More media

An overdue follow-up to the previous post about streaming Chinese media. And I think I will need another follow up to this one (hopefully not so delayed).

Chinese media is really, really important to my learning strategy, as I am not in a Chinese speaking country and have to work hard to find Mandarin speakers to practice conversation with.

First things first, if you are anything like me then listening to as much real Chinese radio etc. and watching as much Chinese TV, films etc. is going to be a huge part of your learning. I learn and have learned so much from exposure to the language. Sometimes I get something right, just from a gut feeling, not because of any rule I learnt from a book.

Assuming you want to watch/listen then where to start. Well you can read the previous post to this one first but in my opinion a super tool is the Videolan player. This will play most any sound or video file you chuck at it, as well as Windows media streams and Realmedia streams. Videolan will also work on many operating systems and best of all (something I didn't realise for too long) you can record media streams with it.

Videolan player is a bit tricky to get the hang of but worth the effort you have to remember that it does a lot of stuff (like distributing streams over your own network if you wish) that you probably don't need so the real art is learning which bits to ignore. Learning to use videolan (google for help) is time well spent though. Explaining the intricacies of recording is a little beyond my time allowance but here is a link. This link is for mac osx however you can extrapolate. I found it best to save as an asf file with an asf extension, I can play the resultant file in media player or Videolan (and why bother with media player). The Videolan software is written for techies and tells you how to do stuff from the command line, everything you need is available from the menus though. So now you can record media streams or media files that are delivered as a stream. Both the previous links were mentioned in my last post in more detail. I think you are going to have to do some digging though to dig up the resources that you can connect to and that you like.

In my opinion Videolan is a better option than the SDP recorder mentioned in the last post. Although SPD's recorder may have some useful timeing features. Techies can use scripts and cron to manage timed recordings on Linux or similar though :)

Now the Tv and the media streams you will find will be variable in quality. Many will also be hidden in webpages that that use media-plugins to play them (often inaccessable to non-windows users). This is why I highly recommend that you ditch your current web-browser and use Firefox (if you are not useing it already). Firefox is a valuable aid to learning Chinese, the first reason being the whole host of excellent extensions you can get for it. The one you want now is called Unplug, learn how to use this one, it will help you track down media links. Also even if the links you want are not concealed but on a page of Chinese that you cannot read this is an excellent tool to track them down.

Listen to Chinese, watch Chinese, at all levels of undertanding. More than most languages Mandarin is a stream of syallables. Each syallable has meaning even if coloured by those around them. However much you can understand, aquiring the ability to hear those syallables in normal Chinese seems to be a no-brainer to me. Without this you will never understand even if you have enough vocabulary.

The next post will be very soon and focus on the Streaming peer to peer TV channels (thanks to Mashood) and more media via bittorent and e-mule (straight to the desktop this time). Enjoy!

Chinese TV streaming/recording

A post by Pandagator introduced me to a nice new tool for saving streaming video media. I have experimented with a number of ways to record Chinese TV, and have a number of streams to watch. This one however has the benefit of being both free and not too technical.

There are a number of places where you can obtain streaming Chinese TV. My best sources came from this page of links. Note that most Chinese sites seem to prefer Windows technology so the media is targeted for Windows media player. Also the connection is not always reliable. Sometimes you can get a good connection, sometimes the server at the other vanishes from sight for a while or returns a busy signal. Your quality of connection may depend on the time of day or on your geographical location. On a good day however you can watch Chinese TV programs and listen to real Chinese (well real TV Chinese anyway).

The bad news is that non-windows users have a technical headache to get the TV ( problem I still haven't solved, but I mostly use Windows now), the connection is usually unrealiable, and you can only watch what is being streamed to you, so if you see something good it is a one shot only, you cannot replay.

I have managed in the past to record using methods that are either technically awkward or errr... distinctly dodgy. Sometimes I have recorded 7 hours or so and then picked through it for goodies afterwards. It is a great way to listen to Chinese. Another huge advantage of recording is that you can often record streams when the connection is too poor to watch in realtime (the player just keeps trying to buffer).

The opensource program (SDP) detailed by Pandagator really works though, it is a bit rough around the edges but well worth learning how to use.

You will need some media urls to use with the application. You can start with the one Pandagator detailed NTDTV although bear in mind that this one is funded from outside China and may have a political agenda, it does usually have a strong connection though. Some sources will play in media plugins on the webpage but you can usually find the urls you need by viewing the text source of the page. You can also track down urls from this excellent page. These are not realtime streams but saved CCTV programs designed to be played via a stream. CCTV also provide pages with text for the dialogues :):).

A nice multi-platform media player you can play your recordings on is VLC. VLC is well worth having anyway especially for those moments when you download some interesting media file from somewhere and media player coughs up a codec not recognised error.

Rooted in sound!

I will be posting more in the future about my experiences with Chinese characters but before I do this, I should make it clear that my own personal strategy for learning Chinese will always be firmly rooted in sound and not writing.

I know this is an area that causes much argument, and many people may prefer to base their learning on the writing system. Many others will have no choice because they are following formal courses of study. I do have my reasons for preferring sound, which I will now try to explain.

For starters I think many people are forced into a 'literature' centric mode of learning Chinese. As the saying goes "if you only have a hammer every problem looks like a nail". The most horrific example is a type of comment I have heard a few times now on different forums from people in the early stages of learning Chinese. The comment goes something like this "how do you visualize the characters, when listening to full speed Chinese, I find it hard to visualize the correct character especially with homonyms?".

I can't imagine the learning system that would allow someone to even phrase a question along those lines. Visualizing characters will not help you sort out homonyms and visualizing conversation as text strikes me as a particularly inefficient way to translate in real time. For starters most Chinese sounds are represented by many characters (to visualize the correct one you already need to have extracted some meaning from context so why bother with the character bit). Also many characters have two or more sounds associated with them, sometimes different tones, sometimes completely different. Both characters and sounds have their own confusions, I am aware that you are more likely to extract meaning from a character than a discrete sound however you should bear in mind that the same character may well have a similar or identical meaning in Japanese kanji and obviously Japanese and Chinese are two completely different languages.

I have a suspicion that learning to understand the meaning of Mandarin from the writing system is not exercising the correct pathways of the brain to aid eventual fluency in conversation. For me it seems pretty clear that learning to write what you can already hear and say is a more logical approach (and the approach taken by all those that speak Mandarin as a first language).

I can see that many people will have no choice but to learn the reading as soon as possible and it obviously has a lot more relevancy for anyone actually living in China etc. Also many years ago there simply wouldn't be enough sources of sound input available for somebody living in England (or elsewhere) and learning Mandarin in their spare time. For these reasons many techniques for learning Chinese had to be developed from a predominantly literature-centric view.

Today the Internet provides us with a huge sound resource. We have podcasts, streaming TV and radio and of course DVDs and music. Sound input can even occur in otherwise dead time for learning (times where it simply isn't practical to get out a book and start reading)

I believe that the writing system and Chinese literature can offer huge opportunities for study but as with English I expect to acquire the basic language through the medium of sound and move on from there.

Maybe the real question should be "Are you studying Mandarin mostly from books or mostly from the spoken language?"? Followed by "Which do you want first, to be able to read it or speak it?".

Comments Enabled at last (how embarassing)

How embarassing, thanks to an e-mail from John I just discovered that I have had the comments set to moderated on this blog all the time (I never checked). Thank you for all the comments, which have now been released, I must spend some time now to read them :). Also anybody can comment now.

Now I have comments I am spurred on even more! Dang I have been talking to myself all this time and not listening to what everyone else has to say (a bit like my early Mandarin Conversations). Having had a look it may take a little time to respond to some of the excellent points, it is terrific to have so much response it is all very valuable.

Mandarin progress report 3

Should really have posted this a while ago, but here I am at seven and a half months. Generally all is well but I have an awful lot to do. And the blog is losing relevance (maybe).

You can go straight to the previous report.

The good news, the last time I posted a progress report I was hoping to be well into listening to the intermediate level Chinesepod lessons by around six months. That happened and I am still there. I think it is going to take a while to crack the Intermediate level. I can understand much of the Chinese chat about Chinese language but much of the rest of the chat requires a lot of hard work and analysis. My target on this score is to be studying the advanced level podcasts by Christmas.

Natural conversation is hard, but is seems normal that the ability to construct and utter Chinese is going to lag behind my ability to hear and understand. I am working increasingly on conversation with Skype. Unfotunately my Chinese friend, that I meet once a week is returning to Japan to work very soon. I think we will keep in touch over the internet though. My pronounciation is improving through recitation of toungue twisters and jokes, I do have a few sounds though that need serious work (rather than just improvement). The problem at the moment is between sounds like chi and che, which are okay in isolation but definitely not in conversation.

I still watch some Chinese TV over the Internet and watch Chinese films etc. The progress is steady but sure, it is very exciting when I am lucky enough to fully understand a few sentances rather than the odd word or phrase.

The time seems to be right to start learning Chinese characters again. I need to experiment a little more before I am confident about the best way to approach this. The initial goal is to be able to read Chinese subtitles in realtime. I think this will be a good first reading target and certainly easier than reading a newspaper. I want to keep the speed pressure because I don't want to teach myself to 'analyse' Chinese text, I want to be able to 'read' it.

Sounds are still very, very important to me. Despite an increasing interest in Chinese writing and literature I am still very committed to the idea that the spoken language is where most of the initial focus should be directed. On this note I am going to try to make some real effort to get some audio on this blog and demonstrate some of my ideas.

I am feeling a bit indifferent about the blog at the moment, I don't want to give it up but on the otherhand it doesn't seem to provoke much interchange of information (I have never had a single comment ;)). Having said that I have had a fair amount of e-mail and comments on other blogs. Also my Chinese friend found me through this blog and initially approached me about face to face language exchange so that was a big plus.

The art of conversation?

The art of conversation? Less an art, more like a confounded mathematical puzzle at the moment.

Wedged firmly in the UK and initially knowing no Chinese speakers, I am at the opposite end of the spectrum from the immersion technique. Now I have both a Skype partner and a 'real world' partner that I can meet once a week or so, I am finding conversation (constructing sentances to say in real time, whilst still retaining enough brain cells to understand what they say) quite a different animal from listening.

Thankfully I am making a little progress and need to experiment a little more to find some way in which to speed up the progress. I have decided to finish the Pimsleur courses (I originally got bored at number 10). I think that the way Pimsleur keeps making you say things in a slightly different pattern and gives you only small pauses to speak helps excercise the conversation 'muscles' a little.

Chinesepod is helping a bit, sometimes I can just blurt out a whole chunk of stuff because I have become so familiar with listening to it

In the end though I don't see how any form of self-study is going to really provide you with all the skills required for conversation. I guess you just have to go out there and do it.

For the first time, I now understand how people can sometimes be very good at understanding a language but are incapable of speaking it. I really want to make sure that doesn't happen in my case.

Remembering tones from Pinyin

Six months - yes I have been tying to learn Chinese for six months, which means that I ought to write a progress report soon. That has provoked me into thinking more about my learning process.

Thinking about how some things are easier to remember than others I had a sudden realisation about tones and writing pinyin.

Thinking about [měitiān wǒ hěn lèi ] written with the tone marks it looks more professional. Written as [mei3tian1 wo3 hen3 lei4 ] it is easier to remember the tones (for me, maybe not for you).

After some thought about it I have realised that if I don't know the tones for something I am saying and I try to remember them from a memory of what I read then I have much much more chance of remembering if the pinyin was written with tone numbers. The number almost becomes a another letter.

Maybe it works this way for me because my first language doesn't have accented letters? The difference in the ability to recall the tones by 'remembering' the writing is significant.

Literal translation paying huge dividends

A while ago I posted about literal translation and how I thought it was a great aid to learning Chinese. Well as it happens I am discovering just how powerful it can be. In fact I can't understand why it is not emphasised right from the begining by everybody, as eventually it becomes a wonderful tool to aquire some of your Chinese vocabulary for free.

I have noticed that many Chinese words are composites of others, so you get many words like dian4nao3. Dian4nao3 is computer, but don't stop there, it is literally electric brain. Now what if you learn dian4nao3 = computer but don't fully absorb the electric brain meaning what do you lose?

You lost that aha! moment when you learn dian4hua4 = telephone (electric talk). But hang on hua4 is in shou1hua4 and even xiao4hua4 = joke (smile talk) and .... and ... ... and. I think you get the picture.

A couple of the many concrete examples that I have benefited from:

In one Chinespod podcast they introduced the word ke3ai4, I guessed it meant loveable (or cute etc.) straight away from the context and because the ke3 from ke3yi3 and ai4 (love) literally fitted together and made "can love" or "can be loved". I think that often these helpers are missed. A later podcast hits this word again and goes as far as loveable but not down to this sort of literal translation. To be fair though Cpod is more likely than most resources to give you a literal translation or other mnemonic to rember by (cheers Ken).

Next we have an example of a free word and they are increasing. I was looking up words for husband and wife and came across ai4ren2 (spouse, partner, even sweetheart). I decided to mostly ignore it, spouse is an old-fashioned word in English and I guess this wouldn't be high frequency. However I had already noticed straight away that a literal translation could be (love person), which effectivly memorised the word with no effort. About two weeks later and I am half listening to some Chinese radio and I hear a strange line in a song. The line was literally "ni3 you3 bu4 ai4ren2". That sentance was just wrong, surely it should be "ni mei2you3 ai4ren2" or similar??. Also maybe ai4ren2 is more common than I suppossed (store for later and ask someone). As luck would have it the two hosts on the radio station spotted it too and had a good laugh about it (I actually understood some of what they were saying as I had a context, they thought it was really funny). Now I am pretty sure this word and the grammar was wrong.

I did actually discuss this later with a Chinese friend, he thought it funny too. Apparently a lot of Mandarin songs are written by non-native speaker who sometimes get a little dictionary happy and do horrible things with the language.

Matt's subconcious monkey brain.

Alongside pandagator's strangely resonant common Chinese words list (see previous post), another blogger Matt, stuck a harmonic with his comment on subconcious development(specifically the need to give the brain a little simmering time).

Matt was reffering to his martial arts in the second part of this post, however I find a similar effect with my Chinese learning.

I manage to do something at least everyday, towards learning Mandarin. Sometimes if I have been pushing it though I can't take anymore of a certain aspect. Often I switch, maybe just spend a few days concentrating on one aspect that doesn't seem too hard or reading around the subject in a general way.

These periods usually coincide with a night or two of very heavy dreams, then when I return to what I was doing before, I find I have made significant progress by 'doing nothing'.

Common Chinese word list (Pandagator)

A nice list of common Chinese words here: list of common Chinese words at Pandagator

This list strikes a particular resonance as I know almost all the words on it. Many have been important words I have picked up in the past couple of months.

This tells me that most of these words must be truly high frequency (otherwise I wouldn't know them ;)). It also suggests that the few I don't recognise or have forgotten the tones for are worth assimilating. Nice one Pandagator :)