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Mandarin Learner seeking a special human being

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15
Sylveon
321 posts
Joined April 2014
Topic Starter
Sylveon
Hello hello!

As the title suggests I am currently learning Mandarin (and Japanese, but this is more about Mandarin) at University! YAY..

Anyhow, the Uni course for Mandarin in particular is not to great in terms of casual everyday speaking. We spend many weeks learning about topics that I believe should be learned at a much later level (we started at complete beginner). Thus while I may know certain words like 保护环境，职务，君子兰，油彩，盆景，摆架子，讽刺。。。什么的。。 I cannot currently hold a conversation at all and basic grammar was (up until last week where is started hardcore self study and research away from my textbook) impossible.

As I am going abroad from September to both Japan and Taiwan respectively (6 months each) I really want to amp up my self studies, esp Mandarin. Which I have been doing and naturally, I have amassed questions/translations etc that I would love to be able to ask someone about!
My Mandarin teachers are great yes, but they have many students and often find it hard to explain certain things.

So I would like to reach out to the community to see if there is anyone willing to say, add me on discord help me out with a question here and there.. even try to chat with me.. Because Right now my Mandarin after nearly 2 years of Uni is well.. not conversational at all.. but we learn how to write off by heart all the characters we learn so that takes up as much time as we could spend actually speaking..

So yes! I would really appreciate any help from you lovely Osu! players :)
Last edited by Sylveon , edited 2 times in total.
Flanster
5,938 posts
Joined August 2010
Flanster
From the subforum index I thought this was gonna be some dating thread.
Good luck anyway yo.
Last edited by Flanster , edited 1 time in total.
Sylveon
321 posts
Joined April 2014
Topic Starter
Sylveon
Thanks :)
45Traeath
388 posts
Joined February 2016
45Traeath

Flanster wrote:

[...]
I can't believe someone actually thought that.
What's the staff's stance, if it was that kind of thread?
________________________________


What I left as a draft "2 days ago"...


Sylveon wrote:

Anyhow, the Uni course for Mandarin in particular is not to great in terms of casual everyday speaking.
Because Right now my Mandarin after nearly 2 years of Uni is well.. not conversational at all.. but we learn how to write off by heart all the characters we learn so that takes up as much time as we could spend actually speaking.
I kind of frowned when I saw this underlined part, then I understood what was the problem better...
I've yet to figure out a "cheat code", to get over the oral expression/speaking part of the learning process too.

(Sorry I'm not the "special human being" needed...
Even though I was born from two "strangers" . .)

One thing is to try to spend a sufficient amount of time, to remember the pronounciation(/tones) of what you've learnt so far.
From what I've read, you could have not gotten through this. I don't know about whether you've been suggested that or not, but I would consider it important, especially for this language.
You might have seen that there are multiple words/characters that could share the same pronounciation (regardless of their respective tone), so to me, I would do the above either before of while looking for a vocabulary I might/will use.

My big sister's answer, yesterday...

"That's something that should be learnt and improved the same way as when you learn how to write the words.
You just, learn the vocabulary (both known and new), write them and train your pronouncing of the words. Repeatedly."

________________________________


Unfortunately, while I'm saying this, neither one of us uses Discord (grammar check, please XD), so I can't give much more support than this.
Sylveon
321 posts
Joined April 2014
Topic Starter
Sylveon

45Traeath wrote:

Flanster wrote:

[...]
I can't believe someone actually thought that.

What's the staff's stance, if it was that kind of thread?

________________________________


What I left as a draft "2 days ago"...


Sylveon wrote:

Anyhow, the Uni course for Mandarin in particular is not to great in terms of casual everyday speaking.
Because Right now my Mandarin after nearly 2 years of Uni is well.. not conversational at all.. but we learn how to write off by heart all the characters we learn so that takes up as much time as we could spend actually speaking.

I kind of frowned when I saw this underlined part, then I understood what was the problem better...
I've yet to figure out a "cheat code", to get over the oral expression/speaking part of the learning process too.

(Sorry I'm not the "special human being" needed...
Even though I was born from two "strangers" . .)

One thing is to try to spend a sufficient amount of time, to remember the pronounciation(/tones) of what you've learnt so far.
From what I've read, you could have not gotten through this. I don't know about whether you've been suggested that or not, but I would consider it important, especially for this language.
You might have seen that there are multiple words/characters that could share the same pronounciation (regardless of their respective tone), so to me, I would do the above either before of while looking for a vocabulary I might/will use.

My big sister's answer, yesterday...

"That's something that should be learnt and improved the same way as when you learn how to write the words.
You just, learn the vocabulary (both known and new), write them and train your pronouncing of the words. Repeatedly."

________________________________


Unfortunately, while I'm saying this, neither one of us uses Discord (grammar check, please XD), so I can't give much more support than this.


Hi, thanks for your reply :). Luckily I also very much agree regarding tones and pronunciation. Unlike the majority of those in my class I always try to learn the correct tones alongside the vocabulary. I am a keen user of flashcards, its lit all I use in my free time (I have grammar flashcards as well).
If I were to struggle with certain pronunciations it would be 3rd tones correctly (when in a word with two tones), and also I'm constantly reminding myself that certain sounds like zhi,chi,shi,zhe,she, qian/xian etc, all are different, sometimes I catch myself bieng lazy and grouping certain sounds together esp shi and she/ zhe/zhi etc.

One thing I notice when watch shows or hearing Mandarin is that in a sentence not all tones are pronounced (at least thats how it sounds to my foreign brain). Only key words in the sentence tones are clearly pronounced and filler words are not. By key words I mean the key noun/words that express feeling etc. By fillers I mean very common words. Am I wrong?
Last edited by Sylveon , edited 1 time in total.
45Traeath
388 posts
Joined February 2016
45Traeath

Sylveon wrote:

One thing I notice when watch shows or hearing Mandarin is that in a sentence not all tones are pronounced (at least thats how it sounds to my foreign brain). Only key words in the sentence tones are clearly pronounced and filler words are not. By key words I mean the key noun/words that express feeling etc. By fillers I mean very common words. Am I wrong?
(After a careful, 2nd reading...)
You might be right.
I have to ask her though. I'm not an avid spectator of those, but during the week, around 8PM there's some being broadcast on NTD...
Yes, I just based my straight answer, straight from TV shows that I wouldn't care much enough to actually listen.

Alright, I should write more about the real answer later, after some questionning, maybe.
Arctos Sagittario
215 posts
Joined August 2011
Arctos Sagittario
My best bet would be some international students in UK, because schedules would be harder to meet with a huge 8-hour timezone difference.

Unfortunately Chinese players don’t usually visit forums here, and they don’t quite go to tieba, a very popular forum in China, as often as five-ish years ago. It’s hard to find those guys these days even by myself to be honest.

If your teacher is a Chinese, then I ‘d suggest asking him/her about this, and see if he/she could find volunteers in local Chinese students community.

Oh, regarding the question: you’re right. There is a tendency of pronouncing 轻声 for less important words.
Last edited by Arctos Sagittario , edited 1 time in total.
Sylveon
321 posts
Joined April 2014
Topic Starter
Sylveon

Arctos Sagittario wrote:

My best bet would be some international students in UK, because schedules would be harder to meet with a huge 8-hour timezone difference.

Unfortunately Chinese players don’t usually visit forums here, and they don’t quite go to tieba, a very popular forum in China, as often as five-ish years ago. It’s hard to find those guys these days even by myself to be honest.

If your teacher is a Chinese, then I ‘d suggest asking him/her about this, and see if he/she could find volunteers in local Chinese students community.

Oh, regarding the question: you’re right. There is a tendency of pronouncing 轻声 for less important words.


Hi, thank you for your reply :). Yes I understand what you mean, I was hoping there may be Mandarin speakers in Europe who could help. Of course, if I am just asking questions I don't mind if I wait a day in between getting answers, it would just be really chill to say, be studying have a question and instantly send it to a friend who could help (eventually).
burakku_old_1
40 posts
Joined July 2017
burakku_old_1
Check out r/ChineseLanguage and r/languagelearning for info. Specifically the sidebar of r/chineselanguage.

Also, I have seen people on quora say that tones don't matter in most of the cases. They said that natives use context to understand most of the time.
Last edited by burakku_old_1 , edited 1 time in total.
45Traeath
388 posts
Joined February 2016
45Traeath

Arctos Sagittario wrote:

There is a tendency of pronouncing 轻声 for less important words.

burakku wrote:

[...] tones don't matter in most of the cases. They said that natives use context to understand most of the time.
Well, those are some words I (and she, from my previous talk) can get behind.

I'm not sure about whether that 8h difference is important or not...
*Wait, we were talking about oral conversations, so of course it is...*

Are foreign students rare, around UK?
In my only year of uni', (maybe/approx') 40% of the people I met in the course were able to speak Mandarin, yet (mainly use "close-to-native" French and) took the cultural course (there's some hours per week to learn the language, don't worry).
I met 4 people whom were mainly Chinese("-speakers"?) in high sc', and they still fared quite well in the classes other than the optional 3rd Language (one, of the student's choosing).

I don't know. Weird scales made me think about the above question when I should rather ask: isn't there any possibility to train with anyone like the ones I mentioned?
mulraf
1,067 posts
Joined January 2012
mulraf

Arctos Sagittario wrote:

Unfortunately Chinese players don’t usually visit forums here, and they don’t quite go to tieba, a very popular forum in China, as often as five-ish years ago. It’s hard to find those guys these days even by myself to be honest.


well there are some on the chinese subforum https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/25 . i mean it's not thaat frequently visited but i guess a few people a day. maybe op can also find someone there :? not sure how the average english skills are for chinese people though and if it would be appropriate to ask a request in english in that sub
Nao Tomori
osu! Alumni
3,106 posts
Joined December 2014
Nao Tomori
seems that most cn community on osu use qq anyway not discord or forum
burakku_old_1
40 posts
Joined July 2017
burakku_old_1

Nao Tomori wrote:

seems that most cn community on osu use qq anyway not discord or forum

... QQ?
Flanster
5,938 posts
Joined August 2010
Flanster

burakku wrote:

Nao Tomori wrote:

seems that most cn community on osu use qq anyway not discord or forum

... QQ?

It's a messenger commonly used in China.
beepbop3540
1 post
Joined February 2019
beepbop3540
If you still need help feel free to msg me ^^
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