I'm Back

I have been gone for a really long time. I stopped learning Chinese for a few months until about March 2011 and went to China in June 2011. Ever since that trip I have been studying daily. I fill up at least two notebooks per month if not more.

Boost Your Ego

While I am exhausted from learning and don't want to do it anymore I listen. I make some food, go on YxuTxbe and type in Mandarin Chinese News. This is great for practice in listening, it is especially good if there is Chinese subtitles, so you can follow along with the characters you know. Not to be offensive, but it feels good, just in this short amount of time to transform a lot of noise into something real. It's funny that when you know nothing of a language it sounds so alien and obscure. Just learning the small amount I have, I hear the words I know and can even distinguish word breaks.

That has to be my number one reason for learning another language. To open up a different world that otherwise would not exist. Not to mention Chinese girls are very beautiful. Which - No - that is not my reason for learning Chinese. I could be fluent in Spanish in 4 months and be surrounded by beautiful senoritas if that was my motivation.

Another thing that is fun to do. Pick out an article from Wxkxpxdia in Mandarin Chinese. Read that article everyday and after a month read it again. It feels good to mark your progress by being able to read an article you had no clue about 30 days ago.

Repeat and Do It Some More

A few years ago I was study for an important event. While speaking to a friend, who studied in college to become a teacher, he told me you need to repeat something about 200 times before it is set in permanent memory. However, even permanent memory is not forever. So that is the basis of my new study habit. During the time I am not learning new characters and when free time permits, I will be writing sentences. Over and over. Not the same sentence 200 times in a row like I did after school when I was younger, because from my experience that makes you not enjoy it. Just grabbing random words and forming simple sentences. Over and over and over. While writing the sentences I speak each word as I write it down. Then when I finish I read the sentence. Sometimes I even start with one word and add one word and start over such as:

I. I have. I have a. I have a red. I have a red apple. For some reason it helps my speech flow easier.

66 and Counting

So far I have learned 66 Simplified Chinese Characters. They are the following.

我你他们要有没吃看只
猫苹果一个条鱼辆车二
两三鸡蛋红色的白黑在
住哪里本书男孩子人女
是这些四五韩国北京多
少公寓报纸明治支笔六
份手机张床球

I find it easy to learn the characters because I spend hours each day writing them in different ways. I want a car. I want a black car. I have a red car. I have your cat. You have a dog. etc. I just write and write and write. Whenever I get free time throughout the day, I write sentences. The whole paragraph I am writing doesn't need to make sense nor does it need to tell a story. I just make sure each of my sentences are grammatically correct.

Keeping Busy

I have been reading, writing and mixing basic Declarative Sentences. When I started learning Chinese I thought writing would be miserable. However, I am an artist and I love writing. In the past week I have probably wrote hundreds of sentences using basic nouns in Declarative Sentence format.

我有一只猫。这只猫是白色的。我有一只白色的猫。我的只猫是白色的。我的只猫有一个苹果。我的只白色的猫有一个苹果。我的只猫有一个红色的苹果。我的只白色的猫有一个红色的苹果。这只白色的猫是我的。这一红色的苹果是他的。

In English this means. I have a cat. The cat is white. I have a white cat. My cat is white. My cat has an apple. My white cat has an apple. My cat has a red apple. My white cat has a red apple. The white cat is mine. The red apple is his.

There really is no use for this little paragraph, but think of the possibilities. You can plug is any color and any noun. These 10 sentences can turn into 100's of sentences just by learning a few verbs.

You can also replace the Classifiers 只 and 个 with 些 and make the noun plural.

Our Interesting, Creative, Remarkable, Lively, Clever, Elegant Language

We have a colorful language that allows us to speak about the same emotion/feeling or characteristic for hours without repeating the same Adjective. That's all good in 4 years from now, when I get bored of being so proficient in Chinese that I can just sit around and find new words to replace the ones I have already learned. For now, I will stick to the basics.

I have narrowed my Adjective list down to about 137 words. This includes 11 Basic Colors and 4 words without opposites. I sat and debated for a little while about whether or not I should include certain words. Each word I picked has an antonym. Some of the adjectives can simply be used with "Not" to give its opposite. However, if you were having a nice day at the zoo, I don't think it would be correct to say "Today was not painful". Other words can be tricky to define in a foreign language.

In English we have Tall/Short and Long/Short. We see 3 different words, but when translated they might be used differently. Tall/Short is referring to height while Long/Short is referring to length.

Weary of Others Lists

As I have previously mentioned I have found some sources which say you need to learn well over 50,000 words to become fluent in a language. I started thinking about my lists that I am creating. I thought i'd have a lot of Nouns, less Verbs and even less Adjectives. Just think in your mind for a moment. How many ways can you describe something you don't like.

Food: In General
Gross, disgusting, nasty, unedible, trash, garbage, terrible, not good

Food: Specific
Undercooked, overcooked, burnt, raw, chewy, greasy

I am coming up with a new theory. It is the "Layered Adjective" approach. You have two ways of describing something. In General and Specific. In General tells wheather you like it or don't like it and Specific tells exactly why you do or do not like it.

You really don't need to learn every single adjective out there. I'd say you could live with using 100 Adjectives. When you think about, most mean the same exact thing. Although some express different levels of emotion, such as: I Don't Like You compared to I Hate You.

After doing some research I have found that the English language has many more ways to express negativity than positivity, but that is neither here nor there. The bottom line is, if you read or hear that you need to learn 100's and 1,000's of words...adjectives to be precise...take it with a grain of salt.

Once you have a solid foundation of adjectives that allow you to express yourself without limitations, then you can proceed to add more complex "Synonyms".