好久不见 (Long time no see)

I've been quite busy at work and have not ad time to blog about my Chinese learning progress. I have been reinforcing my spoken Chinese by listening to Chinese lessons in the car whenever I go to work. This habit also seemed to make my driving better. I am less aggressive on the road and I don't  mind traffic as much as I see it as extra time to learn Chinese. I have aslo finally gotten my copy of the Practical Chinese Reader and started working my way through it. Awesome. I have further started watch the one Chinese TV channel (CCTV4) and have discovered that I like contemporary Chinese music and that listening to it while reading the text on screen is a huge help in learning and reinforcing my Chinese. I am a little bit disappointed that I cannot follow either the written or spoken Chinese to any degree on the TV. I am guessing that my ability to follow will get better as I immerse myself more in the language.

The Golden Axe - 2

The first sentence in the story is: 这是个炎热的夏日. Here is the translation and pinyin for each character in the sentence: 这(zhe4;this)是(shi4;is)个(gu)炎(yan2-scorching;buring hot)热(re4-hot)的(de)夏(zia4-summer)日(ri4).So literally translated this means: This is a scorching hot summer’s day.

Notes:

1.  I translated the general measure word (个) as a even though strictly speaking Chinese does not have an indefinite article. I am wondering is the original should not have been 一个 instead of just 个. http://mylanguages.org/chinese_articles.php
2. The possessive particle 的 is used here purely to indicate that it is the day that is hot. I initially thought that it was used to indicate that an adjectival verb (热) was used as a pure adjective instead of a verb. That would have meant that 炎 would have been the adjectival verb’s (热) intensifier. I cannot find evidence for this.

If anybody is reading this and disagrees with any of my translations or thoughts then I would appreaciate any feedback.

The Golden Axe - 1

To practice reading Chinese i downloaded an iPhone app that contains the story of the golden axe. I think this story is a variant of The Honest Woodsman story. The iPhone app is not brilliant but it does have the English for the story as well as the simplified Chinese characters.I am going to start doing my own translations and explanations based on this app. It should prove to be a good learning exercise. Lets start with the title of the story: 金斧头 (jin1 fu3tou2). 金(jin1) means golden and 斧头 (fu3tou2) means axe. So its quite simply: Golden Axe or The Golden Axe. I am still a bit confused about how some words are formed for example: 斧(fu3) means axe or hatchet. But 斧头(fu3tou2) also means axe or hatchet. Why would the title not simply be :  金斧 (jin1 fu3)?

White(百) Board

This last weekend I bought myself a mini white board to help me practice my Chinese writing. We use white boards extensively at the office for design etc. so I thought a white board would be ideal for learning Chinese. I did however not know that white boards were made in this mini format. All I an say is that its awesome. It is so nice to be able to write a character a couple of times at a couple of different sizes to get the stroke order right. Here is a picture of my board with some practice material on it. (The grammar might be a bit wrong :)).

Chinese (中国人), Chinese (中文) and Chinese (汉语)

The last week I have been a bit quiet since we were moving into a new home. I have been keeping up with learning Chinese and also have a couple of posts in draft. During the weekend it occurred to me there is a difference between Chinese (中文), Chinese (中国人)  and Chinese (汉语).

中国人: This is literally translated as Central (中) Country/Kingdom (国) People (人) where 中国 means China. So in English this can be read as Chinese. Chinese as in people from China. (e.g : 他是中国人 - He is Chinese)

 中文 : This is literally translated as Central (中) Culture (文). Again 中国 means China but in this case I assume that the 国 is omitted. So in English this can also be read as Chinese but Chinese as in something Chinese. (e.g. : 中文书 - (a) Chinese Book)

汉语 : This is literally translated as Han (汉) Language (语). This way of saying Chinese refers to the Chinese language. (e.g. : 我正在学汉语 - I am studying Chinese)

So there you have it. Three ways to say Chinese in Chinese and only one word in English. English seems to be bit more context sensitive than Chinese from this small little analysis.

The particle 的 (de)

I have finally gotten to this construct in my spoken Chinese lessons. I like this way of indicating possession. I am by no means an expert but it seems like this particle doesn't just indicate possession. I have seen three distinct uses for this little gem:

1. Indicating possession.
•  我的书(My book). 
2. Omission of the noun in noun modification.
• 我的书是好的 (My book is good) instead of 我的书是好书(My book is a good book)
3. Indicating that a word is not a verb but a noun modification.
• I don't actually have an example for this case. (Interesting! I'll have to do some research on this facet).

 We have been moving into our new house over the last couple of days so I have not been learning as much Chinese as I would have liked to. But the new place is much bigger and we are settling in quite nicely. Anyway, that's me for today.

Starting Grammar

I have started to dip my feet into Chinese grammar. This link is has been very useful for getting me started on the tenses. In one of my previous posts I used the past particle (了) incorrectly. According to the link above the past particle is never used on the verb to be (是). I was supposed to use a time specification (last week, yesterday etc.) after the subject. As I haven't covered time and time frames anywhere I will leave the fixing up of my previous grammatical error till later.

Chinese Comic Strips

Here is a link to quite funny comic strips in English and Chinese. Very good to practice reading Chinese.

Poetic Chinese

As I continue to study Chinese I am amazed almost every day by how poetic Chinese is. Today I learned the word for 星(star) and the one of the words for 河 (river). Now guess what the word is for "Milky Way": 星河 (star river). Isn't that very beautiful and poetic? Now I know that English and Afrikaans (the other two languages that I speak) are also poetic (I am probably just so used to them that nothing is really new) but I find Chinese to be uniquely descriptive and poetic. I am looking forward to each new learning session, looking forward to find more gems like 星河. Here is another one. Not quite a poetic but so descriptive: 小 (small) 羊 (sheep) which is a lamb. Or how about : 山(mountain) 羊(sheep) which is a goat.

Busy Week

This week was hectic at work. 我是了很忙. I did keep up my study of Chinese. I didn't learn to many new things but I did practice the things I have already learned. I have also discovered some of the free 'learning Chinese' podcasts. The one I'm using to supplement my other resources are "Manadryn Chinese Lessons  with Serge Melnyk". His website can be found here. The podcasts are excellent and especially well done with regards to the pronunciation of the 5 tones. I have also started using the eZiTest3 software on my iPhone and its is a very good companion to the Tuttle book.

The Chinese Currency

I didn't learn to much today but I did read up on Chinese culture. I learned today that the Chinese currency is not the  元(yuan2) as I have always thought but the 人民币(ren2min2bi4). You can find the Wikipedia article here. So 人(ren2) and 民(min2) means people and 币(bi4) means currency or money. So 人民币means "people's currency". With my limited knowledge I would have translated "people's currency" as 人的币. So hopefully one day soon I will discover why my way is incorrect :) PS: Google Translate does translate my direct translation 人的币 to "people's money".

Counting (计数)

I've been reading up a bit about counting and counting related subjects in Chinese. Attached here is a nice summary of what I've been learning. Counting in Chinese is actually quite simple. It only becomes a bit more tricky at about 100 000 (十万) but even then its quite logical. I have found that reading and writing Chinese numbers are much easier than speaking them out loud. It might just be that I am more analytically and visually focused. On my long run this morning I started counting in Chinese in my mind from 1 (一) to 100 (百）and then in increments of 100 from 100 (一百) to 900 (九百). This is quite a nice exercise to do while running or in the gym.

My Character Sheet

I lied in my first post. I only know about 75 characters now. There is a document with all the characters I know at the moment. I will be updating this as I progress.I am using this list primarily as a revision tool for my progress through the character learning book: Tuttle, Learning Chinese Characters, Vol. 1: A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters. My approach of using multiple source for learning seems to be working for me. It ensures that I don't get bored, and it exposes me to different aspects of Chinese. Util my next post, 再见.

Serenity Chinese

Here is a link to some translations of the Chinese in the TV Series Serenity. Very nice.

Another Audio Course

OK, so browsing through the local books shop I couldn't stop myself from buying another Chinese training aide :  Living Langaue - Starting Out in Chinese. I've only listened to the first two lessons but I have already learned quite a bit of new things. I like the fact that there is two speakers which gives my ears lots of exercise in listening to Chinese. This is also the first product that I own that is more concerned with practical conversational Chinese rather than just learning words or characters.

First Steps

About a month ago I started learning a couple of Chinese phrases. Since then I have learned at least a hundred words and close to a hundred characters. I have decided to to take a multifaceted approach. I have a couple of apps on my iPhone which is helping me. I particularly like the AccelaStudy Chinese and the iChinese applications. I use AccelaStudy's Audio Auto Advance feature extensively when I drive around and in the gym. It is a very easy way of learning new vocabulary and pronunciation. iChinese has helped me to write characters. Both are excellent apps. I also picked up the following book (Actual paper,I know, very low tech): Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters, Vol. 1: A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters. This was an impulsive purchase but such a good buy. I only read the reviews on amazon on this book a couple of days later and let me tell you that most of the negative comments are totally unfounded. So this is the beginning. I am aiming to post my experience learning Chinese on this blog and maybe it is useful to somebody.