User Comments - pearltowerpete

Posted on: Lesson Preview, New Team Member

Dear changye,

Thanks for your support. I'm a passionate student of Asian history and literature. While Chinese is of course essential, there is a huge body of work in Japanese that serious scholars can't afford to ignore.

Hi chris,

Thanks for taking the time to apply modern technology to this ancient study practice!

Hi henning and hitokiri6993

Klingon is indeed a Star Trek language. The international effort to translate Shakespeare's Hamlet into Klingon failed because the language apparently lacks the verb "to be."

Posted on: Lesson Preview, New Team Member

Hi hitokiri6993

I guess this just shows the limits of my supposed "Taiwan-ness." I've never gotten comfortable with 注音符號 (zhu4yin1fu2hao4, an alternative phonetic system for transcribing characters).

And in a related note, I heard that Taiwan is switching from the Wade-Giles romanization system to pinyin... Can any poddies confirm or deny?

Posted on: Lesson Preview, New Team Member

Hi pinkjeans, and sebire

Thanks for your kind words! See you around the forums!

Dear strillop,

I agree, the Media channel is wicked. A lot of our poddies are at a level where they are nearly able to get the meaning of news and broadcasts, but just need a little help with vocab or tricky structures. It's an exciting feature, and we are working to expand and improve it.

And light487, sorry for any confusion. Basically the idea is: 

• fold a normal sheet of notebook paper into six vertical columns.
  
• in the first write your Chinese words, in the second the pinyin WITH TONES, and in the last your native language (or if you are ready for the challenge, the Chinese meaning. But this leads to a lot of writing.)
  
• then cover the Chinese and pinyin so you can only see the definition and try to write the Chinese and pinyin in the next columns.
  
• check if you were correct.
  
• now keep going, covering two columns and writing the last.

I recommend jumping around randomly top-to-bottom on your word list so that you are not just memorizing the sequence and "gaming the system."

In one day I will generally do six columns, then a day later do the other six on the back of the paper. Then at the end of the week, I go through the words I learned that week and make a new group of ones I consistently got wrong.

The only thing about four columns/three columns is that Latin uses the same alphabet as English so there's no need for something like pinyin. So there are just four columns per side.

One other hint, since it looks like you play the guitar. For me, writing characters is like playing an instrument. You only really know the character if you can write it slowly and methodically. Anybody can blast through John-Petrucci-style, but it is actually harder to think about making each stroke, or note,  correctly.

Hope this helps. Any other poddies with study tips or problems, please consider this an open thread.

Posted on: Lesson Preview, New Team Member

Hi Auntie68, martin111, checkingoutchina, and hitokiri6993,

Thank you all for your warm welcome. One of the best things about this job is the friendly community of scholars and students. You all help each other and keep us here at CPod on our toes. I'm honored to be a part of it.

As for your question, Auntie68, I studied Latin and French in high school for four years. I'm reasonably comfortable reading either of them but it will take a lot of FrenchPod before I'm able to speak the way I'd like. I also took a year of Italian in college, mainly because I love the the Divine Comedy.Again, it would take a while to get up to speed. Future goals include Japanese and Spanish. There is never enough time.

As for the Taiwanese accent, I can only say that I have lived in Taiwan for a month, in a monastery (!). But mostly I've lived in mainland China, in Nanjing and Shanghai. I do have quite a few Taiwanese-American friends. Anyway, it's a rockin' little island and I'm happy to be associated with it in any way.

Posted on: Lesson Preview, New Team Member

Hi aspiredeath, xinjiapo2703, light487

Thanks for your support and interest! I was lucky to have an excellent Chinese teacher at college America (a foreigner) who, in one intense year, drilled us on the essentials-- tones and radicals. So when I came to China, I already knew how to learn Chinese.

In high school another outstanding teacher taught me Latin for four years. She taught us the column method of vocabulary learning.

• fold a page into 4 vertical colums, then write foreign words and their definitions all the way down.
  
• cover one column and try to fill in the next from memory.
  
• say each word aloud, and verify.
  
• repeat, ad nauseam.

Of course, with Chinese, you need three columns (the extra is for Pinyin). This method is dry but brutally effective.

Contrary to many people's advice, I have never watched many Chinese movies, and I've sat through about three hours of Chinese TV in the last three years. But I'm a big fan of reading-- trashy newspapers, 活着 （Yu Hua's novel about New China), news magazines, you name it. And I love listening to Chinese music as I work out, particularly Wang Fei and my main man, Jay Chow.

CPod has been an essential tool for years. I spent many mornings cracking open iTunes and Wenlin and learning with Jenny, John, Connie and the rest of the CPod Alliance of Heroes. What a thrill it was to move from Intermediate to Upper Intermediate, and then Advanced and Media.

I think light487 hit the nail on the head: it helps to get into the gestures and facial expressions of the foreign language. So much communication is non-verbal. In fact, this may be a disadvantage of the podcast format. But rest assured, we are ever-improving to bring our Poddies more diverse formats to fit all learning styles.

To wrap up an already-long post, let me emphasize that my study of Chinese is not finished, and never will be. This is such a rich and supple language. A thousand lifetimes is not really enough time to scratch the surface.

Posted on: Lesson Preview, New Team Member

Hi bababardwan!

Thanks! I'm looking forward to getting to know you and the other great Poddies.

Posted on: Keys, Wallet, Phone

Hi Bento

Looks like the 50 Euro, or as I like to call it, the 485.2 RMB bill ;-)

Posted on: Language Power Struggle

watchouthereicome,

I agree. Your time is valuable. I have had friends who would just tutor someone in English for good money, and then pay a grad student maybe 40 RMB per hour to just speak Chinese with them.

But of course it's great to make pure friendships, too.

Posted on: Los Angeles

Hi Paul,

Great to hear from you, and so happy to hear you enjoy CPod.

The best pinyin input system is without a doubt Google Pinyin. The only downside is that the instructions are all in Chinese.

But it's easy enough.

• Just click on the big blue bar in the top right,
  
• allow your machine to install the .exe, and you're on your way.
  
• Hit alt+shift to turn the pinyin input on and off.
  

And you can also click on the bar to switch between traditional and simplified characters (useful in Taiwan). This is a "smart" system, meaning that it learns your preferences, and it compares/updates among all the other users in the world.

Hope this is useful, and looking forward to seeing you around CPod!

Posted on: Teaching English in China

Hi light487.

I can assure you that your limited Chinese would not be a problem in the classroom (daily life might be another story, especially in smaller towns). Many schools don't want you to speak Chinese at all with the students, even if you speak really well. 

I would also suggest that if you really are good at IT it might be wiser to look for work in that field.Teaching English is a pretty good way to get exposed to life in China, but might not seem so fun if you were struggling to pay the bills back home on about one to two thousand (tops) dollars per month.

That's just my opinion. I taught for a year in a prestigious (but low-paying) school in Nanjing. It was a good time, but it's not for everyone. Maybe some poddies will disagree with my assessment but understand this is just my angle. Much love.