russ (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} goulo) wrote,@ 2003-12-06 00:36:00 |
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chinese is hard, let's go shopping
For those who don't know yet, I had some language epiphanies and inspiration last week, and decided I was in a mental rut about only learning one language, and that there's no reason not to gradually start learning multiple languages, and so now I have started trying to learn Chinese, for multiple reasons, including that I want to go to the Esperanto congress next summer, which will be in Beijing, so it would be nice to know a few useful phrases like "Hello", "The weather is nice", "How much does that cost?", "My hovercraft is full of eels", and so forth. (I have also started re-learning German which I studied for 3 years in high school; German is being much easier than Chinese!) Yeah, I am probably insane.
Anyway, tonight I listened a second time to lesson one of this Chinese CD set from Pimsleur. The sound and speech quality is good, and the format is that a male and female speaker both teach you words and short phrases which you repeat and ask questions which you answer. It was still hard the second time, and I'll have to do it a 3rd time (at least) since I'm nowhere near getting 80% of the responses yet. (I'm supposed to listen to a half hour lesson once a day, ideally, and not move on to the next lesson till I do about 80% of the responses right. At this rate, I have no idea how long I'll be stuck on lesson one!) But I was gratified to notice that I at least did better than the first time (last night), so at least there is hope!
The words and sounds are so alien and arbitrary sounding, that it is like back in April when I was trying to learn Lojban vocabulary (which was randomly generated)... but with the additional twist of the changing pitch. That's the really tough part. Studying Latin, German, or Esperanto vocabulary is so much easier! And Finnish (which I had 2 years of in college), while odd and not from the same family, at least has the same types of sounds (and alphabet!) So Chinese is definitely the toughest language I've looked at. It feels like burning new ways of processing into my brain, which I suppose in some sense it is.
Doing this CD course (which by design has no book) also makes me aware of just how visually oriented I am for learning. I'd noticed this over the years, e.g. in classes I was much more into reading the books and taking notes than many students seemed to be. Learning just by hearing stuff is hard for me. It's really weird and frustrating and humbling and illuminating to hear a few words of Chinese, say them ok, then do a couple minutes on some other words, and then be totally unable to remember the first set of words. And a while after doing the lesson, I can't confidently remember most of the words. The alien concept of changing pitch (in addition to the accustomed learning of the consonants and vowels) just makes it weirder.
Anyway I will stick with it for a while and see what happens. It's interesting if nothing else! And I do remember that I had trouble even with German pronunciation when I first encountered it (sounds like ch and ü). So I am managing my expectations... this is gonna take a while.
For those who don't know yet, I had some language epiphanies and inspiration last week, and decided I was in a mental rut about only learning one language, and that there's no reason not to gradually start learning multiple languages, and so now I have started trying to learn Chinese, for multiple reasons, including that I want to go to the Esperanto congress next summer, which will be in Beijing, so it would be nice to know a few useful phrases like "Hello", "The weather is nice", "How much does that cost?", "My hovercraft is full of eels", and so forth. (I have also started re-learning German which I studied for 3 years in high school; German is being much easier than Chinese!) Yeah, I am probably insane.
Anyway, tonight I listened a second time to lesson one of this Chinese CD set from Pimsleur. The sound and speech quality is good, and the format is that a male and female speaker both teach you words and short phrases which you repeat and ask questions which you answer. It was still hard the second time, and I'll have to do it a 3rd time (at least) since I'm nowhere near getting 80% of the responses yet. (I'm supposed to listen to a half hour lesson once a day, ideally, and not move on to the next lesson till I do about 80% of the responses right. At this rate, I have no idea how long I'll be stuck on lesson one!) But I was gratified to notice that I at least did better than the first time (last night), so at least there is hope!
The words and sounds are so alien and arbitrary sounding, that it is like back in April when I was trying to learn Lojban vocabulary (which was randomly generated)... but with the additional twist of the changing pitch. That's the really tough part. Studying Latin, German, or Esperanto vocabulary is so much easier! And Finnish (which I had 2 years of in college), while odd and not from the same family, at least has the same types of sounds (and alphabet!) So Chinese is definitely the toughest language I've looked at. It feels like burning new ways of processing into my brain, which I suppose in some sense it is.
Doing this CD course (which by design has no book) also makes me aware of just how visually oriented I am for learning. I'd noticed this over the years, e.g. in classes I was much more into reading the books and taking notes than many students seemed to be. Learning just by hearing stuff is hard for me. It's really weird and frustrating and humbling and illuminating to hear a few words of Chinese, say them ok, then do a couple minutes on some other words, and then be totally unable to remember the first set of words. And a while after doing the lesson, I can't confidently remember most of the words. The alien concept of changing pitch (in addition to the accustomed learning of the consonants and vowels) just makes it weirder.
Anyway I will stick with it for a while and see what happens. It's interesting if nothing else! And I do remember that I had trouble even with German pronunciation when I first encountered it (sounds like ch and ü). So I am managing my expectations... this is gonna take a while.
