyond my comfort zone. The next day, I’ve almost magically improved and can push it further.<\/p>\n

I’m also interested in how much I use English, or translating, while learning. Using it extensively, such as trying to translate everything I don’t understand, holds me back. Learning works best when I try to think in Mandarin, connecting the sentence or phrase as a whole, rather than individual words. But English helps to set the context. Some learning systems exclusively use the language being learnt, with no English at all, just as a child would learn their first language. And the idea is obviously based on the understanding that too much English can get in the way of learning. But I find that some English is useful to set the context. Telling me in English that the next dialogue is about a man meeting his teacher, and then switching to Mandarin, saves me time in fumbling about to understand the context.<\/p>\n

So I guess if I was spending US$300 on some language learning software, that’d mean Fluenz<\/a> would work better for me than Rosetta Stone<\/a>. I’ll just stick to my Exclusive Books special, and hopefully some help from some Taiwanese friends.<\/p>\n

I can perhaps learn from the way I learnt French versus the way I learnt Spanish. French I learnt at university, and the methodology was similar to what seems to work best for me now. I studied it for two years, but barely did anything more than attend classes.<\/p>\n

Spanish, by contrast, I learnt in a month in preparation for a trip to Peru. I studied quite diligently for about an hour a day, but focusing much more on the grammar, and using much more English. I ‘learnt’ enough Spanish to bumble around Peru, but perhaps one consequence of the intensive easy-in method was that it was also easy-out. I can barely speak a word any more. French I remember much better, even though it’s years since I spoke it.<\/p>\n

Bear in mind these are only first impressions, as I’m only about four days into my Mandarin studies! As the time draws closer I may in desperation revert to my Std 6 Latin teachers method, and be seen frenziedly chanting the Mandarin version of amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Tags: Mandarin<\/a> French<\/a> Spanish<\/a> languages<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m learning Mandarin Chinese in preparation for my trip to Taiwan in August, where I’ll be attending the Wikimania conference before spending a month or so wandering around the island. That’s assuming my passport comes through the strike in time of course. I’m enjoying learning a new language again after a long period of atrophy… Continue reading Learning Mandarin Chinese, and some insight into my brain’s inner workings<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-water-personal","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}