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guardian_learning咱们在这里一起练习了一百天了吧！厉不厉害？
One hundred days in a row may not be a lot in the grand scheme of language learning, but I think it's a pretty good start here. I am so grateful to the people who have been commenting here, often with immensely helpful knowledge and advice, as well as with thought-provoking questions, interesting quotations, and so on. I also appreciate very much the people who have been following along quietly, as the subscription list graaaadually increases! 万分谢谢大家。❤️
In administrative matters, let me know via comment here or DM if there's anything you would like to be different--tags? content? pinyin? should I keep aiming for daily posts or would once or twice a week be easier to deal with? And so on. I still haven't gotten to putting together a masterlist of useful links etc., as discussed previously, but it's on my list. As it were.
I'm also kind of curious to hear about people's goals and achievements with regard to Chinese, on large or small scales, everything from "hey, I understood this one line without looking at the subtitles! that felt really good!" to "passed X test" or "read Y novel cover to cover" and so on and so forth. My Chinese goals seem to be divided by likelihood, as in a) maybe realistic if I keep studying long enough: able to understand 80-90% of what I read and to communicate what I need to say in not necessarily correct but understandable writing; b) would probably need immersion to happen: same respectively with listening and speaking; c) not likely, period: able to translate professionally from (written) Chinese to English. As for achievements, this comm feels like one! The others are small and haphazard and things like "I understood That Scene from 叛逆者 ep. 20 without needing an English gloss" or "I had a whole text conversation with a-Pei in Chinese without needing to resort to English" and so on.
It's not 第七天, but in the spirit of the joys of amateurism, have Zhu Yilong accompanying himself on a Teresa Teng song: he has obviously practiced very hard and is feeling proud of himself for getting it mostly right.
咱们继续一边努力努力学习一边好玩吧！
One hundred days in a row may not be a lot in the grand scheme of language learning, but I think it's a pretty good start here. I am so grateful to the people who have been commenting here, often with immensely helpful knowledge and advice, as well as with thought-provoking questions, interesting quotations, and so on. I also appreciate very much the people who have been following along quietly, as the subscription list graaaadually increases! 万分谢谢大家。❤️
In administrative matters, let me know via comment here or DM if there's anything you would like to be different--tags? content? pinyin? should I keep aiming for daily posts or would once or twice a week be easier to deal with? And so on. I still haven't gotten to putting together a masterlist of useful links etc., as discussed previously, but it's on my list. As it were.
I'm also kind of curious to hear about people's goals and achievements with regard to Chinese, on large or small scales, everything from "hey, I understood this one line without looking at the subtitles! that felt really good!" to "passed X test" or "read Y novel cover to cover" and so on and so forth. My Chinese goals seem to be divided by likelihood, as in a) maybe realistic if I keep studying long enough: able to understand 80-90% of what I read and to communicate what I need to say in not necessarily correct but understandable writing; b) would probably need immersion to happen: same respectively with listening and speaking; c) not likely, period: able to translate professionally from (written) Chinese to English. As for achievements, this comm feels like one! The others are small and haphazard and things like "I understood That Scene from 叛逆者 ep. 20 without needing an English gloss" or "I had a whole text conversation with a-Pei in Chinese without needing to resort to English" and so on.
It's not 第七天, but in the spirit of the joys of amateurism, have Zhu Yilong accompanying himself on a Teresa Teng song: he has obviously practiced very hard and is feeling proud of himself for getting it mostly right.
咱们继续一边努力努力学习一边好玩吧！
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Date: 2022-04-20 12:44 am (UTC)This comm definitely counts as a huge achievement for you! Thank you so much for all your work on this, I appreciate it so much! ❤❤❤
And I absolutely love the daily posts, even if I don't always manage to comment. I feel like just reading them, and the comments, every day already helps a lot.
My main goal with all of this is to eventually be able to watch cdrama and understand at least 90% of what's being said, which is far off because surprise, vocabulary doesn't learn itself - but at the same time, every time I watch or rewatch something, I understand a little more. And I have been saying that for the last two or three years; the progress, though slow, has been continuous. So I'm actually reasonably confident I can eventually get there, even at a snail's pace. (Reading and writing, haha, not so much ...)
Zhu Yilong accompanying himself on a Teresa Teng song
His voice in this gives me the shivers. :D
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Date: 2022-04-20 02:12 am (UTC)My goals with Mandarin at the moment are to learn how to read better and faster and, I hope, eventually learn how to write sentences that are coherent and don't have completely appalling grammar. >_> I'd also really like to be able to read simplified characters, since I often run across stuff like TikTok clips, YouTube videos, etc., that are in Mandarin and only have simplified subtitles, and I want to know what they say!
With Cantonese, my goal since I started learning has been to get to a point where I can watch movies and dramas without subtitles. I'm slowly getting there! Some shows I can understand like 85% of the dialogue at natural speed without subs now; others are way harder, depending on all sorts of things like people's speech styles, vocabulary, formality levels, archaisms, slang, etc., and whether there are helpful visual cues or not. But even with the harder stuff I think I'm making progress. :) And this comm is helping with that, too. I never formally learned Canto grammar, and a lot of the rules I've sort of vaguely osmosed are becoming clearer to me now that I'm seeing explanations for Mandarin usage on the Grammar Wiki, even if there are differences.
he has obviously practiced very hard and is feeling proud of himself for getting it mostly right
Ack, this is adorable! <3
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Date: 2022-04-20 03:38 am (UTC)I look forward to the daily posts and would love to see them continue, but if that pace isn't sustainable for you, 2 or 3 times a week is fine, too. When I don't comment it means I couldn't easily find any examples for the day's post (or that I was too tired that evening to look for examples...).
I've found the posts, comments, and links all very helpful! Last week there was a bit of dialogue in a Cdrama that I could follow without English subtitles because two of the grammatical constructions had been posts in this comm.
My goals are pretty basic: learn more about the language (because it's fun to learn), and understand more of the written language. I can understand more spoken Mandarin now than 3 years ago, but I'm more focused on reading it, especially since so many Cdramas helpfully have Mandarin subtitles. :D
My pure fantasy, pie-in-the-sky goal is selfish: when a Cdrama I want to watch or Cnovel I want to read isn't fully translated into English, I want to be able to finish it, anyway. I don't think I can reach that point, but I might be able to get close enough to recognize when machine translation is wrong or incomplete.
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Date: 2022-04-20 11:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-20 07:50 pm (UTC)My goals are to be able to read dmbj and xieping fics in Chinese ;)
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Date: 2022-04-20 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-20 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-20 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-20 11:20 pm (UTC)Sounds good to me *tempted*
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Date: 2022-04-20 11:21 pm (UTC)This is so hard! My brain really struggles with keeping track of multiple foreign languages.
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Date: 2022-04-20 11:22 pm (UTC)This is great to hear!
when a Cdrama I want to watch or Cnovel I want to read isn't fully translated into English, I want to be able to finish it, anyway.
Excellent plan. 加油吧！
Edited, forgot to say that your quotations are always helpful and interesting (except for the way they make me want to rewatch The Rebel etc. etc. ;) ), many thanks!
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Date: 2022-04-20 11:26 pm (UTC)Glad to hear it! It's not a lot of work, and I'll see what I can do.
and your goals sound excellent. You bring so much well-researched information here, along with interesting Cantonese comparisons too, much appreciated!
Ack, this is adorable! <3
he's concentrating so hard to get his fingering right on the piano, 好可爱。
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Date: 2022-04-20 11:29 pm (UTC)Really glad to hear it! You always raise such good thoughtful points. <3
So I'm actually reasonably confident I can eventually get there, even at a snail's pace. (Reading and writing, haha, not so much ...)
咱们蜗牛加油吧！ (okay, I had to look up "snail" just for fun). It's funny, I feel just the opposite about reading and listening, hopefully we can keep on learning from one another...
His voice in this gives me the shivers. :D
I love hearing his lower register for a change (though you can hear he's not used to it either, lol).
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Date: 2022-04-21 12:11 am (UTC)Right? He should practice it more, and get more chances to use it!
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Date: 2022-04-21 06:56 pm (UTC)My goal: slowly recognise more characters, be able to write some basic sentences (I love my brush pens), eventually recognise bits of dialogue from cdramas.
Someone in Discord taught me my first sentence today
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Date: 2022-04-21 09:49 pm (UTC)Sounds good! The posts will be here and waiting :)
be able to write some basic sentences (I love my brush pens)
(gosh, I envy artists; I can't write anything worth speaking of without a computer...)
Excellent first sentence! (And icon.)
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Date: 2022-04-21 09:50 pm (UTC)你说得对！
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Date: 2022-04-22 07:51 am (UTC)Re icons, I love yours too! *cello high five*
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Date: 2022-04-22 10:54 pm (UTC)Agree, hard as it is.
*cello high five*
ooh, fellow cellos! <3
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Date: 2022-04-23 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-24 05:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-25 03:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-25 03:18 am (UTC)Goals, goals, goals. So many goals. I would love to be able to watch shows without needing English subtitles (Chinese ones would be fine). I want to be able to read at a webnovel level, preferably both simplified and traditional, but even just one would be amazing. Writing characters is supposedly a dying art due to computers/phones, but it's something that I definitely continue to practice because I enjoy it, even if my handwriting is rubbish. One thing that made me happy in terms of accomplishment recently was trying out a new reading app and being able to read multiple articles, with only a few words I needed to figure out via context clues.
I love it when Z1L plays and sings. Just makes me so happy!
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Date: 2022-04-25 10:16 pm (UTC)I'm glad! The posts are there whenever you get around to them, no problem.
One thing that made me happy in terms of accomplishment recently was trying out a new reading app and being able to read multiple articles, with only a few words I needed to figure out via context clues.
So satisfying when something like this happens, and motivating to learn more...
I love it when Z1L plays and sings. Just makes me so happy!
<3
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Date: 2022-04-30 12:02 pm (UTC)My goals are pretty ill-defined, but generally I want to be able to improve my reading (and listening, but reading is the priority right now) to the point of not always needing English subtitles for videos/TV and maybe if I'm lucky one day being able to read proper Chinese texts. Not sure how likely the latter - or even the former - is, but I'll keep ingesting vocab to at least try. (Absolute dream goal that will never happen: being able to do translation Chinese to English/German.)
he has obviously practiced very hard and is feeling proud of himself for getting it mostly right.
Adorable! Also nicely highlights my usual pet peeve, which is that most songs he does 'professionally', like idk drama ending songs, make him sing too high for his range (looking at you The Rebel). Not actually sure why it's so pervasive to assume everyone needs to be a highish tenor...
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Date: 2022-05-01 08:48 am (UTC)(Absolute dream goal that will never happen: being able to do translation Chinese to English/German.)
Same. Still, even if we never reach professional levels, it would be fun to get good enough to mess around with translation for practice and pleasure!
Also nicely highlights my usual pet peeve, which is that most songs he does 'professionally', like idk drama ending songs, make him sing too high for his range
THIS IS ALSO MY PET PEEVE. It's such a pretty baritone and you can hear he's never been taught to make the most of it, why don't they take more advantage of his natural range? (Do you know 梦开始的地方? It's a group song but he's got some nice low-pitched lines, and it's a nice song anyway.)
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Date: 2022-05-01 11:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-01 12:17 pm (UTC)It's really fascinating how people learn languages differently!
Still, even if we never reach professional levels, it would be fun to get good enough to mess around with translation for practice and pleasure!
Very true. I'm not really aiming for professional anyway, since I'm not actually a translator despite my interest, but I know myself well enough to realise that if my level isn't already good I'll be too frustrated to even do it for fun, unless it's a very small project.
It's such a pretty baritone and you can hear he's never been taught to make the most of it, why don't they take more advantage of his natural range?
Yes exactly! I really hate the whole 'everything has to be in tenor range and everyone needs to be a tenor' thing, and his lower range is so lovely. Someone teach that man how to properly go for it in chest voice, please and then give him some opportunities to do so.
(Do you know 梦开始的地方? It's a group song but he's got some nice low-pitched lines, and it's a nice song anyway.)
I do know it and it's a nice song. Very catchy. (I, uh, may have a whole Zhu Yilong singing playlist with, I believe, everything he has ever done in it - one of the first things I did once I got interested, since I'm very music-oriented (yes, I know, shocker). Comes to just over 30 songs XD)
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Date: 2022-05-01 10:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-01 10:37 pm (UTC)Yeah, I think starting small is probably important, because it's so tiring when you don't (one doesn't) know the language well enough to have most of what you need at your fingertips already. Little steps :)
Someone teach that man how to properly go for it in chest voice, please and then give him some opportunities to do so.
YES.
(I, uh, may have a whole Zhu Yilong singing playlist with, I believe, everything he has ever done in it
You're definitely not alone ;) Mine doesn't literally have everything he's ever sung, because there are a few songs I just don't like enough musically to listen to on repeat, but it has a lot (plus an occasional admixture of Bai Yu or Liu Chang).
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Date: 2022-05-01 10:46 pm (UTC)Nice to know I'm not the only one ;D
I do have a handful of them that I skip more often than not, but the completionist in me wanted them included anyway. I should really get around to making separate playlists for more people, because I keep having to dig in my 'misc chinese music' one, which is getting rather unwieldy...
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Date: 2022-05-01 10:52 pm (UTC)I got the Z1L playlist idea from trobadora to start with! We're all in this together, 是我们都一起的 (terrible Chinese)
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Date: 2022-05-01 11:11 pm (UTC)