I’ve stopped learning Chinese.
Or, more accurately, I have stopped learning any NEW Chinese. I’m spending a month or so on the Karate Kid method of language learning. I’m going to focus on the few things that I know, and I’m going to drill down on them until I know them with a nearly native fluency. I can’t say that I know how this is going to work, or if it rides contrary to all the scholarly thought on the matter, but I’m going to stick to my guns a bit and see what happens.
I’d love to hear from more advanced students on this matter. Did any of you just take a step back and review for a good long while? Inquiring minds want to know!
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Published by Frank March 16th, 2008
in ChinesePod and The Shanghai Show.
One of the great things I got to do while I was in Shanghai was hang out with my old friend, Aric Queen. For those of you who are new to the ChinesePod universe, Aric was the producer of the shows for a nice stretch and hosted the now-famous Saturday Show (of which I was gleefully a guest).
Here’s the man now:
One night, Aric and I went out with Amber and Clay (and a few other folks), and Aric shared a plan with us for an exposé on Bund bars. He shared the details with Clay and I and together we hammered out a plan. The results of that plan can be found right here:
Social Experiment #1
And this is one of the things that I like about this guy. He’s not just a talker. He gets things done. He’s a wild card, to be sure. He’s a shot of tequila with your morning coffee and he’s dangerous. I miss that kind of unpredictability here at ChinesePod sometimes. He was always stirring the pot or poking a hornet’s nest. It’s hard to build a stable, multi-lingual, world-spanning corporation with a guy like that, but he’s rocket fuel on the launch pad. He’s a real gift to start-ups and I can’t wait to see what he does next.
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Published by Frank March 14th, 2008
in movies.
Okay, folks. Time to throw down a bit and strut your stuff. Now and then I’ll take a movie line, or a piece of dialogue and try to figure out how I’d say the same thing in Mandarin and have it mean the same thing (my grammar knowledge being what it is, I can’t say I always succeed on the latter).
I found the following phrase particularly challenging due to the time markers and I’d love to see other’s translations of the same thing. Anyone who can translate this AND tell me the movie it comes from gets a vintage Marvel No-Prize!
Here’s the quote:
“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”
Good luck!
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Published by Frank March 10th, 2008
in RL Practice.
Do you ever get the feeling like it’s all… pointless?
Blasphemy, I know. How could I even suggest it? But there it is. I’m surrounded—SURROUNDED, I tell you—by non-Chinese-speaking people! All these years of practice… well, both of them… and for what? So I can order a Diet Coke one week a year when I go overseas?
Gah. What I really need to do, what we ALL need to do, is move to Shanghai. Who’s with me? Come on, we’ll start a ChinesePod commune. We’ll get one of those old houses with the courtyards and we’ll spend our days chatting in Mandarin. Poor tongue-tied expats will wander through our doors in desperate need of help after a solid linguistic thrashing by a native bully. We’ll train him like a kung fu fighter in a Jackie Chan film and send him back out there armed with useful phrases and a mastery of the dreaded 了. (It even LOOKS like a weapon! It reminds me of a kama.)
I keep trying to find places to use my limited skills. Just the other day I discovered that the independent auditor here at work is from China and I chatted her up but good. Of course, she’s still doing that thing where she tells me my Chinese is great… but she keeps talking to me in English.
I’ll wear her down. Just you wait and see. 我会！
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