Market trader Chinese

I pass a market stall selling fruit and vegetables and note that two Chinese girls are approaching the stall from another angle. I don't need anything there so move on, but as I do so I hear the stall holder shouting out 新年快乐，你好,好朋友！ enthusiastically.

Nothing too strange except that this is Bath in England and the stall holder is a young English lad of typical market stall down to earth joviality. I have talked to him before as the stall is a good place to buy fruit and veg. but never heard him speaking Chinese before. Granted it sounds a little rough but is fully confident and not lacking any enthusiasm. When I have more time I would will try to find out how much he knows.

Bath has quite a sizeable young Chinese population and the stall holder has at least one impetus to learn Chinese, that is to boost his selling. There may be many other reasons including an interest in Chinese girls (but lets not jump to hasty conclusions).

This made my day, I think it is going to happen more often as cultures meet. For every street seller in a foreign country who has self-learned enough English to sell to tourists; I would wish to see another Englishman who is reversing the trend and returning the favor. One in the eye for those who over intellectualize the study of Asian languages.

No matter how functional his Chinese is there is bound to be one who would stand and say "his pronunciation is off and he has little concept of the finer grammar points". If I was there I would happily punch that "one" in the face......

Strange the things that can lift your spirits when the days are dark.

Reasons for not understanding Chinese

When you think you are making progress in a language it can be a little depressing when you come across some that you don't understand and feel that you should have. Actually I have observed and worked out a number of valid reasons not to feel so bad. So next time don't beat yourself up.

You can't hear it properly

This one is two fold: firstly when eavesdropping on passersbys it is very difficult to catch what they are saying, even in your mother tongue (try it), particularly if the ambient noise level is high. The second reason can be when you are watching TV or a film that is intended for English speakers. The director may have included some Chinese talking but expects you to get the meaning from context or convenient subs. therefore the sound man doesn't actually go to the trouble of making sure the voices are clear. You may feel disappointed you missed some basic stuff but replay it and you discover the sound quality of the conversation is so poor you didn't have much of a chance anyway.

You are hearing something out of context

Even if you are good, you are going to struggle with out of context snippets, as above this can even cause confusion in your mother tongue.

They are speaking another dialect

Perhaps even another language. Particularly with Chinese, remember that what you may be hearing is a dialect they are more at home speaking in. Dialects close to Mandarin can be a particular problem, they sound familiar somehow but you don't quite get it. You would need some heavy exposure to get used to it. Having said that I think is is good to listen to target language enough to at least determine whether what you are listening to is in the right ballpark.

They don't want you to understand

Yup it happens don't take it personally, for whatever reason (maybe testing you, maybe suspicion etc.), they are actively trying to mess you up with funky language and or speaking very fast.

They don't speak very well themselves

This happens too, they told you they spoke Mandarin (perhaps didn't expect you to know much) and actually their Mandarin isn't so good, making it harder for you to understand

You weren't actually ready for it

Your are a learner, your window of opportunity suddenly appeared and you missed it, sometimes you may catch it, there are times you will be tired, focused on something else and your second language skills will be comparitively poor.

The language is highly specialised

This will happen a lot, you just haven't any experiance of the vocabulary and context being used, or the film is a specialised genre etc. etc. Think of your own language, which is easier for a foreigner do you think, a standard chat-show or a "gangsta" movie.

Of course you may just need to practice more ;) but even you are feeling bad about an experiance then don't, there is always another opportunity. Don't get me wrong this is not setting myself up for failure just providing reasons to remain confident. I am sure there are many more, do you have some you can share?

A little philosophy, and a good source of Chinese texts

I posted before about effortless learning and it created a little controversy. I can understand why as effortless can mean different things to different people. I came across a nice explanation of exactly what it means to me on Steve Kaufmann's website. At the beginning of his book (which you can read online if you follow the link) in the introduction Steve has this from from a Chinese philosopher. Zhuangzi, the Taoist philosopher, is supposed to have lived in China over 2,300 years ago. He encouraged people to achieve their potential through effortlessness, by not resisting their own natures. That is exactly what I meant by effortlessness.

I have an interest in philosophy, but know much more about ancient Greek and both ancient and modern European philosophy. I found this excellent website, the Chinese Text Project has number of texts with English translations. Some of the text also have modern Chinese versions alongside the older Chinese (an excellent way to learn to read older styles of Chinese).

CSLpod (thanks Edwin)

Edwin left me a comment that introduced me to CSLPod. Looks like another great resource for me to pull lessons from and reduces to the need to roll my own (although this has it own merits sometimes). The advanced lessons do indeed have news and current affairs topics with transcripts. I had a quick look at some of the other levels also and there seems to some good stuff in there also. It seems that students of Mandarin are really spoiled, we have a lot of resources on the internet to help us.

Rolling your own Mandarin lessons (from CCTV etc.)

There is a lot of Chinese content out there, and once you have picked up the basics it is fairly easy to find things that you can study and make your own exercises from. For example CCTV have a site where you can search for small video clips from news articles etc. Sometimes the site is a little broken and specific videos can not load but there is plenty that does work, and much of it has text transcripts. I uploaded the first one I have been playing with to youtube.

New reports seem to be special in many languages and are often fastpaced, I figure analysing and some repeated listening to this kind of material can be useful as part of a learning plan especially if you have some ability to zero into to specific subject areas (I have an interest in internet related matters).

I have the transcript that came with the video on my study materials blog.

Chinese streaming television TUV

I have posted about streaming Chinese TV and various programs before. At the moment I am finding the TUV player most convienient. PPLive seems to hog network resources and the choice of channels keeps changing too much (also seems to have lost the CCTV channels).

Basically when I am using the PC for writing or overtime (from home) I have a Chinese TV window open most of the time. Sometimes I pay more attention to it than others but it is amazing how often I find I hear an interesting phrase and start paying attention.

Sadly I don't understand it all but depending on the program these days I can often understand most of it.

You can download TUV player at www.tvunetworks.com

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.

Mojiti again

I am returning to Mojiti again. I think it is a great potential resource for language learning. John has also played with it. As John points out it can be a little time consuming particularly at first but I believe it makes a great tool in the learning Chinese arsenal. You can create your own little excercises and projects and at a level that suits you, these are far more powerful and interesting than any homework you might be set in a class or an excercise from a text book.

My next Mojiti project is to finish transcribing the following video, I figure if I post it here I will have to finish it (I have been rather busy recently and only made a quick start so far). I will be fairly hard work, although I know what she is saying (a least a pretty good idea) that is not the same as being able to write a character by character transcript, there are a few areas I am going to find quite sticky. Transcribing in Chinese is most important for me then I will do an English translation set like I did with the last song I did. Basically she is talking about the definition of beauty, the proliforation of beauty products, chat shows talking about dieting beauty products haircuts etc., beauty product adverts, changing yourself this way won't provide deep lasting happiness, if she changed her eyelids (I think) it wouldn't make her any happier in the long run, friends and family will love you for what you are, everyone has their own personal beauty etc. etc.

When I get round to finishing it I will put a transcription on my study materials blog also. This is the nearest thing a self learner like me gets to homework.

Ellen's Chinese podcasts

After mentioning Naturegirl's blog in the last post I really should also mention Ellen's Chinese podcasts. Ellen has lots of material on her site and most of it comes with audio. There are different levels of dialog, with text and translations. You also get to hear children's voices, male and female...

I am not sure why more people don't seem to use resources like this, material posted by real Chinese speakers is particularly precious. Ellen gives you some real dialogs often with a lot of humor. Naturegirl's chengyu were a great find, I have just started really taking the study of chengyu seriously and appreciate the example sentences and the fact that I can ask questions.

I get the impression that many learners carry a classroom mentality and are afraid of stepping outside of a set course of instruction. I don't see how stepping outside and spending time expanding your experience can ever cause harm?

Naturegirl found again

Strange title I know. but a little while ago someone called Jenny left a comment. I found her blog and it is a great little resource. Sadly I then lost it (forgot to tag it). I thought it had vanished but turns out it wasn't on Blogger.

I found it again when I followed a comment left by naturegirl on The Tower of Confusion blog Visit the Chinese Help blog, there are lots of Chengyu and other bits and pieces that can help us Chinese learners. Thank you Jenny/naturegirl!