There are lots of Chinese people

Okay, the title of this post is somewhat obvious, there are a lot of Chinese people and in at least three cities and a bunch I towns I frequent it is quite easy to get casual language practice, quite easy to find Chinese people to listen to and with a bit more effort quite easy to find longer conversations. Not so easy as living in a country that speaks your target language of course but much much easier than some languages I guess.

I have been a little quiet here recently but have posted a lot posts on my learning Thai blog, Thai being the second language I have seriously attempted I can focus much better on telling the story of how I learn a language and refine those things that seemed to have worked with learning Chinese. This blog is going to focus more on what happens next after I can cope with everyday conversation (a bit more and a bit less in some cases). I will also deal with what happens as I try "normalising" what I have learned in Chinese with more mainstream leaning, I have decided to take the HSK4 (probably early next year but I haven't checked out the times when I can take it for sure). for now though this post is about yesterday. I emphasize input a lot because I think input is what you spend most of your time doing doing when learning a language....

A fairly lucky day for Chinese practice but you make your own luck to some extent, another rambling brain dump I am afraid but it shows what I do.

Yesterday I went shopping in Bath with my wife, no set plans for language learning, and I have mostly been in Bristol recently. Eventually we wanted a coffee (or similar) so went to a chocolate/coffee shop. This place serves an excellent hot chocolate (forget anything you mostly think you know about hot chocolate, they also do a good mocha coffee), it is also somewhere where about a year ago I had a most excellent and alas too short language learning discussion with a Belgian, a Frenchman, a Malaysian Chinese and another Chinese girl from Shanghai. Today the shop had four (yes 4) Chinese staff. One of which was the girl from Shanghai (after a while Asian people don't all look the same and vice-versa I suspect) she seems to have become a manager there. This gave me the opportunity for a little Chinese chat, nothing spectacular (I was with someone who doesn't speak any Chinese) but everything helps, different accents, different ways of saying the same thing etc.

A little later and my wife wants to look for something I am not interested in so we split up for about 20mins, left to my own devices I go to a Chinese medicine shop I know but the shop is closed there is a sign saying they have moved. I hear Chinese (Bath is a city that has a lot of tourists you often hear Chinese). There is a party of Chinese tourists, some guy is talking to them loudly so I go up and listen. Nothing very interesting, they are talking about lunch apperently the guy (tour leader?) is going to take them to Hai bao for food. Not sure what he means, Ocean something probably, I think of Hai main bao bao (Sponge Bob Square pants). I assume Hai bao is a translation of something English, but don't know. As they march off I walk with them (why not?). I try not to look too obtrusive, perhaps some one will talk to me. They don't walk far, going into a shopping mall and up an escalator and the puzzle is solved, hai bao is there in big Chinese characters, "Ocean Treasure" a Chinese all you can eat buffet restuarant (not very authentic food for the tourists doh!!).

I am in the right place for the medicine shop, these places are everywhere (although fewer since the recession) the staff always speak Mandarin because they get their Chinese Doctors from mainland China and the staff often have to translate for the Doctors (all of their recruitment pages on-line for the various different medicine shops stipulate that the staff must speak good Mandarin (do your homework ;)). Anywhere I have gone in the UK I can usually get at least a little practice in a medicine shop, they are often expensive but you don't have to buy anything, and if you speak Mandarin they often forget the "hard sell". I find out if they have Tiger Balm, how much it is etc. No I don't need it now I have enough but I used to buy it from them where they were previously (the guy behind the counter is new to me though). They have other customers and I have run out of time....

Later on we are in clothes shop, my wife goes to try something on, I let her know I will be back shortly, opposite this shop, there is a mobile phone accessory shop, via a complicated set of coincidences (can't explain all it would take too long) I suspect a Chinese student I knew (I met her and her Chinese finance when they were working in a cafe and we met up a few times last year to practice English and Chinese) has been working there. There are a Chinese couple in the shop, I haven't prepared but say something along the lines of I am looking for an old friend and I think she works there. No problem but apparently she left a while ago and is now studying in Cardiff.

More shopping, and we have lunch (Spanish), a little later and time to go but we have one more coffee in a Starbucks. I draw the shortstraw and whilst my wife finds a table I join the queue, two Chinese people are ahead of me youngish guy and girl, haven't been in England long judging by their clothes, and manner. I spend a little time listening to their conversation, the bits I can hear are fairly simple, they are mostly talking about things in the coffee shop. They don't buy their drinks together, as she leaves to take her drink to the table I start talking with the guy, how long has he been in England (three months) I compliment him on his pronunciation (more English than American which is unusual) he asks me about my Chinese etc. We move into English, some people would say you should never do this but I tend to see communication as a two way thing, he has been in England for a few months and is going to be starting an Engineering masters degree soon, he wants to practice speaking some English.

I am going to try following a few tours of Chinese tourists when I have a chance, should be interesting. I was genuinely looking for someone in the mobile phone shop but if not I could have made up a name and pretended I was (they will just tell me that X has never worked there). I could have asked the Chinese couple in the coffee shop the time (the time in China that is) I have done that about twenty times before and so far no one has asked me why I need to know the time in China even though some have stopped to chat. None of these are long conversations, that can take a little more luck or planning.

When I get home I pull out my Ipod touch and look up a few things that I wasn't sure about, for example I heard the Chinese girl pointing at something and asking in Chinese if it meant xiao fei. the guy confirmed in Chinese that it did. I was puzzled, I assumed she meant tip, Chinese visitors are often worried about tipping but when I got to where there were, none of the signs had anything about tips (service charges or gratuities). When I looked up the word I realized it wasn't xiao3fei4 but xiao1fei4 (to be fair it is harder to eavesdrop when there is a lot of background noise) I should have worked it out though (we become blinded by what we expect), the word "consume" is bound to have been on one of those signs.

Sometimes when moving through a city I don't go five minutes between each occasion I hear Mandarin being spoken by someone. NOW THERE IS A THOUGHT.

The slow language

My Thai language learning may well be too analytical already to ever be able to really master the language (I don't know for sure). I have plans for Chinese that I think will allow me to progress a lot further but I am keeping one language to myself. I am learning it quite slowly but one language is going to be entirely input based for early and middle stages, I won't even blog about it or say what it it is.

As for the more analytical nature of some of my other language learning, I want to see what is going on, I want to be able to come back to it in years to come and understand what happened.

I am aiming to be able to speak a number of languages and start traveling in the not tooo distant future. For this blog however the focus will mainly become what to do to take my Chinese on to the next stage.

How much do you want to learn like a child?

I am working on a mini-project at the moment that is helping to focus my views and opinions on language learning. One big battle that is raging is between natural methods and academic methods, although I guess very few people sit right at either extreme. Part of the battle rages over learning like a child (natural) and the view that once we have passed puberty we can't use certain abilities (that help us absorb language rather than study language for example). My approach is developing into a mostly natural one but with some big exceptions, I justify my exceptions on the basis that in many ways children suck at learning languages.

Children and nature do some really dumb things when it comes to learning language, some are their own fault and some are just down to plain circumstance, here are a few examples.

Firstly they start learning languages before they have the cognitive ability to do it properly (or maybe they need the language to develop the cognitive ability it doesn't matter either way). So even at the stage when they have a growing vocabulary a good ear for their mother tongue they are still missing some abstract thinking capabilities, the ability to see things from someone else's point of view etc. this really restricts their progress and understanding of the language.

Secondly they spend a lot of their formative years hanging around with and conversing with other learners of the same language (other Children in fact). Don't they know that they should live in the target language not hang around with a bunch of 'expats' that don't speak it properly yet.

Thirdly they are lazy, very lazy most of them don't try, they can learn their target language far faster if they apply themselves rather than let nature take its course, the occasional precocious child or bookworm show quite clearly how much faster they could learn.

Fourthly they consistently try to talk even before they are ready (whoa there you are going to get fossilized little fella stop that meaningless babble and wait until you are ready to say it properly).

Fifthly as they get older many of them not only hang around mostly with fellow learners they even actively resist the target language, often going so far as to make up their own words, change the meanings of words or adopt language from another culture/dialect just because it seems cooler. They can carry this to the extent that they will alienate any of their fellow learners who appear to be too good at the target language ("grown up").

Sixthly there is no consistency each child depending on circumstance and interest bumbles around picking up what they can, so a bunch of little classmates may have some who know how to say their primary colors, a precocious child who loves learning colours and knows the difference between tope and aqua-marine, some annoying child who loves cars, won't say any colors and points at red saying "brake light" and little billy who seems happily oblivious to any color language and if you don't pull up your socks young man I am going to have to fill in a bunch of forms, talk to your parents and get a specialist in to test your vision (sigh!).

Do I need to continue? There are many more stupid things that Children and nature do when it comes to language, perhaps because it is compromise, perhaps because talking apes aren't natural at all, perhaps because the selfish meme idea is correct (do we speak languages because we evolved that way or did we evolve this way because some ape like creature got infected with proto language and from that point there was no going back).

Because of all this and because of the fact that I was already almost 40 before I started learning foreign languages (and I want to learn about five of the damn things mostly becasue it is best hobby I found for a long time) I will cherrypick. I am happy to listen to language I don't understand (when I think it is helpful). I am also happy to watch video WITH subtitles, and without, unlike the Child I have already been infected with one language I can use it to speed things up (if I am careful). I am not afraid of fossilisation (I don't see how some naturalists can argue that yes I can absorb like a child but no I can't avoid fossilisation of my mistakes like a child).

I am a naturalist, I disdain grammar study, ignore textbooks, I will use the most natural effective approaches I can and armed with my Ipod touch ERRRK (not exactly natural), armed with my Video ERRRK (also not very natural), my mp3's ohhh damn this isn't looking anything like when I learned my mother tongue!

Sighh nothing is ever simple is it? Perhaps I should just grab the language when and how feels good at the time, apply meaning to it when and how I feel like it, check back with reality every now and again to ensure I am making progress avoid stress and have fun. I do want to make reasonably rapid progress though so when that stops happening I will think again.

More on Google for learning Language

Following on from my last post Using Google for Lexis, I have a habit of posting thoughts and then searching for what other people are doing, actually I think this is a better way to learn :).

I found http://bbs.english.sina.com/archiver/?tid-805.html using google to learn English.

For example:

"on another hand" 107,000 results
"on other hand" 415,000 results
"on the other hand" 78,700,000 results

The majority rules..

I also found Jim Stroud at englishcafe.com explaining How to make Google your English Teacher

Unlike Jim Stroud suggests with learning English I have not found any useful functionality with the ~ character when learning Chinese at google.cn, however the * is very useful. Just remember to make sure you are in English mode with your input method, the Chinese ＊ is not the same as * and google will not see it as a character wild card. Basically if you put an asterix in your query then google will substitute any character for the asterix, seeing what comes out the other end can be very instructive.

Google also be used to search specific sites, which can be instructive, for micro-blogging for example you can restrict the search results to fanfou.com by adding site:fanfou.com to the front of the query.

Learning multiple languages 自相矛盾

A couple of people have asked me about the languages I am learning, because I occaisionally mention Cantonese and Japanese. Well to be honese the Japanese was fun but it is currently on hold. I think I was enticed by the wonderful feeling I was getting as I started to understand basic Mandarin and wanted to extend that into another language. However it now feel that to truly master Mandarin (at least to the extent of my ambition) I need to give it the main focus of my free time. I hope to maintain the first steps I have made in Japanese to return to it at a later date.

Maybe when you get to an intermediate level in a language the dynamics change and the things you have to do to improve change also. It seems very tempting to start an new language from scratch and get the familiar buzz from those early milestones achived. For me though this can only retard my progress in Mandarin.

Now having said all that I am going to confess to still pursuing Cantonese, this is at a slower pace than Mandarin studies and a different style. I have many reasons. Which I will explain in a later post, but in summary it is commonly spoken by many overseas Chinese, it forces me to stay true to my original beliefs of starting from spoken language (learn to read what you already know and don't directly associate sound to hanzi), it eventually puts me in the same position as many Chinese people (able to speak Mandarin and at least one other Chinese language), and lastly it is fun.

The main problem is that there are not the same resources for Cantonese, so after completing the Pimsleur course, I am hoping I can bootstrap from Mandarin (films with subs. and soundtracks for both Mandarin and Cantonese speakers etc.). Also jump in the deepend and use resources like those supplied by Marcelo, for example I know this Chengyu very well in Mandarin and here I have text and audio in Cantonese.

The brain and language

Learning a new language is a big issue and involves a huge investment in time. For me it makes sense to spend at least a little time studying the learning process, if you find something that makes even a small improvement to the way in which you study it will pay off hugely over time. Whilst looking around for something to teach me more about the brain and language I discovered this video on Google videos. Just the ticket to get started.

IMHO Google video rocks as you can download easily from it unlike youtube where you have to jump through hoops using things like the unplug plugin for Firefox, even then you need a media player that will play flv files. There is a lot of Mandarin stuff on google video and the mp4 download option means it is easy to convert or play directly on mobile devices. Yes I do know Google bought Youtube but at the moment the interfaces and content are seperate.

The same people have also produced a long video in both Mandarin and English about the Nanjing massacre. This is obviously a very heavy subject and at the complete opposite end to the spectrum from the girly talk I mentioned in my last post. However the documentary is over an hour long and the presence of both an English and Mandarin version makes it a potentially valuable study resource.

English version

Mandarin version

I am acutely aware that emotive issues like this, the holocaust, the bombing of Dresden etc. etc. are open to much interpretation and many viewpoints. If you want to get a perspective on the many viewpoints issue you could do worse than watch the Japanese film Rashomon, also available in Google video. Apparently like a lot of good old media it is now public domain (happy days).

Rashomon (not Chinese but worth a watch)