Posts tagged: Chinese

Thoughts on Language Learning (Part 4 of ?)

I realized this a little while ago, but am only getting around to writing it down now: the reason why people are so confused about this idea of Chinese grammar is because there isn’t any. At least, not in the conventional expected sense as with other languages. You know those rules that you have to learn in other languages about conjugating verbs, so on and so forth? Chinese doesn’t have rules like that. It’s so simple, especially if you’re coming from another SVO-language, which, fortunately, English is. Actually, a significant portion of the day-to-day stuff that gets picked up in language classes are subtler (less widespread, and thus less explicitly taught) grammar patterns that involve very specific vocabulary. For example, how do you use words like “ぜんぜん” or” はず”/”つもり” in Japanese, or words like “because” or “not only…but also” in English, or words like “lo” or “estar”/”ser” in Spanish, or words like “ni” or “manquer” in French. The broadness of applicability varies among these terms, but the point is that the grammar points fall between the extremes: between applicability across the language (e.g. “this is how you conjugate all verbs ending in…”) and very narrow applicability (e.g. “蜻蜓 means ‘dragonfly’ [in Chinese]“).

Indeed, Chinese is full of such grammar points. Most of what is usefully learned in Chinese classes, besides vocabulary, are what I will refer to as “common/useful phrase constructions.” As the examples in the preceding paragraph demonstrate, most languages have these kinds of grammar points, but most other languages also have more widely applicable and necessary grammar points, including, but not limited to, things like verb conjugations, rules for noun-adjective gender/count agreement, etc.

So all this while, I’ve been slightly mystified as to why all I seem to be able to teach are these sorts of “common/useful phrase constructions” in my Chinese class sessions and worrying slightly that information is being imparted more slowly because there’s not more widely applicable grammar information that I can provide. But now that I’ve realized that all languages have this type of information (and in fact, Japanese has both vast tracts of widely applicable stuff to keep in mind and lots of these applicable-to-a-mid-range-of-the-language grammar points, which does make it slightly more annoying to teach), I will continue to teach Chinese as I have been, because this is, in fact, the way to teach this language, in my humble opinion.

Thoughts on Language Learning (Part 3 of ?); Language Classes Update #3

*takes a deep breath* Okay. Here comes a stream of consciousness dump, but I will try to keep it semi-organized and emphasize the main points as I go or else summarize some things at the end.

The stream of consciousness starts with an idea that I’ve been turning over in my head for some time now: holding “office hours” once every week or every other week. Students would have the opportunity to ask questions that they’ve had, or get additional speaking/listening practice. To take this one step further, I could turn these into sessions of interesting lectures (e.g. the lecture on pronouns, which is more FYI and not strictly immediately practically useful). This last approach, however, has the downside of making office hours semi-required in a highly-recommended sort of way.

One student offered the response that I can always be asked random questions over zephyr, and additionally that it would be nice to have more conversation practice during class or after class, if class time might be better spent purely as a information delivery period. The thing is, I’m not really sure that practicing the conversations that we currently go over in class would be all that useful (except in terms of pronunciation, which can, of course, only be improved by practice), and I would much rather have time dedicated to free conversation so that people can talk about whatever their heart desires. (I am, however, still interested in hearing people’s opinions on how useful practicing the provided conversations is for getting material into your heads, or whatever other use y’all might find them useful for.) The problem with free conversation time, though, is that people either don’t or don’t think that they have enough vocabulary/grammar to pull such free conversation off for any length of conversation greater than two or three back-and-forth exchanges.

A response that was offered to this problem was to post a giant vocabulary list that people could study on their own time. Which brings me to my main point, I think….

The exact origin of these language classes has not been widely known until now: during this past IAP, I was talking about my language classes (”Learn Asian!” and “Introduction to Japanese”) with someone in the SIPB office, and she expressed an interest in learning one or more Asian languages, but couldn’t make it to my IAP sessions. Also, there was the point that my IAP sessions were meant to be a primer for learning on your own, and you weren’t expected to come out of them being able to say much, but rather you should’ve come out of them with pages upon pages of grammar notes that would hopefully bring grammar patterns to your attention that your textbook might have otherwise not explicitly mentioned or explained. So my response was that I would be delighted to teach a group of some minimum size (a group too small would feel like not enough results to show for time invested), provided that the group did not expect me to be super-organized about it (i.e. that I could ramble to my heart’s content in a semi-organized/coherent manner about interesting and useful grammar points). The idea was that we would all have an understanding that the class was meant to be low time-commitment and more for everyone’s enjoyment than necessarily really serious, where the teacher (mostly me) would be expected to have solid lessons prepared and the students were expected to have done the preparation and/or homework asked of them.

Well, the classes have evolved since then. And now we’re on the cusp of a decision, because I can’t realistically keep the classes up in their current state. In the spring, I mostly rambled about grammar topics, people took notes and asked questions, and while a low percentage of the material stuck, I think we had fun. This term, I’ve been trying a more steady approach, where I prepare some lesson plans and we slow down a lot in order to give people time to absorb vocabulary and be exposed to actual sentences/conversation during class time. As a result, I’ve had less time to information-dump about things like pronouns, which are not really explicitly discussed in the JSL curriculum, which is what I’ve been taking material from. It feels very slow to me, and yet I still feel as though I am pushing the limits on the expectation level of the students, because I, personally, have been spending more time on the classes, and it does kind of suck to not feel okay asking more of the students.

So my question is really this: how serious are all of you (my students) about the language classes? Would you guys be interested in having any or all of the following:

  • mandatory attendance or a requirement to make it up by scheduling an appointment with me during the following week (people missing classes has caused us to do a little repeating/backtracking when it comes to information-dumping);
  • more class time;
  • more-or-less-required free conversation time before/after class or at some other time during the week, possibly on a rotating schedule so that everyone can make it at least once every other week;
  • office hours, which would be different from semi-required free conversation time in that attendance would not be more/less mandatory;
  • more homework that you are actually expected to complete (mostly vocabulary memorization);
  • in-class vocabulary quizzes;
  • (other ideas?)

Reminder: these are not rhetorical questions that I’ve posed here. I really would appreciate any and all feedback (the main parts of the most important questions that would like responses are bolded).

More thoughts (added 7/22/2010, ~1400h): Basically, the question this all boils down to is this: how serious are you guys about learning this (there) language(s), and how much time are you willing to put in as a consequence of that? We’ve run into what I call “the time problem”: in the end, learning a language requires time, whether on your own or in-class. With the spring term curriculum, you got a lot of information but had to spend copious amounts of time at home studying things that we didn’t explicitly cover in class (such as vocabulary) if you wanted to develop useful speaking skills; if you don’t want to do independent work/studying, you have to commit to more class time; under this current curriculum, we’re spending more time in class per topic than we did in the spring but at-home studying is still highly recommended, if not essentially required. All of these possibilities, of course, assume that you guys are actually interested in acquiring some amount of conversational skill; if you are not interested in such, I am totally willing to back off in terms of seriousness and return to babbling about grammar. On the other hand, if you are interested in actually getting usable conversation skill out of this, I am totally willing and excited to help make that happen. We just need to all be on the same page about what our expectations of this endeavor are.

Language Groups Update #2

I’m going to be lame this week and kind of cop-out of a “more hardcore” post because I’ve been busy dealing with the weather, work, and language groups, which I’ve been investing a lot of time in over the last week and a half or so because of the new website. The new website, which is located in my www, currently features transcripts of the conversations that we’ve practiced in class, to varying degrees of annotation as I have deemed reasonable, audio files corresponding to those conversations, and vocabulary (although I have been slow about getting the Chinese vocabulary list up on the website). I’m planning to add links to youtube videos of the songs that I’ve translated in this blog and link back to my translations, for additional listening exposure. So here’s my new question for y’all: what else do you think you would find useful? Would it be useful for me to link youtube videos and accurate but not word-for-word translations that other people have done?

F.I.R. – “Fly Away” Annotation

It has been brought to my attention that while I’ve done translations of Chinese things, I haven’t done detailed translations, which might be useful for the Chinese learners. Thus, I shall endeavor to translate each word of the stuff that I have translated in the past, annotating the hanzi where relevant. I’ve decided not to do a word-for-word translation of Ten Impossible Questions because the grammar of those gets kind of atrocious at times, and y’all shouldn’t be learning off those. So, we’re starting with the next-oldest one: my translation of “Fly Away” by F.I.R. As in the original post, implied pronouns (to the best of my understanding/interpretation) are bolded.

清晨的微风
如此的平凡
看似简单
雾气驱散

The slight wind of the clear morning
So commonplace in this way
Looks as though it so simply
Disperses the fog

  • 清 (qīng)- “clear,” composed of the water radical (the three leftmost strokes) to indicate an association with liquid (e.g. “clear liquid”) and the word for “grue“/青/qīng as the phonetic component
  • 晨 (chén) – “morning”/”dawn,” composed of the sun radical (in this case the simplified version of the starry radical 晶/jīng) and the phonetic component 辰/chén (no longer in common usage, but was used with a set of words to distinguish between items in a given set, such as the year of the Dragon (the given set being “years”), 0700-0900h (the given set being “two-hour periods”), the 5th earthly branch (the given set being “earthly branches”), or the third solar month (the given set being “solar months”))
  • 的 (de) – indicates possession of the following noun by the preceding noun; composed of the characters for “sun”/日/rì, altered to “white”/白/bái, and “ladle”/勺/sháo
  • 微 (wēi) – “micro-”/”small,” composed of the following components: “step with the left foot”/彳/chì and a phonetic component (if you really want *coughirrelevantcough* details…)
  • 风 (fēng) – in the traditional, originally written 風, which is composed of the phonetic component “ordinary”/凡/fán and “insect”/虫/chóng (because insects are borne by the wind)
  • 如 (rú) – “as if”/”like”/”as”
  • 此 (cǐ) – “this”/”these”/”in this case” (I am neglecting to provide etymology for this word and the preceding one because I’m not convinced that my usual sources are accurate, and these words are commonplace enough that they’ve changed a lot and no Chinese person knows the etymology either)
  • 的 (de) – (see above: third character in the preceding line)
  • 平 (píng) – “flat”/”level”/”peaceful”
  • 凡 (fán) – “ordinary”/”common”/”any”/”every”
  • 看 (kàn)- “look”, representing a “hand”/手/shǒu shading the “eye”/目/mù
  • 似 (sì) – “resemble”/”similar to”/”seem” (again, old unclear etymology)
  • 简 (jiǎn) – “simple”/”succinct”, composed of the radical “bamboo”/竹/zhú, to represent what was written on in ancient times, and the phonetic component “(space) between”/间/jiān
  • 单 (dān) – “single” (don’t worry about the etymology)
  • 雾 (wù) – “fog”, composed of the radical for “rain”/雨/yǔ and the phonetic component “matter”/”affair”/”business”/务/wù
  • 气 (qì) – “air”/”gas”
  • 驱 (qū) – “expel”/”drive away”/”spur a horse on”, composed of the radical for “horse”/马/mǎ and the phonetic component “area”/”region”/区/qū
  • 散 (sǎn) – “scatter”/”disperse”/”break up” (I…have no idea how to interpret this etymology, therefore: “it’s not important, of course!”

Anyway, hope y’all enjoyed this installment.

Language Classes Update

So far, we’ve had the first two weekends of Japanese/Chinese classes for the summer.

In Japanese, the first session actually covered somewhat more advanced material than the second session, owing to a much smaller group the first session who were of at least advanced-beginner level. Thus, the first session we covered the three main categories of words (nominals, adjectivals, and verbals — yes yes I know I’m totally missing particles and other things, hush) and useful verb conjugations, while in the second session, we went over the writing system and a little basic grammar, including particles. Next week I think I’ll bring in my textbooks and we’ll start with basic conversations and vocab-building, so we’ll be following the curriculum here to a degree except for the part where I will randomly throw in more advanced and useful grammar where it makes sense to.

The first Chinese session was mostly an overview of phonemes and introduction to pinyin, although I mostly expect people to pick up pinyin with repeated exposure. (It’s somewhat more lacking in rules than is terribly useful.) During the second session, with a much better showing (just like Japanese-Learners, I guess), we covered tones and learned some basic vocab and grammar, with a practice conversation that I made up on the spot! As Greg Price pointed out, what you want to start learning for conversational purposes doesn’t match what you want to start learning for literacy purposes (e.g. why would you start out with the moderate-to-quite-complicated character for “I”?), so we’re going to be trying to stay more focused on conversational skills, and while I write as many relevant characters as I know on the board during class, it’s mostly for the purposes of exposure and students are not really expected to remember them (except for the two characters that make up “Chinese”: 中文). Thus, for this weekend’s session, we should have more practice conversations, and hopefully we’ll have a workable ratio of actual beginners and people who have some familiarity with the phonemes and/or tones so that partnering up for conversation practice will work well. For Chinese, as opposed to Japanese, I don’t really have a curriculum to follow, so I’m going to be making these conversations up, and I will probably try to theme them, as is frequently the case in language classes. So far I’ve come up with at least two sessions worth of food-related vocab and one session’s worth of weather-related vocab. Help me out here: what other vocab themes and/or useful conversational phrases might y’all be interested in learning?

王光良 (Michael Wong) – “第一次” (First Time) Translation

Some editor’s and translator’s notes:

The song is sung by the guy. The colored parts are in the music video: blue is for the guy, red is for the girl, and italicized parts are voice-over’ed, as though the two people are looking back on the story and commenting on it in retrospect. Some of the things the girl says are clearly intended to be insults, but I have no clue how to actually parse them, so I have left them as is and you can feel free to inject a scoffing/frustrated tone.

The girl also says “拜拜!” a number of times, according to the subtitling in the music video, but in the translation I’ve written “bye bye” without an exclamation point; I think that the exclamation point is used differently in the Chinese (as in, it is always tacked on to the end of “拜拜”). (Pedantic note: I did mean “in the Chinese,” meaning in this example in Chinese, as opposed to “in Chinese,” which would imply that the meaning of punctuation is quite different between English and Chinese, and that is not really true.) Anyway, I’ve made changes to the punctuation in the translation as fits the tone of the exchange.

Finally, there is an idiom that appears twice in the song lyrics (”天长地久”) which I have translated as “eternity”; the idiom is made of the words for “sky/heaven,” “long,” “ground/Earth,” and “long time.” This dictionary provides the interpretation of “enduring as long as the world does,” which I think is quite accurate, but it doesn’t really fit into the context of the sentence terribly well in that form.

这是我第一次对她说
我喜欢你

我喜欢你

哈哈哈
我当做没听到啊
你赶快忘记吧
拜拜!

我就是能当她哥儿们吧
哇   剉塞

当你看着我
我没有开口   已被你猜透
爱是没把握
还是没有符合你的要求
我失   业了
要不要喝一点什么
是我自己想得太多
还是你也在闪躲
如果真的选择是我
我鼓起勇气去接受
不知不觉让实现开始闪烁

喔   第一次我   说爱你的时候
这是我的一次跟她牵手
呼吸难过   心不停的颤抖
喔   第一次我   牵起你的双手
失去方向   不知该往哪走
那是一起相爱的理由
那是一起厮守
喔   第一次吻   你深深的酒窝
想要清醒却冲昏了头
喔   第一次你   躺在我的胸口
二十四小时没有分开过
这是我第一次跟她接吻
那是第一次知道天长地久

干吗穿这样
喔喔…有剉塞
找工作啊

是我自己想得太多
还是你也在闪躲
穿這樣子心情比較好啊
如果真的选择是我
我鼓起勇气去接受
不知不觉让视线开始闪烁

喔   第一次我   说爱你的时候
呼吸难过   心不停的颤抖
喔   第一次我   牵起你的双手
这是我的一次和她拥抱
哼    嘜假
失去方向 不知该往哪走
那是一起相爱的理由   对我

天哪   怎么这么重
感觉你属于我
肉腳
感觉你的眼眸
第一次就决定 绝不会错

喔   第一次我   说爱你的时候
呼吸难过 心不停的颤抖
喔   第一次我   牵起你的双手
失去方向   不知该往哪走
那是一起相爱的理由
好不好吃
那是一起厮守
干吗
没什么
喔    第一次吻   你深深的酒窝
想要清醒却冲昏了头
你上次在这里跟我说什么
喔   第一次你    躺在我的胸口
我忘记了
二十四小时没有分开过
那是第一次知道天长地久

好甜喔!
拜拜!
真的是笨猪一条!
你上次在这里说什么
我喜欢你
我好喜欢你喔

喜欢谁
萧淑慎
谁喜欢萧淑慎
王光良
这是我的第一次

哼   也是我的   嘿嘿

This is my first time saying to her
I like you

I like you

Ha ha ha
I am going to pretend I didn’t hear that
You should quickly forget it
Bye bye

I can just be her friend/brother
Wah   剉塞

When you watched me
I didn’t open my mouth and already you guessed my everything
Love is without certainty
Or does it not meet your demands
I lost   my job
Do you want to drink a little something?
Is it that I think too much
Or are you also being evasive?
If [your] real choice/pick is me
I will summon the courage to receive it
Subconsciously letting the realization begin to flicker

Oh the first time I said I love you
This is my first time holding hands with her
Breathing was difficult and my heart wouldn’t stop pounding
Oh the first time I took your two hands
[I] lost [my sense of] direction and didn’t know which direction to go
That is the justification/reason for mutual love
That is staying together
Oh the first time [I] kissed your deep dimple(s)
[I] want to be clear-headed but instead [my] head becomes completely muddled
Oh the first time you laid on my chest
[We] didn’t part for twenty-four hours
This is my first time kissing her
That is the first time knowing eternity*

Why are you dressed like that?
Oh oh … again 剉塞
Looking for a job

Is it that I think too much
Or are you also being evasive?
Having this kind of attitude is better
If [your] real choice/pick is me
I will summon the courage to receive it
Subconsciously letting the realization begin to flicker

Oh the first time I said I love you
Breathing was difficult and my heart wouldn’t stop pounding
Oh the first time I took your two hands
This is my first time hugging her
Hnn  嘜假
[I] lost [my sense of] direction and didn’t know which direction to go
That is the justification/reason for mutual love to me

Heavens   so heavy
Feeling that you’re part of me
肉腳
Feeling the pupil of your eye(s)
The first time [I] just decided it absolutely wouldn’t be wrong

Oh the first time I said I love you
Breathing was difficult and my heart wouldn’t stop pounding
Oh the first time I took your two hands
[I] lost [my sense of] direction and didn’t know which direction to go
That is the justification/reason for mutual love
Is it tasty?
That is staying together
What?
Nothing
Oh the first time [I] kissed your deep dimple(s)
[I] want to be clear-headed but instead [my] head becomes completely muddled
Last time, what did you say to me here?
Oh the first time you laid on my chest
I’ve forgotten
[We] didn’t part for twenty-four hours
That is the first time knowing eternity*

So sweet!
Bye bye
[I] really am a stupid pig!
Last time what did you say to me here?
I like you
I really like you!

Like who?
Xiao ShuShen
Who likes Xiao ShuShen?
Wang GuangLiang
This is my first time

Hnn   mine too  hehe

“老鼠爱大米” (Mice Love Rice) Translation

我听见你的声音
有种特别的感觉
让我不断想
不敢再忘记你

我记的有一个人
永远留在我心中
那怕只能够这样的想你

如果真的有一天
爱情理想会实现
我会加倍努力好好对你永远不改变

不管路有多么远
一定会让它实现
我会轻轻在你耳边
对你说… 对你说…

我爱你
爱着你
就象老鼠爱大米
不管有多少风雨
我都会依然陪着你
我想你
想着你
不管有多么的苦
只要能让你开心, 我什么都愿意
这样爱你

I hear your sound
It has a special feeling
It lets me think nonstop
I wouldn’t ever dare to forget you

I remember that there is a person
[Who will] forever stay in (the middle of) my heart
Even if that’s the only way I can think of you enough

If there there really comes a day
The dream of love comes true
I will double my diligence to (properly) never change [my feelings] towards you

No matter how far/long the road is
[I] Will definitely let it come true
I will softly, by your ear,
Say to you… say to you…

I love you
Loving you
Just like mice love rice
No matter how much wind and rain there is
I will still accompany you just the same
I think of you
Thinking of you
No matter how much pain/bitterness there is
As long as you can be happy, I am willing to do anything
[I] love you this way

F.I.R. – “眷恋” (Attachment) Translation

把爱深埋在记忆中
说不出口一种难过
给祝福太多
不能覆盖我的痛
你要转身你要走
不在多作停留

分开是谁说没什么
最难的决定是放手
眼中的落寞
说的都是我的错
当你笑着挥挥手
你的沉默我懂

请别说爱我
推我想晴天
最温暖的天空
却换了季节
在绝望的面前
洒落一地心碎
就算是伤悲
我不想太狼狈

请别说爱我
别许下心愿
下一秒就出现
你给的纪念
风吹过的思念
曾有过的眷恋
哭红了双眼
再让我心痛一天

Bury love deeply in memory
There’s an inexpressable kind of discomfort
Giving too many blessings
Cannot cover up my pain
you want to turn away, you want to leave
Not staying much longer

Who says there’s nothing to separating?
The hardest decision is letting go
The hidden meaning in your eyes
Says that it’s all my fault
When you smile and wave
I understand your downfall/failure

Please don’t say you love me
Push me towards sunny days
The warmest times
Have, alas, changed seasons
In the face of my dreams/wishes
I scatter pieces of my heart, covering the ground
Even if it is my pain
I don’t want to be too much of a burden

Please don’t say you love me
Don’t make heartfelt wishes
In the next second, it will appear
The memories you gave
Longing that has been blown by the wind
The attachment that was
Having cried until my eyes became red
Let my heart hurt again for one more day

Private Lessons and Other Classes

So recently I’ve been in talks with another, intermediate-level, Chinese learners group, investigating whether we might merge our groups. On Thursday, we met with a potential teacher for their continuing studies in the fall, and I began to more seriously consider the thought that had occurred to me on Monday, about teaching $language (or $instrument) to small groups of students, more formally (similarly to a piano teacher, getting paid), because the people in our conversation group seem to be primarily those who grew up with Chinese spoken in their households, and then some people with a moderate amount of experience and some with almost none, and the people with almost no experience might benefit from some introductory material, after which they could join the more intermediate group’s lessons.

I’m wondering how much interest there might be in such language/instrument teachers. Certainly there would probably be interest in piano/violin teachers, but I don’t really know how much people might expect to get out of private language instruction, nor how well that would work. Should I join a preexisting educational/tutoring organization and teach classes through an infrastructure that is already set up? Should I consider organizing a group of people experienced in something, and mostly act to pair up interested learners with experienced teachers (while being in the pool of experienced teachers myself)? Should I try to do this as a private instructor, as piano/violin/voice/etc teachers do?

I guess I haven’t really figured out why I want to do this. If it’s purely an interest thing, it might be somewhat fleeting, as with “Learn Asian!” Sure, I taught it for two years, but towards the end of the second instance of the class, I began to realize that I had lost some interest in it. Perhaps I lost interest because people expected things from the class that I wasn’t ready to offer. Perhaps I lost interest because I kept wanting to tie it into cultural observations of the languages, but I didn’t feel like it was really my place to inject my opinions (nor did I really want to express my opinions to a bunch of random people); this last possibility really only occurred to me last night. I’m not sure where I want to take “Learn Asian!” from here. I don’t know if I want to teach it again in an altered form next IAP, or stop teaching it altogether. I’m not sure whether I want to continue teaching or expand my “Introduction To Japanese” class for next IAP, either.

So many questions. Fortunately, there is totally time to figure things out. I would also be interested in hearing from people who might be interested in the IAP class or private lessons what your thoughts might be.

Thoughts on Language Learning (Part 2 of ?)

I was writing an email today, to an alum who is part of a group of Chinese-learners, and it occurred to me that practicing a language conversationally not only helps one keep the phonemes/grammar/vocabulary in shape and readily accessible, it also helps to focus the direction of further acquisition in the language. Back in the day, MIT Medical organized a “cultural language exchange” program: you filled out a form indicating which language(s) you were proficient in and which language(s) you wanted to practice, and they paired you up with someone who was reasonably proficient in the language(s) you wanted to practice. My first pairing was with a native French speaker. As we talked, I realized what sorts of things I liked to talk about, what sorts of things I wanted to say about myself in casual conversation with a new acquaintance, and so on. As I realized what these topics were, I found myself wanting to learn richer vocabulary to talk about them, and thus, where I had been confused and overwhelmed by the vast body of French there was left to learn, I began to develop an idea of the direction for further studies in French (whenever I chose to continue them).

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