Dec 19 2006
drat
My Chinese class is closed, and I’m on the waitlist. Fooey.
9 responses so far
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Meta
You are taking Chinese? I did not know.
Well, hoping to. Maaaaybe not, at this rate.
cf http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org
Mandarin or Cantonese?
Mandarin
which I think is what’s widely spoken in Taiwan, no?
Ah, wikimania! It all makes sense now. Mandarin would, indeed, be your best bet if you are traveling to Taiwan and want to learn a li’l of the local language. Have you considered doing some sort of audiobook course until (and if) a class opens up?
Yes, indeed… I need to find a good one. Part of my trouble is I am insane enough to want to study the written language as well (esp. since most of our communications are written online…) I don’t imagine I’ll get anything like fluent but I want to train my eye in recognizing characters. Most audiobook courses don’t touch the written language, for obvious reasons (it’d take a lifetime to get fluent, and most courses say things like “speak the language in 60 days!” etc.)
At any rate, if you have any suggestions for specific products let me know!
I did discover an article about my workplace, though
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%88%B4%E7%B6%AD%E6%96%AF%E5%8A%A0%E5%88%A9%E7%A6%8F%E5%B0%BC%E4%BA%9E%E5%A4%A7%E5%AD%B8
awesomeness.
Well, I have been liking (and learning from) the Cantonese lessons from Pimsleur. I think they came on CD, so Mr. Netsirk had to figure out how to get them them on our ipods or whatever. I don’t know how the Mandarin lessons are, but they’re probably equivalent.
As far as learning to recognize characters, I found that mah jongg is really good for learning numbers! Don’t know if the symbols used on mah jongg tiles look anything like the neon or painted or whatever signs in real life, but it’s a start, I suppose. I haven’t yet tried to learn more than that, but I do know that characters are composed of radicals, which means you can sometimes deciper complex characters if you know common radicals. You could start by learning the 200-odd radicals…
(Mr. N and I hope to travel to China in 2009, to visit his grandparents’ villages in Guangdong and witness the post-Olympics landscape – this is one reason I’m interested in learning!)
Good luck!
Mah jongg is a great idea! Maybe I’ll bring a set to xmas & make everyone play with me
You’ll probably get a kick out of this project, if you’ve not seen it already:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Chinese_stroke_order
thanks for the CD recommendation.. we should practice, once I figure out how to say anything