Me about Mandarin, using Mandarin 关于中文，用中文

[jaapgrolleman]

Hey Chinese-Forums!

 

This is me after two and a half years of learning, going through around a dozen of books, +500 class hours, and hundreds of conversations with Chinese friends.

 

https://youtu.be/ZB6nXEVCiEU

 

Any questions, please let me know!

[alantin]

Impressive! Well done! ?
Did I understand/assume right that you spent the two and half years living and studying the language in China?

 

If so, what do you think would be different and what would you do differently if you did the same but living somewhere else, where mandarin isn't spoken around you?

[889]

Only substantive comment I'd make is you have a tendency to use 轻声 on the second character of words like 汉字 and 文化 that normally use a full normal tone on both characters. (You don't want to confuse 汉字 with 汉子.)

 

But impressive overall for two years.

[jaapgrolleman]

On 9/14/2021 at 6:21 AM, alantin said:

If so, what do you think would be different and what would you do differently if you did the same but living somewhere else, where mandarin isn't spoken around you?

 

Yeah I've been in China for three years now. This is a good question: Living in Shanghai helps a lot, and I actively find Chinese people to talk with now. 

 

If I'd been abroad, I'd work really hard to create a language environment for myself. Call me crazy but maybe I'd decorate a small wall or room in my house with Chinese stuff, so it *feels* like I'm going into China every time I sit down there to study. Watch Chinese movies, listen to podcasts, attend online events in Chinese, talk to Chinese people on Tandem (but also be very picky on the right kind of language partner). And you could go to Chinatown. I come from a village of 10,000 people in the Netherlands, and there's even a restaurant there where the waiter speaks Chinese. Without such immersion, you'll learn slow but also lose motivation.

[jaapgrolleman]

On 9/14/2021 at 8:02 AM, 889 said:

Only substantive comment I'd make is you have a tendency to use 轻声 on the second character of words like 汉字 and 文化 that normally use a full normal tone on both characters. (You don't want to confuse 汉字 with 汉子.)

 

I even made this mistake in typing sometime ? like "啊我不认识那么多汉子“

but ok thank you! Actually yes my focus for the rest of this year is pronunciation, I didn't realize this one is my weakness, I do have a weakness also on Zh like the 长 in 校长 or 市长, and also J like in 经常 (but then again it is clear in 警察）

[jiaojiao87]

Nice work! If you want to be easier to understand and sound more natural, I'd focus on your tones and some word pronunciations.  Most sentences have a decent number of pronunciation errors that make it so I have to focus pretty hard to understand without looking at the subtitles. This will become a bigger issue as your vocabulary improves and your sentence structures get more complex.

 

Shooting these videos is a great way to practice, and also a great way to reflect back on your progress.  You should def keep it up! my situation is a bit different from yours: I've always lived in America, so use processes like these to study.

 

I record one to two videos per week to send to my teacher, who sends me corrections for grammar, tones, pronunciation, etc. I don't do all the production you did around this, because I'm not really recording to share. Here's an example if you are curious.

 

Anyways, great work!!

[道艺]

Hey I saw your username and figured it was you, so I hopped on the video and saw your Youtube profile pic was the same as your Wechat. You're probably the only Jaap I've met in Shanghai, so the name was a giveaway.

 

I studied at two different GoEast campuses and have joined a bunch of your online events. Ask Lynn if she still remembers 道艺!

 

Good to see you have been taking Chinese more seriously. Same advice as the others - take those tones seriously! It's very easy to get comfortable when talking to the Chinese teachers, as they are much more forgiving with wrong tones, but when you talk to Chinese people outside the Chinese learning bubble, things get tough. People will genuinely not know what a word means if the wrong tone is used.

 

加油！

[alantin]

On 9/14/2021 at 3:15 AM, jaapgrolleman said:

... attend online events in Chinese

 

This is a phenomenal idea!

 

My work email gets flooded with invitations to English and Finnish webinars all the time, but it never occurred to me that I could attend one in Chinese too! I'll have to look around!
I'll have to ask my tutors. Maybe they'll be able to find something for me in my field.

[jaapgrolleman]

On 9/14/2021 at 12:13 PM, 道艺 said:

Good to see you have been taking Chinese more seriously. Same advice as the others - take those tones seriously! It's very easy to get comfortable when talking to the Chinese teachers, as they are much more forgiving with wrong tones, but when you talk to Chinese people outside the Chinese learning bubble, things get tough. People will genuinely not know what a word means if the wrong tone is used.

 

道艺！我当然记得！We played werewolves in Chinese online and you also spoke at this GoEast/SmartShanghai event.

 

And thanks. I actually wonder about tones and pronunciation. Many times I don't consciously remember it. Yeah, 买 and 卖 I can remember, but 北京 and 背景, right now I don't know how to pronounce them differently. I need to check Pleco. How did you learn this? Do you consciously learn the strokes, or do you speak it a lot, or listen a lot, and learn it more by heart? Do you understand my question like this? ? I'll say hi to Lynn~!

[jaapgrolleman]

On 9/14/2021 at 10:45 AM, jiaojiao87 said:

Nice work! If you want to be easier to understand and sound more natural, I'd focus on your tones and some word pronunciations.  Most sentences have a decent number of pronunciation errors that make it so I have to focus pretty hard to understand without looking at the subtitles. This will become a bigger issue as your vocabulary improves and your sentence structures get more complex.

 

Thank you. And yeah I know this is an area I need to focus on! I subscribed to your channel, very nice way of practising and also recording your own progress.