Hi,
Just wanted to know how people learn new languages; English or other.
I actually started poorly at 10 years old, then the next year i had a very strict teacher, my results went from 7/20 to 17/20 very quickly, with times it eventuallty went down to 14 or 12 but i always was ahead of the others, or most of them, in fact i was bored as i wasnt learning anything new, i participated into "big challenge", some kind of contest, i was in the 1st quarter(within 40k people) and was second in my own school, i got a free dictionnary out of this
. Then i went to university, started to watch all ST episodes, without subtitles, every series. before that time i use to translate some songs from genesis or pink floyd or others though it didnt always made more sense once translated . i also played games like daggerfall, 100%english, and somehow understood what were the quests about...
got a score of 880 at the Toeic before i left university, then i went abroad in china where i had to use english in my work place(i do speak chinese as well, though not as fluently).
i never really stopped using english, though maybe a bit when i got into chinese . the only thing i'm worried about is my pronunciation, except in china i never really had a chance to practice.
Chinese mandarin is way harder to learn, though not as hard as one would think, the grammar is simple, even simpler than english grammar, no plural, no feminine, no conjugation, it may require some getting use to though, the pronunciation is simple enough, though not very varied, many words sounds the same. Hand writing is difficult yes, but not on a computer, know the pronunciation, or the stroke order? then it should be ok. The main problem with that language is vocabulary, there are tons of it. there are a few easy words like "cofee"(kafei咖啡), "sofa"(shafa沙发), "chocolate"(qiaokeli巧克力) but that's about all of what is recognizable.
edit : i forgot about tones... almost every character has one, there are 4 : flat, rising, descending then rising, and the last one descending(think of a piano, rising = "going" to the right, descending = "going" to the left...)
a word out of context wont be understood without that. yet this is not enough if you ask for only one character.
for instance there are hundreds of "ji"; without context, there's no way you can guess which one you want to talk about.
most character are their own words, for instance chifan吃饭 is chi(eat吃)+fan(rice饭) chifan means either "to eat" or "to eat rice", fan is there as a default word(you cant say i want to eat by simply using "chi", you have to use "fan" as well), if, in a restaurant, you're asked about what you want to eat, if you dont want rice you have to change it : "chi ..."
there are many other exemples.
Just wanted to know how people learn new languages; English or other.
I actually started poorly at 10 years old, then the next year i had a very strict teacher, my results went from 7/20 to 17/20 very quickly, with times it eventuallty went down to 14 or 12 but i always was ahead of the others, or most of them, in fact i was bored as i wasnt learning anything new, i participated into "big challenge", some kind of contest, i was in the 1st quarter(within 40k people) and was second in my own school, i got a free dictionnary out of this
. Then i went to university, started to watch all ST episodes, without subtitles, every series. before that time i use to translate some songs from genesis or pink floyd or others though it didnt always made more sense once translated . i also played games like daggerfall, 100%english, and somehow understood what were the quests about...got a score of 880 at the Toeic before i left university, then i went abroad in china where i had to use english in my work place(i do speak chinese as well, though not as fluently).
i never really stopped using english, though maybe a bit when i got into chinese
. the only thing i'm worried about is my pronunciation, except in china i never really had a chance to practice.Chinese mandarin is way harder to learn, though not as hard as one would think, the grammar is simple, even simpler than english grammar, no plural, no feminine, no conjugation, it may require some getting use to though, the pronunciation is simple enough, though not very varied, many words sounds the same. Hand writing is difficult yes, but not on a computer, know the pronunciation, or the stroke order? then it should be ok. The main problem with that language is vocabulary, there are tons of it. there are a few easy words like "cofee"(kafei咖啡), "sofa"(shafa沙发), "chocolate"(qiaokeli巧克力) but that's about all of what is recognizable.
edit : i forgot about tones... almost every character has one, there are 4 : flat, rising, descending then rising, and the last one descending(think of a piano, rising = "going" to the right, descending = "going" to the left...)
a word out of context wont be understood without that. yet this is not enough if you ask for only one character.
for instance there are hundreds of "ji"; without context, there's no way you can guess which one you want to talk about.
most character are their own words, for instance chifan吃饭 is chi(eat吃)+fan(rice饭) chifan means either "to eat" or "to eat rice", fan is there as a default word(you cant say i want to eat by simply using "chi", you have to use "fan" as well), if, in a restaurant, you're asked about what you want to eat, if you dont want rice you have to change it : "chi ..."
there are many other exemples.
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