Mandarin moron
Ah, there's nothing like learning a new language to make one feel completely inept. Where to start?
It's very difficult to learn Mandarin but not for obvious reasons. See, I thought the characters would be the toughest part but it's actually the tones (game or game) and the structure. One cool discovery is that Mandarin (at least so far) never conjugates verbs--hooray (past, present, and future tense are all the same verb); however, we're learning right now about a concept known as "measure words" in which you have special characters to describe certain objects and these are not as interchangeable.
Meanwhile, my brain wants to translate everything I hear from English to Pinyin to characters (either traditional or simplified and then to spoken language.) Let's say the processing time is as fast as blackstrap molasses on a sweltering picnic.
This guy gives me hope: Benny Lewis, an engineer-turned-polyglot from Ireland, says in his TED talk from San Antonio that he could never learn languages until he stopped studying and started speaking the language. In other words, you muddle through with what little vocabulary you have until, finally, you start to learn more and then are finally fluent in three months. Sure, be skeptical and it may sound gimmicky, but he seems to muddle through but not without critics.
Still, Benny's adventures give me hope after almost breaking down in tears during class for feeling like a complete idiot around teens who seemingly possess the infant gene by acquiring Chinese as soon as they hear it. In fairness, at least two classmates have had several years in high school; or, they lived in Taiwan for two years, or already speak Cantonese, Malay, Indonensian, or Korean. I know. I'm a whiny tittybaby, and so is this blog!
Turns out, science says our brains are at their least productive learning languages at ages 40 and older (whatever--tell me something I don't know and I still don't think all is hopeless because you've got to practice at any age except the infant statisticians). Also want to read more about the Polyglot Project as introduced and annotated by Claude Cartaginese (YouTube: syzygycc).
Also, why do the type or hand written characters in Mandarin have to be so dang small to hide their beauty and to torture my Mrs. Magoo eyes!?!?!?!? This is my page and I'm making them heading size to say zàijiàn (goodbye)!
.
It's very difficult to learn Mandarin but not for obvious reasons. See, I thought the characters would be the toughest part but it's actually the tones (game or game) and the structure. One cool discovery is that Mandarin (at least so far) never conjugates verbs--hooray (past, present, and future tense are all the same verb); however, we're learning right now about a concept known as "measure words" in which you have special characters to describe certain objects and these are not as interchangeable.
Meanwhile, my brain wants to translate everything I hear from English to Pinyin to characters (either traditional or simplified and then to spoken language.) Let's say the processing time is as fast as blackstrap molasses on a sweltering picnic.
This guy gives me hope: Benny Lewis, an engineer-turned-polyglot from Ireland, says in his TED talk from San Antonio that he could never learn languages until he stopped studying and started speaking the language. In other words, you muddle through with what little vocabulary you have until, finally, you start to learn more and then are finally fluent in three months. Sure, be skeptical and it may sound gimmicky, but he seems to muddle through but not without critics.
Still, Benny's adventures give me hope after almost breaking down in tears during class for feeling like a complete idiot around teens who seemingly possess the infant gene by acquiring Chinese as soon as they hear it. In fairness, at least two classmates have had several years in high school; or, they lived in Taiwan for two years, or already speak Cantonese, Malay, Indonensian, or Korean. I know. I'm a whiny tittybaby, and so is this blog!
Turns out, science says our brains are at their least productive learning languages at ages 40 and older (whatever--tell me something I don't know and I still don't think all is hopeless because you've got to practice at any age except the infant statisticians). Also want to read more about the Polyglot Project as introduced and annotated by Claude Cartaginese (YouTube: syzygycc).
Also, why do the type or hand written characters in Mandarin have to be so dang small to hide their beauty and to torture my Mrs. Magoo eyes!?!?!?!? This is my page and I'm making them heading size to say zàijiàn (goodbye)!
再見
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