Monthly Archives: July 2009

Memorable Moments in Language Acquisition

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  1. When you aren’t sure what language a conversation was in. Oddly enough, you can recall it in both.
  2. When you have a dream in your target language.
  3. When you no longer remember what the language sounded like when you didn’t understand it. (Note: Learning a language because you like the way it sounds is a self-defeating goal.)
  4. When you realize how terrible most translations are for Japanese movies, animes, books, etc.
  5. When you inadvertently use the target language for reflex words such as, 「痛っ！」 or 「よいしょ」.
  6. When you use the body language of the target language, such as waving a hand to beckon someone over.
  7. When onomatopoeias actually start sounding like the sounds they’re supposed to represent. (Hint: They sound nothing like the actual sound, your brain has just been brain-washed.)
  8. When you somehow knew the meaning of a word without ever actually having learned it (my favorite and most baffling moment).

Feel free to share your own memorable moments.

The #1 Chinese myth

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Every time I mention how I struggle with Chinese grammar, people inevitably say something like:

Isn’t Chinese grammar similar to English?

Here’s my answer:

No, not really.

Hey, since you know a whole bunch of Kanji from Japanese, and you speak English, learning Chinese should be a snap, right?

No, not really.

To illustrate, here’s a sentence I ran into during some light reading.

你想把他带到什么地方去？- Where do you think you’re taking him?

If you assume that the grammar is similar to English and translate the words literally, you get something like this:

You think (direct object) him, take where go?

Wow, that doesn’t look like very good English, does it? I mean there’s a verb at the end and something similar the 「を」 particle! But it’s not like Japanese either, since the main verb isn’t “go” but “think”. It’s Chinese sentence structure, which so far I’ve managed to break down into the following rules.

Rules for Chinese sentence structure

  1. Order the words so that it “sounds” natural depending on what words you’re using.

In fact, I’ve given up in trying to break things down logically. My current method of learning essentially boils down to behavioral training and osmosis. It works but it’s not something you can really teach or explain. “Hey, just go with it” doesn’t sound very good. 🙂

Smart.fm looks smart all right

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You may (or may not) remember when I lamented about all those stupid index-card websites with just lists of random words.

My argument was that the main drawback of word lists is that they had no context and are boring. You still have to go find source material on your own in order to learn those words in any meaningful context. It would be so much cooler if people can share interesting content and the words associated with it. Well, it looks like smart.fm has delivered exactly that.

There’s still lists of just random words, it won’t stop you from making those. But you can also append other media to provide context. For instance, you can learn the words to the Japanese version of Beauty and the Beast while watching the actual clip. Pretty cool. Here’s another catchy song with the full lyrics and accompanying vocabulary list.

Looks like there’s plenty of bloggy material to read as well.

Here’s a really freaky story called 「なまえのないかいぶつ」. Kind of scary. Would you read such a story to your kids? I wouldn’t unless I wanted to give them nightmares. Maybe it has something to do with why horror movies are so popular in Japanese (and scary too!).

There’s a lot of stuff in that site to play around with. My only complaint is that it can be a bit difficult to find media-based lists. It would be nice to be able to scroll through all the videos or music instead of having to mess around with tag clouds. Ahh, here we go, you have to use the results filter after you do a search. Not very intuitive if you don’t have a particular search term.

I’m having fun but I wish there was more Chinese content. Oh well, can’t have everything.

Definitely check it out. Two thumbs up.