Chinese Calligraphy - 4th Lesson

It's been fun living and studying in China this past month.

Monday through Friday - I have 4 hours of private mandarin lessons. Then I have calligraphy class every other day.

Here's a sample - the first character in each row is the teachers. He circles the ones he likes.

300 Tang Poems

When I was in China back in 2002, I picked up several children's books. I hope to eventually work my way through them. Here's the first offering.

chán

蝉

cicada

chuí ruí yǐn qīng lù

垂 緌 饮 请 露,

dangling caps (to) drink invites (the) dew

liú xiǎng chū shū tóng

流 响 出 疏 桐.

flowing frequencies emit thinly (through the) "Chinese wood-oil tree"

jū gāo shēng zì yuǎn

居 高 声 自 远,

resides (the) loud noise (of) self (heard) far

fēi shì jiè quī fēng

非 是 藉 秋 风.

not is because of autumn wind.

Moral: if you live high (on the social ladder) your voice carries far.

Nifty Learning Chinese Sites

http://hua.umf.maine.edu/Chinese/games/games.php

Especially love the Snow White storyboard and the fruit game.

Didn't like the directions game because it was so repetitive, but it finally reinforced the difference of words "right" and "left" in Chinese for me. I was always confusing which word was which direction.

http://www.archchinese.com/

Worksheets and animated stroke characters. Helpful when one is not sure which direction the stroke needs to go.

http://www.nciku.com/

Don't know that character, mouse it into the graph and nciku will find it for you.

http://usa.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=translate

Received an email from your teacher all in chinese characters?

No problem, just copy and paste it into this site and you'll get the drift of the message.

http://www.enterzon.com/

Feel like wandering around in a free virtual game exploring a chinese town. This one's for you.

Chinese, Chamber, Classroom Courses

As August comes to a close and I finish my TESOL certification, more distractions rear their ugly heads. One is the start of the fall school semester. Courses in Classroom Management, Mandarin Chinese, and Chamber Music begin. Substitute Teaching begins. Chamber Music class has guitars this term so it looks like I'll be doing double duty. I do seem to thrive on a little stress. The trick is knowing what's "a little". Found a neat site "Skrittle.com" for practicing Chinese characters. Still hoping to learn 800 by next summer.

Chinese Overdose

Finished up the refresher Chinese course at the local community college this week. Unfortunately, as a farewell gift, the professor gave me 1,375 basic chinese character flash cards.  I pulled out about 300 characters that I recognize and will work on trying to be able to write them before worrying about the other 1075 characters! Another friend took the time to translate my entire blog's "About Me" section into Chinese so now I'll have to copy and learn all the new words to that as well. 

关于我  
一九五九年圣诞节前夕，我在韩国汉城被家人遗弃，送进一所孤儿院。当时我才是一个刚断了奶还包著尿布的婴儿。所以哪天是我的生日只可猜测了。后来我像邮件一样给寄到美国，被一个多元化的家庭收养；自小就在匈牙利、爱尔兰、犹太人和天主教的影响下成长。我父亲从事热带鱼生意，他往往会消失在秘鲁、哥伦比亚和亚马逊等充满异国情调的偏远地方。我是跟猴子、野猫和其它珍贵宠物，还有传统的狗、猫、仓鼠和鹦鹉一起养大的。虽然我在北卡罗莱纳、维吉尼亚、马里兰州和华盛顿特区住了很久，但大部分时间是住在佛罗里达州的南部。我还没有去过澳大利亚、新西兰、南太平洋或印度，可是我会讲一些西班牙文、汉语、法文以及保加利亚文。由于我计划在今年秋天前往南美的秘鲁旅行，目前正加紧学好西班牙文。我跟我的丈夫厄尔住在迈阿密市中心仅有一个睡房的杂屋里。我的丈夫是一位家庭律师，他几乎从我出生以来就爱玩小提琴。我们家里还有八个鱼缸，两个degus（？）, 两只鹦鹉和一只可爱的小鸟。

Tuttle - Learning Chinese Characters

A few folks have recommended Tuttle for learning 800 chinese characters. Thought I'd give it a try. I probably know about 150 characters but took the test at MDBG and found that I only scored 85% on 100 characters. Either I forgot the pinyin equivalent or I forgot the meaning. Tuttle supposedly brings it all together. The big thing for me is remembering the tones. Tuttle uses stories and visual hints to remember the characters. High first tone = giant, Rising second tone = fairy, Third up and down tone = teddy bear, Fourth falling abrupt tone = dwarf, Neutral tone = robot. For example, the character for Gate/Door is easy to remember because it sort of looks like a [ ]. However, remembering the tone is another story. Well, Tuttle writes it up with a story about a FAIRY collecting MONey at the GATE. The MONey tells the approximate pronounciation, the fairy the tone and the gate the meaning. 门

Another good example of the Tuttle system is the character for "cup".  It's a combination that uses the tree character and the "not" character.  This does not bring to mind a cup.  Tuttle's story is about a lumberman that's about to cut down a tree and someone shouts NOT that TREE with the CUP on it, it belongs to the GIANT who uses it to collect the syrup for his BAcon.   So TREE and KNOT tells me the characters, GIANT  tells me high 1st tone and BAY is the prounciation.    杯

There's a few more mnemonic tricks and some of the stories seem overly elaborate but that's because they are for future building blocks. I'm up Chapter 5. So far so good. Most of the characters I know already but now I'm finally remembering the tone.

Studying Chinese Again

When I received an email last month with a 25% discount off the local community college's Intensive Mandarin Chinese evening course, I sprung for it.  I haven't reviewed my putonghua since 2004 and thought it might be a good refresher. The course teacher is male and has a different spin than the female teachers I have had in the past. This course also covers the character writing which is very useful.

Distracted by cello and humanities I haven't focused much on Chinese studies yet but it's starting to get exciting.  Just browsing through the internet last night and found tons of resources.  Especially on YouTube.  There's karoake with pinyin.  So much more to study than there was 5 years ago.  

Countdown 23 and Back to School

I did manage to do a little humanities study during the week off visiting my friend in Bradenton but haven't typed up my notes yet.

Tonight was the first of fifteen "intensive" Chinese classes.  Out of the twenty people in the class only three haven't studied Chinese before.  So this class should zip along.  It will be a good review for me.